Note CS — LETTER XXIII.

If the rich in the large towns of the North spend eight or ten times as much as the clerk, it is not that they keep up much style, or even that they have an equipage. When would the husband, always immersed in business, or the wife, occupied with her household cares, be able to use the coach? Suppose they had time to use it, and the public opinion would not be offended by it, what could one do with an equipage in the streets of Philadelphia? The principal difference in the expenditure of the two classes, is that the rich man now and then gives a ball, and piques himself on his parade, which the indulgent democracy pardons for one day; this sort of luxury is much more expensive here than with us, and it does not require a very brilliant rout, in small houses, in which the company is received in two rooms 20 feet by 25, to cost 700 or 800 dollars.