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قراءة كتاب Curiosities of Impecuniosity
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CURIOSITIES
OF
IMPECUNIOSITY.
BY
H. G. SOMERVILLE,
AUTHOR OF
“NOT YET,” “SELF AND SELF-SACRIFICE,” ETC.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, W.
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1896.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
PREFACE.
It is customary for the proprietor when starting a newspaper or periodical to issue a notice to the public explaining—or purporting to explain—the raison d’être of the new venture, which notices, with very trifling exceptions, are to the effect that the projected journal “will supply a want long felt.”
I might, in sending forth the following pages, state something similar with perfect truth, since if the little work be as successful as (I say it with all modesty) it ought to be, it will unquestionably supply a want long felt—by the author.
It is frequently averred nowadays that much that is written bears evidence of being of a non-practical character, and under these circumstances, I felt I should take a pardonable pride in being able to point to one volume in the English language to which this stigma could not be applied; for I flatter myself the subject of Impecuniosity is one with which I have long—too long—been practically familiar.
H. G. Somerville.
CONTENTS.
| CHAP. | PAGE | |
| I. | The Moral and Immoral Effects of Impecuniosity | 1 |
| II. | Impecuniosity of the Great | 13 |
| III. | The Shifts of Impecuniosity | 25 |
| IV. | The Luck and Ill Luck of Impecuniosity | 48 |
| V. | The Ingenuity of Impecuniosity | 73 |
| VI. | The Impecuniosity of Actors | 87 |
| VII. | Impecuniosity of Artists | 132 |
| VIII. | Impecuniosity of Authors | 158 |
| IX. | The Romance of Impecuniosity | 196 |
CURIOSITIES OF IMPECUNIOSITY.
CHAPTER I.
THE MORAL AND IMMORAL EFFECTS OF IMPECUNIOSITY.
“I wish the good old times would come again, when we were not quite so rich,” says Bridget Elia. “I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase now that you have money enough. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury, we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what savings we could hit upon that would be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money we paid for it. Do you remember the brown suit which you made to hang upon you, it grew so threadbare, and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher which you dragged home late at night from Barker’s in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o’clock on the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late; and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper lighted out the relic from his dusty treasure-house, and when you lugged it home wishing it were twice as cumbersome, and when you presented it to me, and when we were exploring the perfection of it, and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak, was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and Potter’s Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday? Holidays and all other fun are gone now we are rich,—and the little hand-basket in which I used to deposit our day’s fare of savoury