A LIFE OF ‘SHOW.’

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIX, Issue XXV, 11 December 1897, Page 780

A LIFE OF ‘SHOW.’

To live in the world and only for the world is alxiut the most thankless and unsatisfactory state of things that can lie endured. Yet it is a condition in which many people place themselves of their own free will, and suffer to continue, fondly imagining that they deceive others into thinking that they are really what they try their hardest to seem to be. Is there anything more foolish than for the wife of a young clerk earning something like £HX) or under a year, to attempt to entertain, dress, and shape her life generally on the lines adopted by the wife of her husband’s manager, who writes his income with four figures instead of three ? That she can succeed in her imitations is impossible, but she goes on trying with an energy worthy of a lietter cause, and cares nothing for the discomfort and stinting of her daily life, if occasionally she can manage to launch into a little outward show, which deceives nobody as to her real position, and brings no real pleasure or satisfaction either to herself or her husband. It is better to have plenty of wholesome food and good clothes, and forego the delights of so-called society, than to skimp and plot and plan in order to lie ‘At Home ’ once a week to a few acquaintances who come to eat and drink and talk, and go home to comment on the house, dress and tea of their hostess. A woman like this will not care how badly supplied her kitchen may lie. nor for the bare shelves in her linen cupboard, if she can have a drawing-room furnished with a certain degree of grandeur in which to receive her guests, and will go alxiut in an old, torn and dirty dress at home with a peaceful mind, provided she has a grand hat and coat with which to face the outside world. ‘For outward show’ is her motto, and she will s|iare no trouble to live up to it, although it would lie hard to say what good she gains thereby.