nance of his family. In London, in a healthy | pense. Thus, for the first few years, the reasonand respectable neighborhood within thirty or able annual outlay for the necessaries and the forty minutes' walk of the commercial portion comforts of life can be rated at an aggregate of the city, $300 per annum is regarded as a sum of $1500 per three persons, and about $500 very respectable rental. Living in general is per each extra couple of adults that might be not high; so that a man with a yearly salary added to the family circle. As regards food, of £300 can afford to keep house and to enjoy fuel, and a moderate indulgence in the luxuries some of the luxuries even of life. But in the of life, the military tables of subsistence furnish city of New York, under the present system of us an excellent guide to the rule of quantity; management, the equivalent sum of $1500 goes and if to these we add an acknowledged judicious no distance at all toward the support of an es- outlay upon wearing apparel, we can not greattablishment. But this condition of affairs can ly err in our estimate of cost of the entire renot exist forever. The yearly increase of build-sponsibilities entailed upon domestic life. We ings in the city of London, even relatively considered, is quite equal to that of the city of New York—a fact that goes to show that, while there appears to be no ordinary prescription to the growth of a city, the maximum valuation of real estate, in a given locality, is speedily reached, and that a subsequent inflation in its rate of value is but a temporary evil. The fact likewise shows that the magnitude of a city depends not upon a positive and absorbent wealth of its denizens, but upon enterprise founded on a partial money basis. Leaving the present extreme inflation of prices entirely out of the ques-official titles of given quantities are invariable, tion, it is fair to presume that, eventually, the valuation of real estate in New York will be coincident with that of London to-day, and consequently the average of every description of rates will correspondingly decrease.

To have a home without a majority of unnecessary luxuries is called, nowadays, a sort of offense against society. And yet we do not think a man will greatly err in braving Mrs. Grundy and seeking his terrestrial heaven in a neat, substantial frame dwelling twenty-five feet front by thirty-five or forty feet in depth. The house would be small, but large enough to fall under the title of being respectable; and the fact of its being of wood does not prevent its being the abode of refined people, who, rather than to let Happiness shiver on the broad stairs of ideality, are sensible enough to seek, in a Christian spirit, a reasonable amelioration of their condition, and to surround themselves with the blessings of domestic life.

Whatever care children may require, until they shall have reached a considerable age, they demand but a small figure of the domestic ex

here offer the reader a fairly estimated table of the quantity of provisions (and their prices) necessary for the sustenance of three persons during a single week. The rule of quantity is founded upon "The Revised Regulations of the Army of the United States (pages 277, 279, 280): Philadelphia, 1861." We have based the prices upon what tradesmen term "a wholesale purchase" of all imperishable articles of food, and the perishable articles are rated at the retail prices demanded for first-class provision.

Inasmuch as prices are variable, while the

the rules of relative quantity, and consequently of price, can always be predetermined by the following table, which we give from The Revised Regulations, etc. The only precaution to be taken in calculating the various quantities is to deduct one-tenth the weight or measure from each item, as the military excess allowed for wastage.

Rations for one Person for a single Portion of any given

Pork
Beef
Flour

common Article of Food.

Description.

either

Pounds. Ounces Gills.

12

4

2

1.6

16 100

The results here obtained show the average of table expenses for three adults to be about $2 41 per day, if the provision be properly pur

Payments on Interest and Principal of Mortgage on $2500, dating from May, 1867, to May, 1875. 1887-1868.. $2500 00 interest due (7 per cent.), 1868.... $175 00 Payment, May, 1868.... 225 00

225 00 equal to a rent of.... $400 1869.... 159 25 240 75 1870.... 142 40 257 60 1871.... 124 37 275 63

400

....

400

66

....

400

1872....

105 07

84 43 315 57

66

1874....

86

May, 1875 ...

361 30

191 56

Table and Household Expenses.
Roasting Beef. 5 lbs., @ 35 cents per fb..
Mackerel. 1 lb., @ 15 cents per b.
per bushel

Vegetables Potatoes. 11 tb., @ $1 50

Onions. b., @ $1 25 per bushel
Vegetable luxuries..

Bread. 2 loaves, @ 10 cents.

Milk. 1 quart, @ 10 cents..

Coffee.tb...

Butter. b., @ 60 cents.

Dessert. Flour, rice, eggs, and spices

Car and Ferry fare to and from business (309 days)

Servant hire, @ $8 per month

Two cords of split wood, @ $18 00.

Coal for kitchen range (365 days), 9 tons, @ $$ 50

66 "portable furnace in basement, etc. (182 days), 4} tons Kerosene oil, 14 pints per day (365 days)

Water rates (on two-story dwelling)...

Insurance on house (of 1 per cent, on $2500).

64 "furniture (three-fifths of 1 per cent. on $1500)

Taxes on assessed value of property (3 per cent. on $3000).
Payments on principal and interest of mortgage...

The absurd rates demanded by the city gas corporations has led us to substitute the much-vilified burning fluid.

It is not the use, but the abuse of this article that has caused so much destruction to life and property.

not in itself the ultimatum that is within their sensible men and women have not called a con663 reach. To this class of beings appears to be in-vention and tumbled the betinseled deity down trusted the duty, the privilege, of maintaining the back stairs of society. And especially when an intellectual home. Possessing all the suscep- humbug is involved in the subject under contibility to refinement that characterizes the ma- sideration, in nine cases out of ten, if a man jority of people born in a more fortunate condi- and woman have just cause for mutual love, tion of life, and yet flung, as it were, upon the they are fools not to be happy together under very edge of a class that has want and vulgar merely tolerable circumstances, instead of living poverty for its companions, the people whose separate in the tinsel of a condition not far recause we are advocating stare the misfortunes moved from that which they appear so heartily of the latter class in the very face, and are to dread. And if it will superinduce the overthoroughly alive to the benefits, the social edu-throw of the god HUMBUG from his pedestal in cation, which their more fortunate fellow-creat- the hearts of such men and women, we assure ures are able to buy. But if one is to borrow trouble, is it necessary that the children of parents in narrow circumstances should receive but a wretched primary education; or because it is a rule followed by the greater portion of the wealthy classes, is it obligatory upon clerks to trust an expensive school with the inculcation of those moral and æsthetic refinements which

are

We

them that their determined status in the domestic condition will be immeasurably more respectable than the flimsiness with which they envelop their stilted, unreal course of life, the veil of which is penetrated by every body except themselves. The fiat of a self-constituted OPINION has promulgated laws as groundless in justness as the claim by which it sways the silly most properly acquired at the mother's multitude. A false and irresponsible order of knee? The instant we make home influence and society brands us with a peculiar term of its own (even a partial) home education the foundation invention, and we tremble as though the thunof family government, the question of domestic ders of Truth had been hurled against us. life assumes a light wholly differing from that will not be happy because we can not afford to in which it is commonly viewed. And with re-torture ourselves with the criticisms of envious gard to people so immediately connected with neighbors. It is the old story of "the man, the the extremes of the whole community, so con- boy, and the ass," rehearsed in broadcloth and siderable in number, and so impressible as the cheap finery; but with "The Moral" left out. class to which we have dedicated our article, It is so comme il faut to smother "The Moral" their establishment in the domestic scale of life, under gingham and home-spun; to say nothing and the infusion of such principles throughout of lugging into the presence of refined society the body, must unquestionably affect in a bene-such vulgarities as the being who travels nightficial manner the entire chain of society. For the present we must conclude with the remark, that while something remains to be done for this numerous class of individuals, much remains to be undone. It ought to be an empty regret for us, if the sister of our belle idéale chooses to marry the rich Smith, or if Miss Jones, who is "such a perfect lady," disdains to live in a cottage, or indeed in any thing short of a boardinghouse, 66 a large one, where there is plenty of society." There is no dearth of sensible Miss Smiths, and la belle idéale will find that all the men are not geese. The truth is, that there is so much real misery in humbug, and such thorough humbug at the bottom of our little miseries, that it is a subject for wonder why

ly to his haven of rest, the welcome voices that greet his return, the conviction that the word home sounds no longer like a mockery in the ear the quaint adage, that "home is home, be it ever so homely.'

involve the highest duties of its state. Like a Life is but an imperfect labor if it does not butterfly, we may flutter along the surface of the social state, and paint our wings with a thousand hues; but we gather no treasure in our summer day, and an after-season will sweep us beneath the dead leaves, an unsightly, nameless worm. price is a fool to pay roundly for the certainty The man who can be happy at a cheap of being miserable; and those who will be fools must suffer the penalty.

We hope that none of our British cousins were ter of more or less honest John Young, a British

disposed to smile at our enthusiasm over our royal visitor, Queen Emma of the Sandwich Islands. True wisdom, the philosophers tell us, is to make the most and the best of what you have. Of course our British brethren, who have the privilege of maintaining royalty of the very first order-who keep a Queen and Princes and Princesses, and royal Dukes and Duchesses and Highnesses at an enormous expense-who pay for royal palaces and castles and seats at discretion, besides exhibiting a royal crown under a glass case in the Tower-will think, in their own expressive phrase, "small beer" of our raptures over her Sandwich Majesty. They have bought the right to be critical in such matters. But our monarchical critics should remember that most of us never saw a Queen, and we have been carefully taught that we must be very good indeed if we expect, even when we die, to go to Paris and see a real Emperor and Empress; while, perhaps, superior and prolonged virtue may carry us so far as beyond the Rhine to behold an actual Serene Highness of Schlippen-Schloppen, or a Grand Duke of Pumpernickle, in the flesh. But these are visions of ecstasy-the possibilities, mercly, of another and a higher sphere.

Jack tar, appearing as a queen, and graciously giv ing audience to the special embassador of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the United States respectfully inviting her to become the guest of the nation. But the same brother would kneel, tingling with delight at the overpowering condescension, if the Empress of France should proffer him her lily hand to salute. And why not the grand-daughter of John Young as well as Miss Montijo? Nay, did not Victoria, Defender of the Faith, descend the grand staircase at Windsor Castle, and offer her ineffable cheek to the oscular salutation of Miss Montijo's husband? That was not only right, but right royal, by the etiquette; yet who was that husband but the nephew of a Corsican lieutenant of artillery?

That is only saying that the most umbrageous oak springs from an acorn. All royalty has a beginning, good British brother. Kings first crown themselves, as the Corsican lieutenant did with the iron crown of Lombardy at Monza. Indeed, only those who are able to crown themselves found royal lines, and "King by the grace of God" really means only king by the grace of an ancestor's right arm or cunning brain. That grim jester, Count Otho Von Bismarck, who has been turning Germany and Europe upside down, says with a fine feudal air, "Prussian monarchs have received, not from the people, but by Divine Grace, a practically unlimit ed power, a portion of which they have voluntarily granted to the people." Felix Holt would treat the Herr Count's remark with exactly the respect it deserves by saying, "Grace of fiddlestick! He gets his power from the elbow grease of the old Counts of Brandenburg." And when we have come so far, why is not that original ointment of royalty as respectable in a British sailor as in a German man-atarms, or a Corsican lieutenant?

In a late admirable letter from Paris we read, with ardor and satisfaction, that the ruler of Frauce has usually one or two kinds of soup, a bit of fish, a plate of roast, and a chop, at dinner, with a light pud

The truth is, that our moderate and unsophisticated tastes in royalty would be satisfied by a King of the Cannibal Islands, if we could do no better. We had, indeed, a few years since the opportunity of contemplating a living Prince of Wales; and of the large crowds with which New York greets every fresh spectacle that which waited for his coming seemed to be the largest. It filled doors, windows, roofs, steps, sidewalks, lanterns, posts, awnings, trees, railings, and was as good-humored and wellbehaved a throng as the sun ever shone upon. A large part of those amiable spectators had seen the mermaid, and the Albinos, and the fat woman, and the stuffed elephant at Barnum's, for twenty-five cents, and here they were-such is the benignity of Providence to a model republic-about to behold a living royal Prince gratis. The faithful historian will record that they were worthy the high priv-ding and perhaps a crumb of old cheese by way of ilege. As for the elect damosels who afterward danced with him, and broke down in his august society through the impromptu floor of the late lamented Academy of Music, they preserve the incident doubtless in sacred family tradition, and the memory will be transmitted to the ultimate generations of their houses as a precious heir-loom. Indeed there are matrons comely and gracious still to be encountered in the most perfumed circles, who have the air of peculiar darlings of fortune, and bear themselves with a mien of affable superiority to all contemporary events, but the secret of whose beatification is not comprehended until they are pointed out with awe as partners of the Prince de Joinville at Mrs. -'s famous ball of a quarter of a century ago. Did any of those mild matrons, who might have been at Washington four years since, recognize in a very quiet, very deaf old gentleman, who went about modestly peering into every thing, the royal and gallant sailor Prince of that earlier, rosy time?

The British brother who feels that he has an undivided thirty millionth part of interest in the remotest Plantagenet or princely Tudor, was doubtless inclined to smile at the idea of a grand-daugh

dessert. But we confess reading with an equally
respectful awe that the dowager ruler of the Sand-
wich Islands "partook heartily of gumbo soup,
chicken, green pease, succotash, and all the other
delicacies of the season.' Our kind Parisian in-
formant, writing to the papers, also described the
country costume of the Corsican lieutenant's neph-
cw. He wears high boots, it seems, of convenient
material and form, when he rides to hunt in the
park at Compiegne—a domain which is kept for him
by the people of France in gratitude for his great
public services. But Mr. Jenkins, our amiable fel-
low-citizen, conveys no less gratification in inform-
ing us that" Her Majesty wore for the drive in the
Park a black and steel-gray grenadine dress, of
small pattern, with a Japanese cloak of the same
material, trimmed handsomely, and a black velvet
jockey hat with black and white feathers.
dark kid gloves, and a single jewel of unusual brill-
iancy fastened in the collar of the dress at the
throat." Mr. Jenkins reserves the following fact
as a bonne bouche: "Her visiting cards have a
mourning border, in memory of his late Majesty,
husband of Queen Emma, King Kamehameha IV.,
now dead." Mr. Jenkins, of Paris, does not speak

Also

of the visiting cards of his Imperial personage; but they too, without doubt, have a mourning border in memory of the fellow-Frenchmen of his Majesty who died suddenly of grape-shot in the streets of Paris on the 3d and 4th of December, 1852, and for those who more lingeringly perished at Cayenne

and elsewhere.

union of the two continents are so incalculable that all the commentators have avoided speculation. They will be so rapidly developed that we can well wait. The first and inevitable consequence has been the sweeping away of the old and intense general interest in the heading of "Three days (more or less) later from Europe," which has so long heralded the arrival of the ocean steamers. The steamers bring the cream no longer. That is shot elec

As for the public services of the two potentates, Her Majesty the Queen, as Mr. Jenkins further states, being a dowager, “and not having any af-trically under the sea, and the ships suddenly confairs of state to engross her attention-she being a sincere Christian, as above stated," is a member of the Episcopal Church, and is engaged in raising money for the propagation of Episcopal Christianity in her soft and sunny realms. In England Her Sandwich Island Majesty was honorably received by Her Britannic Majesty, and obtained about fifty thousand dollars for her pious purpose. Her imperial cousin of France is also engaged in propagating his gospel of Cæsarism by the pen and otherwise, both at home and abroad. He has undertaken, on the one hand, a mission to the barbarous Mexicans, and, on the other, he is striving for the conversion of savage Republicans, and the gay and gallant nation, more used than we to such luxuries as kings and emperors, foots the little bills.

The British brother and cousin may smile; but her Majesty in steel-gray grenadine, and busy, in her Japanese cloak and black velvet jockey-hat, with black and white feathers, in teaching Highchurch Christianity to the soft Pacific Islanders, has quite as satisfactory a patent of royalty, if not quite so ancient and dusty, as the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs, the Braganzas, or the Bonapartes. As for the Guelphs their representative is also a Queen, honored and beloved, and there shall be no comparisons. But the mot of the old statesman is more than ever the motto of modern conviction, "Your Majesty's self is but a ceremony." If the British and other foreign brethren prefer to maintain it at its necessary expense, of which the money is the smallest part, we will not quarrel. We are wholly content to indulge in the ceremony no further than in following with attention Mr. Jenkins's graphic account of the royal progress of her Sandwich Island Majesty at her own cost.

A GREAT historical event has occurred since our last talk, and it has been received almost as a matter of course. The distance between Europe and America has been practically annihilated; the Atlantic ocean has been abolished; steam as an agent of communication has been antiquated; we read every morning the previous day's news from London or Paris, and there is no excitement whatever. Scarcely a bell has rung or a cannon roared. Not even a dinner has been eaten in honor of the great event, except by the gentlemen immediately concerned; and the salvo of speeches which usually resounds upon much inferior occasions from end to end of the country has been omitted. Indeed, the first thing was caviling and sneering, and an insinuation that the ocean telegraph was no "great shakes" after all. Persons of a cynical turn, however, observed that the defamatory strain proceeded from the newspapers, upon which the success of the enterprise imposed a heavy outlay. For the insatiable public must have all the news at the old expense; and experience has demonstrated that, to the public, no news is worth more than three or five cents.

Indeed, the possible results of the immediate

vey only skim milk. They are yet young men who remember the arrival of the Sirius and the Liverpool and the Great Western. Their coming was the occasion of a thousandfold greater excitement than the laying of the cable. Yet if some visionary enthusiast had said to his friend as they watched with awe the steaming in or out of those huge ships, "Before we are bald or gray we shall look upon these vessels as we now look from the express train upon the slow old stage-coaches," he would have been tolerated only as a harmless maniac. But this kind of maniac is very apt to prove the only wise man. The sole folly is in setting limits to the scope and results of invention.

Of course, there will be something very tantalizing in hearing only the central and important fact of important news. The details are often essential to intelligence as well as satisfaction, but the cost of sending messages is so great that for the present the explanatory details must be often omitted. Thus at this very time of writing the telegraph has just said that Louis Napoleon has asked of Prussia an extension of the French frontier to the Rhine. Under what circumstances and upon what conditions we do not hear, and we are left a prey to boundless speculation. But this is a difficulty which will correct itself, and the transmission of news will become a science.

The name which will be always associated with this historical event is that of the man who has so patiently and unweariedly persisted in the project, Cyrus W. Field. With an undaunted cheerfulness, which often seemed exasperating and unreasonable and fanatical, he has steadily and zealously persevered, no more dismayed or baffled by apparent failure than a good ship by a head wind. We remember meeting him one pleasant day during the last spring in the street by the Astor House in New York. He said that he was going out to England by the next steamer.

"And how many times have you crossed the ocean?"

"Oh," he replied, with the fresh enthusiasm of a boy going home for vacation, "this will be the twenty-second voyage I have made upon this business." And his eyes twinkled as we merrily said good-by. We heard of him no more until we saw his name signed to the dispatch announcing the triumph of his blithe faith and long labor.

A PARAGRAPH in the papers announces that Dr. Stone of Washington has been commissioned to make a marble statue of Alexander Hamilton, to be placed in the Capitol. Of the merits of Dr. Stone as a sculptor we are wholly ignorant. Indeed we do not remember to have seen his name before. Nor does it appear who has commissioned him. But there can be no doubt that it is a work worthy to be done. There is a statue of Hamilton in Boston, carved by Dr. Rimmer, in Quincy granite, by a private order, and admirably placed in Commonwealth Avenue. But Quincy granite can not make