57. So that poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. _The shame of poverty_, the shame of being thought poor, is a great and fatal weakness, though arising, in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves. When a _good man_, as in the phraseology of the city, means a _rich man_, we are not to wonder that every one wishes to be thought richer than he is. When adulation is sure to follow wealth, and when contempt would be awarded to many if they were not wealthy, who are spoken of with deference, and even lauded to the skies, because their riches are great and notorious; when this is the case, we are not to be surprised that men are ashamed to be thought to be poor. This is one of the greatest of all the dangers at the outset of life: it has brought thousands and hundreds of thousands to ruin, even to _pecuniary_ ruin. One of the most amiable features in the character of American society is this; that men never boast of their riches, and never disguise their poverty; but they talk of both as of any other matter fit for public conversation. No man shuns another because he is poor: no man is preferred to another because he is rich. In hundreds and hundreds of instances, men, not worth a shilling, have been chosen by the people and entrusted with their rights and interests, in preference to men who ride in their carriages.
58. This shame of being thought poor, is not only dishonourable in itself, and fatally injurious to men of talent; but it is ruinous even in a _pecuniary_ point of view, and equally destructive to farmers, traders, and even gentlemen of landed estate. It leads to everlasting efforts to _disguise one's poverty_: the carriage, the servants, the wine, (oh, that fatal wine!) the spirits, the decanters, the glasses, all the table apparatus, the dress, the horses, the dinners, the parties, all must be kept up; not so much because he or she who keeps or gives them, has any pleasure arising therefrom, as because not to keep and give them, would give rise to a suspicion _of the want of means_ so to give and keep; and thus thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great _anxiety not to be thought poor_. Look round you, mark well what you behold, and say if this be not the case. In how many instances have you seen most amiable and even most industrious families brought to ruin by nothing but this! Mark it well; resolve to set this false shame at defiance, and when you have done that, you have laid the first stone of the surest foundation of your future tranquillity of mind. There are thousands of families, at this very moment, who are thus struggling to keep up appearances. The farmers accommodate themselves to circumstances more easily than tradesmen and professional men. They live at a greater distance from their neighbours: they can change their style of living unperceived: they can banish the decanter, change the dishes for a bit of bacon, make a treat out of a rasher and eggs, and the world is none the wiser all the while. But the tradesman, the doctor, the attorney, and the trader, cannot make the change so quietly, and unseen. The accursed wine, which is a sort of criterion of the style of living, a sort of _scale_ to the _plan_, a sort of _key_ to the _tune_; this is the thing to banish first of all; because all the rest follow, and come down to their proper level in a short time. The accursed decanter cries footman or waiting maid, puts bells to the side of the wall, screams aloud for carpets; and when I am asked, 'Lord, _what_ is a glass of wine?' my answer is, that, in this country, it is _everything_; it is the pitcher of the key; it demands all the other unnecessary expenses; it is injurious to health, and must be injurious, every bottle of wine that is drunk containing a certain portion of ardent spirits, besides other drugs deleterious in their nature; and, of all the friends to the doctors, this fashionable beverage is the greatest. And, which adds greatly to the folly, or, I should say, the real vice of using it, is, that the parties themselves, nine times out of ten, do not drink it by _choice_; do not like it; do not relish it; but use it from mere ostentation, being ashamed to be seen even by their own servants, not to drink wine. At the very moment I am writing this, there are thousands of families in and near London, who daily have wine upon their tables, and who _drink_ it too, merely because their own servants should not suspect them to be poor, and not deem them to be genteel; and thus families by thousands are ruined, only because they are ashamed to be thought poor.