He sat down and surveyed the simple scene with a quiet sense of pleasure.

He contrasted it in his memory with the weary sameness of the breakfasts served to him in his own palatial London residence, when the velvet-footed butler creeping obsequiously round the table, uttered his perpetual "Tea or coffee, sir?
'Am or tongue?
Fish or heggs ?" in soft sepulchral tones, as though these comestibles had something to do with poison rather than nourishment.
With disgust at the luxury which engendered such domestic appurtenances, he thought of the two tall footmen, whose chief duty towards the serving of breakfast appeared to be the taking of covers off dishes and the putting them on again, as if six-footed able-bodied manhood were not equipped for more muscular work than that! "We do great wrong," he said to himself--"We who are richer than what are called the rich, do infinite wrong to our kind by tolerating so much needless waste and useless extravagance.

We merely generate mischief for ourselves and others.

The poor are happier, and far kindlier to each other than the moneyed classes, simply because they cannot demand so much self-indulgence.

The lazy habits of wealthy men and women who insist on getting an unnecessary number of paid persons to do for them what they could very well do for themselves, are chiefly to blame for all our tiresome and ostentatious social conditions.