Untitled

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 221, 8 September 1876, Page 4

Tbe first thing (says the Fall Mall Gazette) remarked in England by the intelligent foreigner is the poverty of a people wallowing in wealth. Nothing more astonishes the stranger's mind here than the juxtaposition, the mixture of meanness and magnificence. The c&ase is soon learned. We JBlanders will spend tbirteenpence out of a shilling, when the continental only spends elevenpence. And why do families migrate abroad for economy? The price or a pound of bread is much the same in moat parts of the civilised world, The truth is, that what we deem necessaries ia England we find to be luxuries abroad j economy results from not paying less, but from wanting le3B. In England we eat too much meat; once a day should suffice for all Have the hardest worked of working men. We drink too much; "diffusible stimulants" should not be used, except by invalids, till late in the day; and the modern system of " drops" and "pick me-ups," vulgurly called "nip3," would ruin the strongest constitution. We smoke too much. Wisely said the Hodges of yore to their heirs, "Let not tbe smoke of the pipe go up between thee and tha suu I" and the practice of perpetual cigaretting is, if possible, worse than that, of " nipa." We rida and drive even in cabs, when we should walk; we pass our evenings at expensive entertaiuments instead oi cheap spectacles ; in fact, we do a number of things which make life, so economical abroad, dear in England. The reduction of even small incomes may do immense national good by preaching more simplicity of life,