Lunacies of Wealth

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2, 11 January 1906, Page 1

Lunacies of Wealth

* Nonsense ! ' said Neuchatel in Disraeli's * Endymlon,' ' great wealth is a great blessing to a man who knows what to do with it.' But there are so many that do not know what to do with the shekels that fortune or inheritance has placed in their hands. Some.' wealthy Americans and Parisians, for instance, are given to foolish, useless, and even grotesque ways of parting with portions of their wealth— mere debaucheries of senseless extravagance that recall the days when Lucullus and his guests dined on peacocks' brains and nightingales' tongues and other barbarous and fantastic luxuries in the gorgeous villas of Tusculum and Neapolis. One of the latest crazes is the extravagant adornment of poodles and other fancy creatures of the dog 7 lcind. Among the sordid decadents* the Japanese poodle and the ' Dandie D-inmont ' and , the fierce ' bull ' too often usurp the place that happy childhood fills in the Christian home ; and the petted brutes are tricked out in costly furs and fine laces and golden gewgaws and collars studded with rubies and brilliants. They are the Beau Brummels of the canine tribe . The dogtailor, the dog-modiste, the dog-barber, and the dogjeweller now take a place among the recognised institutions of a growing section of the childless wealthy lower orders. And a few blocks away from this .garish and insane splendor, the pinched children of the slums cry fo*r a crust of bread. Those stale degenerates give a point to the 'Foolish 'Dictionary's' definition of ' family ' : ' Originally a wife and .several children, a matter of pride to the possessor. Now obsolete among the careful, or confined to the wife, a bull-pup, and a canary bird.' In New Zealand there are, alack ! many who imitate the northern ,decadents in thedr greater crime. The cult of the prattling • infancy declines amain among our advocates of race suicide. The worship of the bull-pup will follow in due cCurse.