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