Night of December to account for our exceedings?many a long face did you
make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we
had spent so much?or that we had not spent so much?or that it was impos
sible we should spend so much next year?and still we found our slender
capital decreasing?but then, betwixt ways, and projects, and compromises of
one sort or another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without that
for the future?and the hope that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which
you were never poor till now), we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion,
with 'lusty brimmers' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cot-
ton,9 as you called him), we used to welcome in 'the coming guest.' Now we
have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year?no flattering promises
about the new year doing better for us.' Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions that when she gets
into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, however,
smiling at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had conjured
up out of a clear income of poor hundred pounds a year. 'It is true we
were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. I
am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux
into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves. That we had much to
struggle with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful. It
strengthened and knit our compact closer. We could never have been what
we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you
now complain of. The resisting power?those natural dilations of the youthful
spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten?with us are long since passed
away. Competence to age is supplementary youth, a sorry supplement indeed,
but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride where we formerly walked:
live better and lie softer?and shall be wise to do so?than we had means to
do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could those days return?could
you and 1 once more walk our thirty miles a day?could Bannister and Mrs.
Bland again be young, and you and I be young to see them?could the good
old one-shilling gallery days return?they are dreams, my cousin, now?but
could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our well-
carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa?be once more struggling up
those inconvenient staircases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by
the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers?could I once more hear those
anxious shrieks of yours?and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which
always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the
whole cheerful theater down beneath us?I know not the fathom line that
ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in
1
than Croesus had, or the great Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase
9. Charles Cotton (1630-1687), a favorite poet of I. Nathan Meyer Rothschild (1777-1836) foundLamb's. The quotations are from his poem 'The ed the English branch of the great European bank-
New Year.' 'Lusty brimmers': glasses filled to the ing house.
brim.
.
514 / JANE AUSTEN
it. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella,
big enough for a bed-tester,2 over the head of that pretty insipid half Madon
naish chit of a lady in that very blue summerhouse.'
