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Advice to the
Rich
1926
Remember that you will shortly die.
Let us hear a little less about your taxes.
Give largely, and especially to the
embarrassed of your own station
in life. Thus you may possibly escape Hell.
Do not be too angry with the man who
goes about carrying a large
model of a needle with an eye and a little toy camel in his left
hand.
The camel is made of india rubber and can be squeezed through
the eye of a needle; but with difficulty.
Do not patronize: they are at least as
good as you and most of them
better.
What you are really keen on is new
emotions. Try this: dress up
like a poor woman and tramp it for one week seeking work (if you
are a man, which I doubt, dress up like a poor man).
Spend lavishly on your pleasures. After
charity it is the best use
you can make of your money, but take care that they are pleasures;
for most caviare is uneatable and as for most champagne. . .
Have your oysters opened
(a) on the deep shell,
(b) keeping all the liquor,
(c) not wholly detaching them,
(d) immediately before you eat them. And do please remember
that of the 6d you spend on each oyster 5 1/2 is robbery: which
you well deserve.
Learn about the inwards of your motor car.
Rule your children, your servants and
your husband (or wife, as the
case may be) or they will rule you (and that is all right in the
case of
husband or wife, as the case may be, but all wrong in the matter
of
children or servants-or beasts, for that matter).
Do not sell yourself. Poor people don't
and you have no excuse;
yet you are always doing it.
Do not let doctors cut you up: it is heads they win, tails you loose.
Drink Hearty: there
is no more detestable sight than a rich teeto-
taller it always connotes dipsomania-a
poor one is bad enough.
You are quite right to be keen on horses:
the riding Englishman is
the finest sort there is: but don't worship the silly beast.
Worship
God who made you and has long ago repented of that effort-
thus may you appease Him.
When you use the word 'gentleman', use
it in its exact sense of a
particular English product with certain vices and certain virtues-
upon the whole admirable. But don't use it as a piece of self-
worship or as equivalent to 'a perfect being'.
Say what you really like and what you
really don't like, and don't
say you like thing you don't like simply because they happen to
be
in the fashion.
I will say it for the second time: Drink Hearty.
Pray for the pious donor of this
advice, which he has given
you freely and which is so vastly to your advantage.
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