The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 374, February 26, 1887

Synopsis

There is no doubt that in this country the present generation is far more luxurious than the one that preceded it. Living is to a great extent a question of habit. At the present moment a Russian soldier is paid at the rate of a shilling a month, and his only ration is rye-bread baked into biscuit, washed down with a draught of water. The British workman of the day requires a hot meat dinner, cooked from fresh meat expressly for him alone. Were his wife to supply him with cold meat, he would probably grumble. In the last century a labourer was content with a piece of fat pork boiled on Sunday. Possibly in the next century we shall have our soup kitchens for the poor altered into turtle soup kitchens; for it is a fact that the luxuries of one century become the necessities of the next.

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