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Bills
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (July 29, 1911) : 34
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      There are many kinds of bills and many kinds of people who pay them, but there are certain bills that the most reasonable-minded people cannot pay calmly. It is not that they seem exorbitant, it is that they exist at all. The size has nothing to do with one’s anger. It is the feeling of being so unjustifiably treated, of having been wronged by a person to whom you have done no harm, to whom, in fact, you were very civil during a trying time. You did not want to have plastering done; it upset your plans and spoiled some of your furniture, but from the beginning to the end you were courteous to the plasterers, giving every assistance needed, and not once letting them see what you thought of plastering in general. Then, weeks after, when you had almost managed to forget the incident, and at least held no grudge against those most closely implicated, a bill arrived, and it was revealed to you that not only did fate expect you to put up with the first part of the process, but that you must also pay in money that would do so many pleasanter things. And this for an experience that was neither your fault nor at your desire.
      It is at such times that the best of us misbehave and announce that we are being robbed, and that we have no intention of standing it. We read the items aloud at the breakfast table. The workman’s time — an exorbitant sum. Why, in the name of all that is just and right, did he take so much time? You pay double, because he took four days when you longed to have him out of the house an hour after his first entering it. It is the unreasonableness of it that cuts. It is the unreasonableness of it that cuts.
      For every virtue you possess, every attribute of good citizenship, you are penalized. All the unattractive things that you do from no personal enjoyment of them, but merely because it makes matters more agreeable for one’s friends, and because there is a prejudice in their favor to which you from good nature conform, cost the most fantastic sums, and the charges are based on the most ridiculous pleas.
      After “workmen’s time” comes “materials.” They are not the materials you wished, for those you could not afford, neither are they good materials, for you know from experience that the materials used are always those which possess the one quality of having to be replaced with-in the shortest possible time; yet for these undesirable, impracticable things you pay, and pay enormously.
      Then, too, there is the recurring mystery that baffles and maddens — why desirable things are always moderately priced and disagreeable things rated at gigantic values. It ought to be the other way about, but it never is. Charming things are frequently so cheap that you cannot remember the next day what you paid for them, the price completely slipping from your mind. While, on the other hand, washerwomen and dentists are perfectly brazen in their charges. It is no fun for you to have the same garments washed weekly, wearing them out as it does, and only emphasizing their silly aptitude for becoming soiled. And you never asked for teeth. And you never asked for teeth. Torturesome hours are spent tinkering at the badly made little pests. Yet it is always you who pay. The dentist was not hurt, but he is remunerated. You suffered at his pleasure, and then get a bill for it. It is not right.
      Utopias, social reforms, and all that sort of thing are all very well, but what you want is a society based on something more sensible than working hard for money that must be spent on things you dislike having, and for which nothing can be said except that they enable you to go on working all the harder. Grocery bills, for instance, of the past six months — what could be more heartrending than the presentation of such a document? Not a thing listed that is still in existence! Every item gone... Grocery bills, for instance, of the past six months — what could be more heartrending than the presentation of such a document? Not a thing listed that is still in existence! Every item gone,and you asked to pay for them! Nothing to show for it except that you are still alive! Who wants to be alive at such moments? If it is true that you would not be in this world at the present moment if you had not consumed that interminable list of unappetizing things, living seems a loathsome business, and the fuel necessary out of all proportion to the amount gained. You are a little ashamed to have put so many people to so much trouble with so small a thing to show at the end. It does not seem intelligent of you or of the grocer.
      This entire class of bills, and the reader by this time surely recognizes it as one he knows well and can add individually disliked items to, gains for the most amiable people a reputation they do not deserve. There are certain tyrannies every one has a right to revolt against, and such bills as these should be included in the list. What if we do bluster and fuss and act in a manner that our families disapprove of? The relaxation of blustering is all we get out of it...
We are willing to pay, but we are not willing to pay willingly. What if we do bluster and fuss and act in a manner that our families disapprove of? The relaxation of blustering is all we get out of it. Religious and civil wars are never criticized, and a certain kind of bill fires us with the same spirit that causes these big movements. We know that in the end we will have to succumb and pay. We realize only too keenly that society is against us, and that instead of being called martyrs or patriots we are being set down as crotchety and unreasonable, but in spite of all this we want to register a protest against what we regard now, and will always regard, as a personal wrong. We are willing to pay, but we are not willing to pay willingly. We may be cowed by the absurdities of this world to a certain extent, but not to that extreme limit of slavery where we have learned to endure silently glaring injuries. Blustering at such moments is not ill breeding. Neither is it pointless. We feel it to be a moral duty. If the phrase was not hackneyed we would say it was a matter of principle. That, at any rate, is what we mean, and when we bluster, we bluster as one performing a sacred rite.
 

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