refurbished stable in Oxford Village, Connecticut. Both homes are centrally air conditioned. They have their own elevator in town and they ride horses in the country. They have a male cook who lives in and a freezer full of steaks. They also have an automatic washing machine, dishwasher, an electric refrigerator, an electric clothes dryer, a gas stove, a sewing machine, and three color TV sets. They have fourteen rooms and six baths in town and as many in Connecticut. They serve meat or fish 21 times a week and they never eat frozen dinners.

Their homes are richly furnished with antiques and Renaissance paintings and have enormous fireplaces. Still, the Fs' consumption has not been as conspicuous as one might assume. Their town car is seven years old and they have recently and reluctantly bought a station wagon for the country. They also resisted buying a color TV until 1971, though once having acquired it they soon acquired two more. They feel somewhat burdened by their possessions.

They would prefer, for example, to own no car at all. The car in town is a Lincoln Continental, which gets nine miles to a gallon and which Mrs. F loathes to drive; but since large works of art must occasionally be transported across Manhattan, it is a convenience. Meanwhile, it lurks outside their house and their lives like a minor blackmailer, hitting them in the pocketbook. When the garage owner recently raised the monthly parking fee from $95 to $124, Mr. F was outraged and he began parking on the streets. This was not an ideal solution, since New York enjoys what is known as alternate street parking, which means it is illegal to park on one side of the street on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and on the other on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The cook had to go out and move it at regular intervals. It was a burden and costly in traffic tickets, and one suspected that in time the Fs would succumb to the ease of the exorbitantly priced garage.

Meanwhile, the Fs—mother, father and four daughters—moved around Manhattan in taxis and in the country in a station wagon and on ten-speed bikes. The girls take cabs when they go more than three blocks. Mrs. F takes as many as five cabs a day. The family spends the entire summer in Connecticut, with Mr. F commuting. In the country, Mrs. F runs an antique store, which adds an incidental $10,000 a year to the Fs' very substantial income.

But in the summer of 1973, the Fs were not complacent about their way of life. The devaluation of the dollar, for one thing, had affected their businesses and for people living in midtown Manhattan, the problems of our times—pollution, energy shortages, and urban decay—were close at hand. When asked how in theory he would adjust to an America which suddenly had no air conditioning and no jet planes, Mr. F said without hesitation that he'd move to London.

The Fs have never been poor. Mrs. F was born rich at a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans felt they were on the brink of fiscal