# fifteen Es # seven Fs # four Gs # six Hs # eight Is # four Ns # five Os # six Rs # eighteen Ss # eight Ts # four Us # three Vs # two Ws # three Xs
It is easy to prove that the wearing of tall hats and the carrying of umbrellas enlarges the chest, prolongs life, and confers comparative immunity from disease; for statistics show that the classes which use these articles are bigger, healthier, and live longer than the class which never dreams of possessing such things. It does not take much perspicacity to see what really makes this difference is not the tall hat and umbrella, but the wealth and nourishment of which they are evidence, and that a gold watch or membership of a club in the Pall Mall might be proved in the same way to have the like sovereign virtues. A university degree, a daily bath, the owning of thirty pairs of trousers, a knowledge of Wagner’s music, a pew in a church, anything, in short, that implies more means and better nurture than the mass of laborers enjoy, can be statistically palmed off as a magic spell conferring all sorts of privileges.
