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Title: Reflections Of A Bachelor Girl Author: Helen Rowland [More Titles by Rowland]
REFLECTIONS OF A BACHELOR GIRL
VARIETY is the spice of love. THE only people who believe in a personal devil, nowadays, are the ones who are married to that kind. THE girl who marries for money is bought; but the girl who marries for love is sold. A WISE lover, like a good cook, is one who knows when the fire is out. ALIMONY is the price of peace. IN marriage, the love-light so often goes out as soon as the gas bills begin to come in.
THE only way to be happy with a husband is to learn to be happy without him most of the time. LOVE is just the shine on the jewel of matrimony; but, after all, the shine on a jewel is the whole thing. A MAN firmly believes that, if he can only keep his wife in the straight and narrow path, he can go out and zig-zag all over the downward one without falling from grace. A GIRL is never so surprised when a man proposes to her as he is. LOVE doesn't really "make the world go 'round," it only makes us so dizzy that everything seems to be going round. ENNUI is "that tired feeling" that a girl has when the right man doesn't show up and the wrong one does.
STRANGE, how joyfully a man will pay a lawyer five hundred dollars for untying the knot that he begrudged paying a clergyman fifty dollars for tying. WHEN a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of all the other men of her acquaintance for the inattention of just one. IT gives a girl silver threads among the gold to marry her ardent admirer and find out afterward that she has tied herself to a life-critic. AS FAR as men are concerned, a woman's reputation for brains is worse than no reputation at all. ALAS, if husbands were only like sewing machines, and we could have them sent up on trial!
KISSING a girl, without first telling her that you love her, is as small and mean as letting a salesman take you for a free ride in an automobile when you have no intention of buying it. DIVORCE is the "Great Divide," over which many men think they will pass into Heaven. A MAN can never be made to understand why a woman will pay fifty dollars for a hat containing ten dollars worth of material and forty dollars worth of style. YOUTH will be youth; a young man chases temptation, folly, and chorus girls as naturally as a kitten chases its tail. FLINGING yourself at a man's head is like flinging a bone at a cat; it doesn't fascinate him, it frightens him.
MEN say they admire a woman with high ideals and principles; but it's the kind with high heels and dimples that a wife hesitates to introduce to her husband. MARRIAGE is the black coffee that a man takes to settle him after the love-feast. LOVE is the feeling that makes a man turn on the hot water when he meant to light the gas, go hunting for a collar when what he wanted was a pair of socks, shave every day, and forget whether or not he has had any lunch. HAPPINESS is at high-tide at the full of the honeymoon. SOMEHOW, a man who has been thrown over always lands on his knees to another girl.
A CONFIRMED bachelor girl is one who hasn't married--yet. TOO many "flames" dry up the well-spring of love. IT IS difficult for an old horse to learn new tricks--but an old man hasn't sense enough not to try. THE tenderest spot in a man's make-up is sometimes the bald spot on top of his head. NEVER worry for fear you have broken a man's heart; at the worst it is only sprained and a week's rest will put it in perfect working condition again. A RICH girl need not bother to cultivate the art of conversation in order to be fascinating. Her money will do the talking.
NOTHING can exceed the grace and tenderness with which men make love--in novels--, except the off-hand commonplaceness with which they do it in real life. ABOUT the only sign of personal individuality that the average woman is allowed to retain after she marries is her toothbrush. THERE are just three brands of masculine affection: platonic, which is love without kisses; plutonic, which is kisses without love, and kisses WITH love--which is almost extinct. OF course women should marry; no home is complete without a husband any more than it is without a cuckoo clock or a cat. "HOME" is any four walls that enclose the right person.
NO MAN can understand why a woman shouldn't prefer a good reputation to a good time. THE original fox was a man and the original grapes were the girls he couldn't kiss. A MAN'S desire for a son is usually nothing but the wish to duplicate himself in order that such a remarkable pattern may not be lost to the world. IT isn't the girls whom he has loved and lost that a man sighs for; it's those whom he has loved and never won. LAZY men fancy that the wheel of life is a roulette wheel, on which fortunes are won only by chance. EVERY time a woman gives a man a piece of her mind she loses a piece of his heart.
WHEN a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart. A MAN never marries when he ought to; he waits until some woman comes along and gets him so tangled up that he has to. THE shortest way to Heaven or to Hell is via the Love Route, Limited. IT MAY be bad form for a man to pay his wife compliments and call her pet-names in the presence of other women, but it's awfully good policy. MANY a foolish runaway match has been prevented by the fact that a girl didn't have on her best silk stockings at the critical moment.
REMORSE is the feeling a man has when the bottle is empty or he has tired of the girl. HUSBANDS are like Christmas gifts: you can't choose them; you've just got to sit down and wait until they arrive and then appear perfectly delighted with what you get. THE beauty of variety in love or wine is that the moment a man discovers a new brand or a new girl, he forgets all about the others and honestly believes that he is tasting the real thing for the first time. MATRIMONY should not be a prison but a privilege, and husbands and wives should not be jailors but jolliers. THAT lump which a man feels in his throat when he is about to propose is the "don't" lump.
A MAN may read everything that ever was written about women and yet not know enough to avoid asking his wife a question when her mouth is full of pins. THE oftener a man falls in love, the more easily and gracefully he does it; exercise seems to keep the heart in good working condition. IT IS always a surprise to a woman when her husband sues for $200,000 for the alienation of her affections, which he never seemed to consider worth two cents. MATRIMONY is a revolving door, round which husband and wife follow one another without ever meeting on the same side of any question. MARRYING an old bachelor is like buying second-hand furniture.
LOVE always must end sooner or later--usually sooner than the girl expected and later than the man intended. THE woman who insists on playing Solitaire in conversation is likely to end by playing Old Maid. FROM the number of virtues and accomplishments that a man expects to find in one wife, you'd fancy he was marrying a harem. DON'T worry for fear you may freeze a man's love out; the colder the wind you blow upon it, the higher you fan the flames. THE saddest thing about married life is the opportunity it gives two otherwise agreeable people for telling one another the disagreeable truth.
THERE never was a man big and strong enough to get out his clean shirt and collar and fix the water for his bath. IT'S when the game becomes a trifle stale that a man begins to feel conscientious qualms about flirting with a woman. THE woman who pins her faith to a man won't find a safety-pin strong enough to stand the strain. IN love, the best way to erase one face from the tablet of memory is to draw another across it. A MAN'S ideal woman is the one he couldn't get. A MAN may feel like a brute at taking a kiss from a nice girl--but it isn't until after he's gotten the kiss.
WHY should matrimony interfere with pleasure in this day of self-rocking cradles, self-cooking ranges--and self-supporting wives? MOST men write a love-letter as cautiously as though they were writing for publication, or fame, or posterity. THE man who breaks his social engagements with you before marriage, will break everything from his word to your heart, afterward. PLATONIC friendship is a ship that starts for Nowhere and nearly always ends by being wrecked in the port of Love. TO a man, marriage means giving up four out of five of the chiffonier drawers; to a woman, giving up four out of five of her opinions.
A MAN'S conscience is like his head; it never bothers him until "the morning after." A MAN'S shoulders are not always as broad as they're padded. MEN say they hate anything loud about a woman; it must be disgust that makes them always turn around to stare after a peroxide blonde. THE saddest sight on earth is an old bachelor trying to sew on a button with a blunt needle and a piece of string. THERE are some men who, before marriage, will risk their lives to pick up your parasol from in front of a whizzing automobile who wouldn't get off the sofa after marriage to pick up anything you might drop, from a hint, to a baby.
A HUSBAND gets so used to his wife's conversation that after a while it doesn't interrupt his reading of the newspaper any more than the plunking in the steam pipes. OF course men admire a circumspect woman above all things, but they seldom invite her out to supper. NOTHING bores a man worse than the devotion of the girl before the last. IT'S rather sad to see how easily a man gets "that tired feeling" after a love affair has become a bit stale. A MAN may send you a gold-handled umbrella with your monogram on it in diamonds and mean nothing but good-fellowship, but if he offers to put it up and carry it over you for fear the mist will spoil your feathers you may be sure he's in love.
LOVE letters lead to all sorts of complications, but post cards tell no tales. ASKING a girl if you may kiss her before doing it is an insulting way of laying all the responsibility on her. A MARRIED man thinks that if he concedes to smooth his top hair and carry a cane he is sufficiently dressy to go out anywhere with his wife. BRIDEGROOMS have that sheepish look because every one of them is morally certain that he is a lamb being led to the slaughter. A WIFE sort of loses her awe and admiration for men after she has seen her husband without a collar and with his face covered with shaving lather and his top hair sticking up in tufts.
A MAN seldom discovers that he hasn't married his affinity until his wife begins to get crow's-feet around the eyes. IF YOU want to be really popular pat a bald man on the head; call an old man "naughty boy"; treat a young man with timid respect; cling to a little man like the vine to the mighty oak, and tell a fat man how you love to dance with him. THE man who declares a friend innocent even when he knows he is guilty, and defends a woman's reputation even when it is scarcely worth defending, is not written down a liar by the recording angel. ODD how a man always gets remorse confused with reform; a cold bath, a dose of bromo-selzer, and his wife's forgiveness will make him feel so moral that he will begin to patronize you.
IT'S as hard to get a man to stay home after you've married him as it was to get him to go home before you married him. A MAN hates emotions; when a girl pours her heart out to him he feels as if she has emptied the warm water jug or the molasses cruet over him. A WOMAN will lie to anybody else on earth sooner than to the man she loves; but a man will lie to the woman he loves sooner than to anybody else on earth. MATRIMONY is a bargain--and somebody has got to get the worst of the bargain. THE most uncomfortable thing about being married is that you can never tell whether your friends are envying you or pitying you.
ALL a man asks for in the love-game is beginner's luck. POKER and love are both games of bluff. A MAN has so many more temptations than a woman--because he knows where to go and find them. A MAN will sit on the edge of the bed, holding one shoe in his hand and gazing into space for half an hour, and then send the cook into hysterics and the waitress into nervous prostration because he has only ten minutes left in which to eat his breakfast. MOST bridal couples pile enough honey into the first month of matrimony to last a whole lifetime if thinned out and spread on economically.
WONDER if Adam ever scolded Eve for her extravagance in fig leaves. A BABY'S kisses taste of stale milk, a boy's of jam, a young man's of cigarettes and a husband's of cocktails. OF course people can't carry their party manners into marriage; but if they could, marriage would be more like a party and less like a prize fight. SOME marriages of convenience turn out to be about the most inconvenient things that could possibly have happened. WHEN perfect frankness comes in at the door love flies out of the window. MIGHT as well hail a Broadway car on the wrong side of the street as to hail a man on the wrong side of his vanity.
DIVORCE is getting to be as painless as dentistry. Two people pack each other's trunks, genially shake hands farewell, wish each other luck, and then go off to Europe while the lawyers fight it out. A MAN forgets all about how to make love after ten years of matrimony; but it's wonderful how quickly he can get into practice again after his wife dies. DON'T flatter yourself because he calls every Sunday evening that it is a sign that he's getting serious. It may only be a sign that everything else is closed. NO doubt when a man puts his cheek against a girl's he always imagines that it feels as smooth as hers does. GETTING married is so easy that most men are suspicious of it.
A MOTHER-IN-LAW may be the serpent in the Garden of Eden; but if it hadn't been for the serpent whom would Adam have had to blame for all his troubles? WHEN two people marry they "lock their hearts together and throw away the key;" then they begin looking around for some old legal nail to pick the lock with. LUCK in love consists in getting not the person you want, but the person who wants you. If you don't believe it try being married to somebody who is not in love with you. A MAN'S idea of an engagement is a chance to find out whether or not he really enjoys kissing that particular girl. IT'S not his understanding of the plot of the opera that makes a man appreciate it, but the "understanding" of the chorus ladies.
A MAN thinks that by marrying a woman he proves he loves her, and that therefore nothing more need ever be said about it. THE average man looks on matrimony as a hitching post where he can tie a woman and leave her until he comes home nights. THERE is nothing so uninteresting to a a man as a contentedly married woman. A MAN'S sweethearts are like his cigars; he has many of each of them, loves each one as tenderly as the preceding, and appreciates each according to its expensiveness. A HUSBAND can always find fault with his wife, but, then, even archangels could pick flaws in one another if they had to drink coffee at the same table every morning.
MATRIMONY is, like the weather, mighty uncertain, and the happiest people are those who are neither looking for storms nor banking on sunshine, but are just willing to go along sensibly and take what comes. IT MAY mean nothing, but it's very mortifying to a woman when she takes her husband's dog for a walk and he tries to go into every corner saloon. IT'S easier to hide your light under a bushel than to keep your shady side dark. FUNNY how a married man who is trying to flirt with you always begins by telling you what a trying disposition his wife has. IT'S harder to get around a husband without flattery than to get around Cape Horn without a compass.
A MAN marries a girl for what she is, and then invariably tries to make her over into something else which he thinks she ought to be. WHEN an ordinary man does not smoke, drink, nor swear, be careful to find out what worse folly it is that he is addicted to. A MAN gets his sentiment for a woman so mixed up with the brand of perfume she uses that half the time he doesn't know which is which. HUSBANDS are like the pictures in the anti-fat advertisements--so different before and after taking. THERE are moments when the meanest of women may feel a sisterly sympathy for her husband's first wife.
A WOMAN may have a great deal of difficulty getting married the first time, but after that it's easy, because where one man leads the others will follow like a flock of sheep. THERE are so many ways of punishing a refractory wife that the husband who cannot find one is either a timid, mawkish creature or--a gentleman. WHEN a lawyer is slow about getting a pretty woman her divorce it is because he wants a chance to make love to her before she is in a position to start a breach of promise suit. SOME men feel that the only thing they owe the woman who marries them is a grudge. BLUE BEARD isn't the only bridegroom who ever went to the altar with a closet full of dead loves on his conscience.
IT isn't what a man can see through the holes in a peek-a-boo waist that makes the garment attractive, but what he tries to see and can't. A MAN who would turn up his nose at an overdone chop or an overdone biscuit will swallow an overdone compliment with the keenest relish. TOBACCO and love and olives are all acquired tastes; your first smoke makes you sick, your first olive tastes bitter, and your first love affair makes you unhappy. MOST men fancy that being married to a woman means merely seeing her in the mornings instead of in the evenings. A REFORMED rake is like a made-over hat or made-over tea--he has lost his style and his flavor.
A MAN is always advising his wife to wear common-sense shoes, but that isn't the kind he turns around in the street to stare after. IT isn't the man who is willing to stay up late to talk to you, but the one who is willing to get up early to work for you, that you ought to waste your powder on. WHEN a woman is pretty and married an optimistic man can always console himself with the thought that perhaps she is unhappy because her husband doesn't appreciate her. MEN used to marry good cooks and flirt with chorus girls; now they marry chorus girls and hire good cooks. IT'S an ill wind that teaches a man the value of hatpins.
IF WE could all pay the price of matrimony in a lump sum it wouldn't be so bad; but paying it in daily instalments is what wearies us. A MARRIED man soon learns enough not to let the barber put lilac water on his hair; it's wonderful how sharp they get about exciting suspicion. LOVE always comes to a man as a surprise; he feels like a person who has been hit in the dark, and his one thought is for a means of escape. IF THE average husband were half as attentive, solicitous and devoted as his coachman, there would be fewer scandals of the drawing-room-stable variety. FLIRTING is the gentle art of making a man feel pleased with himself.
SOME men are such bunglers at love-making that they cannot make a sentimental remark without tripping over it, or take your hand or a kiss without making you feel as though they had taken your pocketbook. THE average man's ideas of what a woman ought to be are as old-fashioned and set as two china vases on a parlor mantel. IT takes a mighty dishonorable man not to lie to a woman about where he saw her husband the night before. NEAR-LOVE-MAKING is the scientific masculine method of saying a great deal and promising nothing. IT'S so hard to reform a man when he hasn't any great fault but just a little of all of them.
A MAN who devotes his youth to ambition and cuts out love, finds out that he has been eating the bread of life without any jam on it. IT'S so easy for a man to get engaged that he is always disagreeably surprised when he finds out how difficult it is to get disengaged. A MAN buttons a woman's dress up the back with almost the same grace and alacrity that a woman displays in climbing a barbed wire fence. IT isn't Cupid, but cupidity, that is to blame for those unhappy international marriages. A MAN is absolutely certain that a woman is perfectly proper when she refuses to kiss him because in his simple, childlike vanity he can't think of any other reason why she shouldn't want to.
GIVE me a man with a dark brown past--one who has tasted the spice in life's pudding, and won't begin to long for it the moment he has been put on the matrimonial diet of bread and milk. THE man who fancies himself completely understood is as unhappy as the woman who thinks she is misunderstood. IF St. Peter is really an old man, no girl over seventeen need apply for admission to Heaven. A KISS may be anything from an insult to a benediction; and yet a man never can understand why a girl is indignant sometimes when she is kissed and isn't at others. EVEN a dead husband gives a widow some advantage over an old maid.
THE kind of wife every man is looking for is one who can peel potatoes with one hand, curl her hair with the other, rock the cradle with her foot and accompany herself on the piano. IT isn't conscience, but the fear of consequences that keeps a man from trifling with a pretty woman. POVERTY is a love charm; you never know how great a thing love is until you haven't anything else in the world. WOMEN take awful chances in matrimony--because that's the only kind they get nowadays. A MAN'S past is always quite past and his dead loves are so dead that he wouldn't recognize them if he should meet their corpses on the street.
A MAN always holds a woman at her own valuation; if she sets a high price on herself he is eager to pay it, but he doesn't want anything that looks as though it came off a bargain counter. A MAN always considers himself mighty clever when he can glide through the shallows of love-making without foundering on the rocks of matrimony. CHOOSING a husband is like picking out the combination on a lottery ticket; your first guess is apt to be as good as your last. A MAN'S idea of success is to be able to run his business by touching the electric button at the side of his desk. MAN is a mysterious chemical combination; add matrimony and you never can tell what he will turn into.
THERE is nothing which falls with such a dull sickening thud on a man's vanity as his wife's dead silence after he has made one of his characteristically brilliant remarks. IT IS always a shock to a girl when her fiance's sister takes her into his den and she sees her photograph standing on the mantelpiece between an actress in green tights and a cigarette ad. A GIRL who has a brother has a great advantage over one who hasn't; she gets a working knowledge of men without having to go through the matrimonial inquisition in order to acquire it. A MAN always pats himself on the back when he has composed a letter that breathes devotion, but would not be negotiable in a breach of promise suit.
THERE is nothing so easy for a man as forgetting; he scarcely takes time to throw a shovelful of dirt on the grave of a dead love before he is off pursuing a new one. TO a man love is only a side dish; to a woman it's the whole feast. THERE are few men constituted strong enough romantically to stand a daily diet of kisses, without getting sentimental nausea. GENIUS, like anything else, needs distance to lend it enchantment; and the longer you are married to one, the more distance you are likely to give him. BEFORE marrying a man, ask yourself if you could love him if he lost his front hair, went without a collar, smoked an old pipe, and wore a ready-made suit; all of these things are likely to happen.
IT'S a funny thing about being in love, that the minute a man begins to get serious he begins to get foolish. A HUSBAND always expects his wife to look up to him, even if she has to get down on her knees to do it. COURTING is like cooking; you've got to be born with the knack; brains don't take the prizes and theory doesn't count. THE greatest proof that marriage is not a failure is that widows and widowers are always anxious to try it again. THE only way to be happy with a husband is to believe everything he tells you--even when you know it isn't so. IN love, a man's interest in the game is always deeper than his interest in the girl.
A MAN may like a girl ever so much until he finds out she likes him ever so much; then like cures like. See "Simple Homoeopathy." PROPOSING is like making welsh-rarebit; there isn't any reliable recipe for it and you can only tell whether or not you have done properly by the way it turns out. AFTER a man has seen you cry two or three times it ceases to move him--except to move him out of the house. THE color of a friend's finger nails or his socks has very much more weight with a snob than the color of his soul or his reputation. IF a man would stick to his wife as he sticks to his seat in a street car, there wouldn't be much need for an alimony bureau.
AN old bachelor's looks may be well preserved, but his heart is always embalmed. IT takes an awfully big man to own up to his wife that he was a little at fault in a quarrel. WHEN a man gets a wife who makes him happy, he lays it to his perspicacity; when he doesn't, he lays it on fate. LIFE is a game in four rubbers: hearts are trumps when a man is very young; clubs are trumps after he marries; diamonds are trumps as he waxes rich and gouty; and lastly--spades. TO flirt inartistically is like stepping on a woman's toes when you are waltzing with her; it gives her real pain. A MAN seldom marries when he loses his heart; he waits until he loses his head.
A MAN is like a cat; chase him and he'll run; sit still and ignore him and he'll come purring at your feet. WHAT a girl, who would be really popular, should do, is to wave a red danger flag at a man and then start to run in the opposite direction. THERE are some men who regard their wives' accomplishments with the same patronizing complacency that they feel toward the tricks of the educated monkey at the circus. DON'T always imagine that the man and woman who walk side by side without speaking to each other are angry; they may be only married. MASCULINITY covereth a multitude of sins.
THE man who whips his small son for lying to shield a girl, has a mental vision as narrow as a Rocky Mountain path and side walls of dogmatism as high as the Colorado Canyon. SATAN and Cupid are chums, who go about together looking for people who have nothing to do. MANY a woman has divorced her husband for "desertion" who cheerfully helped pack his trunk and pay for his railway ticket when he left her. A MAN'S conscience is made of India rubber--warranted to stretch as long as the fun lasts. SOME men think that by putting on a silk hat and a white Ascot tie they are disguised as gentlemen.
THE average man is about as good a judge of women as a woman is of race horses; he picks the favorites by their shape and color. LOVE is like gambling; you want to be sure that you are a good loser before you go in for the game. A MAN'S idea of honor is so peculiar; he would die rather than steal a friend's money or cheat him at cards, but he will steal his wife or cheat him out of his daughter with perfect equanimity. WHEN you see what some girls marry, you realize how they must hate to work for a living. FLIRTATION is like a cocktail with no headache in it, champagne with no "next morning."
ALL men are the same after ten years of matrimony; they all smell of cloves and tobacco, talk in monosyllables, and tell the same stories when they come home late. A RECKLESS lover and an automobile scorcher may run all the risks--but they have all the excitement. OF course, bigamy is very reprehensible; but the man who marries two women deserves a little credit for trying to make up to the sex for the selfishness of the old bachelor who won't marry even one. IN a domestic quarrel, it is not the one who can hold out, but the one who can hold in, who usually wins. THE boy who has been brought up to button his sister's frocks down the back cherishes no illusions about women.
A MAN is never content with a fortune of less than six figures; but a woman is satisfied with one figure--if it has the proper curves. IT'S a wise woman that knows how little she knows about her husband. ONE advantage of a bull-dog over a baby is that you are not haunted by the fear that he will grow up to be just like his father. THE way to a man's heart is a zig-zag road, leading through his stomach twice around his vanity, across his discretion and straight over his determination not to marry. FAILING to be "there" when a man wants her, is the greatest sin a woman can commit--except being there when doesn't want her.
THE best men always seem to get the worst wives and vice versa; that's Nature's little way of spreading the virtues and the vices around equally, like the jam and the butter on the bread. A MAN'S idea of being "master" in his own house is asserting his right to put his muddy feet on the best divan and his pipe ashes on the parlor mantelpiece. A WOMAN may scoff at her husband's religion, insult his friends, absorb his income and pry into his secrets, and still retain his love, if she regards his pipe and his razor as sacred. YOU can always find somebody to share your money and your pleasures with; but you've got to have somebody tied to you to share your sorrows and troubles with; that's the excuse for matrimony.
A MARRIAGE of convenience is the safety-pin with which a woman fastens on her self-respect when the hooks of love are broken. THERE never was a man so small that he couldn't call his two-hundred pound wife "little one" with a perfectly serious face. GOD made the first man; but He must have seen His mistake, for the Scriptures say nothing of His having had anything to do with the rest of them. A MAN'S idea of a thrifty wife is one who can make lobster salad out of left-over veal and a new hat out of an old fruit basket. LOVE is the spur, matrimony the whip that drive a man to hard work and successful accomplishment.
THE longest way 'round the saloon and the stage door is the shortest way home for some men. THERE never was a man living who wouldn't marry Venus, and then expect her to stay home and do the cooking. ONCE a fool, twice married. WHEN a girl marries she usually has to choose whether she prefers to sit at the foot of a throne or to stand on a door-mat. OF course, you can't expect two people to keep step all their lives to the wedding march; but it's a pity the joy-bells get out of tune so soon. NINE tailors may make a man, but they can't make a gentleman.
BEFORE marriage a man inquires, "What is that fascinating perfume?" afterward, "What is that sickening stuff?" IT isn't the troubles and sorrows they share, but the bridge parties and midnight suppers they don't share, which separate most married couples. THERE is no pity on earth so heartfelt as that with which the bachelor and the newly-married man regard one another. LOVE is a delirious spin in an automobile, marriage the accident of which you are always in danger. A WOMAN can get so used to that sort of thing that she would feel almost neglected if some day her husband should fail to offer up the usual morning and evening growl.
A WOMAN will go on a starvation diet and have herself skinned alive in order to retain her husband's admiration; but a man considers himself a martyr if he resists a boiled onion. THE sentiment a society woman wastes in baby-talk to her dog and the money a society man wastes on gasoline for his automobile would keep half a dozen babies in love and milk. A CYNIC can always find flaws in a woman and weeds in a rose garden. THE lower a man's forehead, the higher his collar. NO matter how much a man dislikes children before marriage, after marriage he always imagines that he is going to improve on the human race.
A GIRL'S idea of a proposal of marriage is so different from any she ever gets, that, even after she is married she often wonders how it happened. VENUS may have been the most popular lady of her time; but it takes a clever huntress, like Diana, to get any attention nowadays. NOTHING makes a woman feel so old as watching the bald spot daily increase on the top of her husband's head. LOVE is not really blind, it is only nearsighted; and marriage is the optician that furnishes it with a strong pair of lenses, warranted to dispel all illusions and make defects perfectly clear. WHOM the gods wish to destroy they first infatuate with a chorus girl.
A WISE jilt wears his scalp beneath his waistcoat, and a wise girl keeps her mittens carefully hidden; only a savage or a fool flaunts the trophies of the love-chase. COCK ROBIN isn't the only chap who ever promised to feed a girl on jelly-cake and wine when he knew perfectly well that the moment they were married she would have to go out and grub for worms. PATCHING up a shattered love-affair is as foolish as trying to mend cobwebs. MATRIMONY is a see-saw; and the secret of happiness lies in keeping yourself so carefully balanced that you neither fly into the air nor come down with a sickening thud. THE softer a man's head, the louder his socks.
FROM the latest divorce cases it appears that as soon as a married couple get rich enough to keep two automobiles they at once begin to travel separate roads. DON'T think your husband has ceased to love you merely because he has begun to lie to you; it's when he stops taking the trouble to whitewash himself that you have real grounds for that suspicion. MANY a woman thinks she has married a hero until she tries to get him to go out and reason with the janitor. A GOOD husband may be the "salt of the earth," but he often seems more like the pepper. THE trouble with the marriage tie is that it's so tight that most people get tangled up or frazzled out trying to loosen it.
WHEN a young man rails at marriage, listen for the wedding bells; a confirmed bachelor is too indifferent on the subject to be bitter about it. A MAN doesn't think he has had a good time unless he has a headache the next morning. THERE is no such thing as a confirmed bachelor in the countries where harems are fashionable. IT isn't tying himself to one woman that a man dreads when he thinks of marrying; it's separating himself from all the others. WHAT a man considers his "personal distinction," and a girl refers to as his "charming personality," is often nothing more than a good tailor and a smart haberdasher.
BEING good is merely keeping up with the styles; what was immoral ten years ago is only fashionable now, and what is shocking now will be only fashionable ten years hence. WONDER how many wives have been awakened from love's young dream by a snore. IT'S the men who are least particular about their own morals who are the most particular about a woman's; if Satan should come up here seeking a wife, he would probably demand an angel with gilt wings instead of a nice congenial little devil. APPEALING to a man's sense of humor when he has just lathered his face for shaving, is about as effective as appealing to a cat's sense of honor when she sees a chance to steal the milk.
A MAN loses his illusions first, his teeth second and his follies last. SOMEHOW, the wagon a woman hitches to a star always turns out a baby carriage. A GOOD lie in time saves nine poor ones next morning. WHEN a girl refuses a man his chagrin is always tempered by his astonishment that she could be so blind to her own good fortune. THE troublesome part of love and everything nice is that it always must end; but then that's the nice part of matrimony and everything troublesome. THAT old saw about marrying a man to get rid of him isn't a joke. It's the best way.
ABSENCE may make the heart grow fonder, but it is more likely to make the head grow steadier; there is nothing like total abstinence to cure you of "that dizzy feeling" that comes from either love or cocktails. BY THE awkwardness with which some men make love, you would fancy they had learned how in a correspondence school. AS lovers men are inclined to be general practitioners rather than specialists. IT MAY be possible to patch up a wornout love affair, but the darned places will always rub even if they don't show. IF a man would display the same patience in catering to a wife that he does in coloring an old meerschaum pipe matrimony would be as pleasant as a pipe dream.
THERE'S an old superstition that it's bad luck to be married in May; why not include the other eleven months? THE only contract a man considers so unimportant that he will sign it without first reading it over is the marriage contract. A WOMAN whose husband gives her cause for jealousy should not shed tears; she should shed the husband. A MAN is never really old until his rosy hopes have turned gray and he has begun to get wrinkles in his disposition. A GOOD woman is known by what she does; a good man by what he doesn't. RICH men and their wives are soon parted; matrimony plus money has such a way of developing into alimony.
ONE way to a man's heart is through your father's pocketbook. LOVE is the sparkle in the wine; matrimony, the headache that follows. BETTER be a young man's slave than an old man's nurse. THERE is something about one cocktail that makes a man want another the moment he has swallowed it; and there is something about one woman that makes a man want another the moment he has married her. A MAN plays his part in his first love affair as an actor plays his first star role with fire and enthusiasm, but without poise or method; later he becomes so technical that he can make his pretty speeches backward without a single thrill.
THE only common ground on which some married people ever meet is the burying ground. LOVE is like a good dinner; the only way to get any satisfaction out of it is to enjoy it while it lasts, have no regrets when it is over and pay the price with good grace. HUSBANDS and wives may meet in heaven--but some of them won't if they see each other first. THE hardest part about the "next morning" is not the headache; it's the effort to recall what particular story you told your wife the night before. POOR people don't have to economize on love, kisses nor enthusiasm; and with plenty of those one can cover all the bare spots on the walls of poverty.
FLATTER a husband a little and he will adore you; flatter him too much and he will soon begin to wonder why such a combination of Solomon and the Apollo Belvidere ever stooped to marry an insignificant little thing like you. IT'S the hours a woman spends making frocks that her husband never looks at, and the hours a man spends making jokes that his wife never laughs at, that make the matrimonial years drag so heavily. THE reason that a woman who takes the downward path has so much attention is that there are so many men going that way. A MAN makes a virtue of necessity when he prides himself on his devotion to a wife who is so fascinating that he can't help it.
A MAN'S wife, like any other sort of stimulant, ceases to have that exhilarating effect after she has become a steady diet. NO MAN knows the shock that a woman receives when she finds that she has got to live up to a standard that is half angel and half cook. MEN declare they admire common sense in a woman; but a physical culturist with a perfect digestion and a thirty-inch waist hasn't a chance in the world against a foolish, unhealthy little thing in a French corset, a princess frock and open-work stockings. THE ultimate proof of a man's love is the self-restraint he shows when he allows a girl to run her fingers through his hair without putting up his hand to see if the part is still there.
A LITTLE knowledge makes a man a fool--but it makes a woman suspicious. THE best way to cure a man's love is to return it with interest--and then watch him lose the interest. A MAN seldom escapes temptation because he is so careful not to let any interesting temptations escape him. SELF-SACRIFICE is the soul of love, and a real soul-mate is one who is willing to get up and take the milk off the dumb-waiter, wait until you have finished with the morning paper and give you the seat nearest the radiator. IT must be awful to live with a man after you have reformed him and he has become so superlatively good that you don't feel superior to him any more.
GOOD husbands are like tracts, comforting but uninteresting; the other kind are like dime novels, exciting, but apt to keep you in a constant fever of dread, anticipation and curiosity. IF a woman were like a serial novel and a man could read only one chapter at a time, honeymoons would last forever. A MAN doesn't demand common sense from a woman; he is satisfied with incense. WHEN a girl marries a man because he is the best she can do it is the irony of fate to have him blame her because they are ill-mated. DAKOTA is the State that cuts a woman's troubles in half--and kindly takes away the better half.
WONDERFUL how soon after marriage a man gets to look upon the morning and evening kiss as one of his daily chores. WHAT is the happiest state in life? Why, Dakota, of course. COLLEGE boys are addicted to cigarettes and flirtations, bachelors to cigars and sweethearts; it takes a married man to get real joy out of anything so economical as a pipe or a wife. MARRIAGE is the "commencement exercise" at which we take our diplomas in love; thereafter, like the college graduate, we begin to learn how little we know about it all. HALF the divorces are founded right on the wedding journey, just as half of indigestion is founded on too much sugar.
WHAT do they know--about one another that makes every man who kisses a girl warn her so darkly and impressively not to trust any of the others? POVERTY is only a relative affair, after all; it is X minus the things you want. HEAVEN must be something like an afternoon tea, as far as the dearth of men is concerned. FIGURES do lie; especially if they are the ones that express a woman's age--or the time a man gets home at night. A MAN'S favorite way of answering a woman's accusations is to tell her how pretty she looks when she gets excited. MATRIMONY is the price of love--divorce, the rebate.
WHEN a millionaire's heart is touched it makes a hollow sound. THE woman who is wedded to an art and also to a man pays the full penalty for that kind of bigamy. IN the love game nobody knows exactly what he wants; but a wise man tries to get what he thinks he wants and a wise woman tries to think she wants what she gets. A MAN isn't as curious as a woman--because usually a woman tells him everything before he has a chance to become curious. THE only original thing about some men is original sin. HOLD on tight to your temper 'round the curves of matrimony.
COLD water never cured a fever and a woman's indifference never put out the divine fire of a man's love. LOVE is a sort of club sandwich affair, composed of large slices of selfishness, seasoned with passion, spiced with jealousy and covered with thin layers of sentiment. A MAN may admire a superior woman, but when it comes to marrying he prefers a goose who will cackle at his jokes to an owl who is likely to hoot at them. A MAN always remembers a girl's first kiss the longest--because usually that's the only one he had any trouble in getting. TO keep a man's interest at high pressure deal yourself out to him in homoeopathic doses; one only wants more of anything that one cannot get enough of.
THOSE who have tried matrimony, like those who have finished with the morning paper, always say, "There's nothing in it;" but somehow that never keeps the rest of us from wanting to see for ourselves. WONDER if it never occurs to the woman who marries a man to reform him that the sort of person who is headstrong enough to have made a "past" for himself isn't likely to sit quietly by and let somebody else carve out his future for him. IT is so much easier for some men to go to the devil for a woman than to go to work for her. ALAS that the fever of love should so often be followed by a chill! IN THE modern love affair woman proposes, God disposes and man--just dozes.
A MAN doesn't need to swear at a woman in order to express his opinion of her; he can shut the front door behind him in the morning so that it sounds just like a "damn!" BY a man's vows of devotion ye shall not know him; the lover who promises a girl a life of roses is usually the one who allows her to pick off all the thorns for herself. MAN is such a paradox that a woman is forced to make him believe that she doesn't take him seriously--or she won't get a chance to take him at all. A MAN cannot keep his grouch and his friends at the same time. THE woman who marries a dandy soon discovers that a thing of beauty is not necessarily a joy forever.
A MAN never selects a wife with any judgment or reason, because by the time he has reached the marrying fever all judgment and reason have fled. IT IS a wise fool who rushes in and a fool angel who fears to tread when it comes to love making; the woman who can't be coaxed can always be captured. IT MAY not be immoral for a girl to say "damn," but it affects a man just as it would to hear a dove or a canary bird shrieking like a parrot. A MAN in the act of putting his wife on the train for her summer vacation feels like the bad boy who has just heard the bell clang for recess; he doesn't know exactly what he is going to do, but he knows it will be something against the rules and hence very fascinating.
IT'S awfully hard for a girl, with her mind all made up and her thoughts at the altar, to sit silently by and wait for the love idea to penetrate the thick layers of resistance that cover the masculine brain. AS long as Satan can make a woman believe that it is possible to reform a rake and make a roue over into a doting husband the ladies will keep his majesty's business running. IF anything could make a woman willing to exchange her curves for a little muscle it would be that maddening, "There, there, now!" attitude with which the average man greets her righteous wrath. MANY a man would be dumbfounded if he should discover that the ideal in his wife's heart didn't have a double chin, a bald spot and turned-in toes just like himself.
THE music of the spheres isn't loud enough to drown the din of some matrimonial squabbles. A KNOWLEDGE of all the ologies and isms isn't worth half as much to a girl in the game of life as a knowledge of how to use her eyes and how to keep her pompadour in curl. WHEN a man discovers that a woman knows more than he does it strikes him dumb--but not with admiration. HEART-TO-HEART talks between platonic friends are as apt to lead to lip-to-lip silences that Plato never dreamed of. MAN may be the noblest work of God--in the abstract; but in a bathing suit--well, it takes blind love to make a girl think he looks like that.
A MAN'S surprise at the calmness with which his wife receives the announcement that he has failed in business is only equaled by his astonishment at her hysteria when a dress comes home that doesn't fit. A GIRL always keeps a tender spot in her heart for the man she has once loved; but to a man nothing is so cold as cooled affection. YOU would fancy a girl were a species of ostrich from the amount of flattery a man feeds her before marriage and the two-edged cynicisms he expects her to swallow afterward. THE average woman goes from the altar into total eclipse from which she never emerges until she becomes a widow--since husbands never look at their wives and other men don't dare.
THE man who is most in love is most apt to get over it, just as the man who drinks most champagne has the worst headache next morning. ALL this talk about trial marriages seems so superfluous--considering that marriage has always been a trial. A MAN'S sense of honor is so peculiar that it gets out of working condition the minute he comes near a pretty woman. MAN--as far as his opinions and emotions go--is the noblest work of woman. A KISS and its thrills are soon parted--after the honeymoon. EVERY woman is born an actress; and actresses are twice as attractive to men as other women because they are twice women.
A DARK brown "past" is sometimes a good insurance against a black future; the man who has "seen life" is not quite so likely to be looking for it. HAPPINESS in marriage doesn't depend half so much on whether or not a man keeps the Ten Commandments and goes to church as on whether or not he keeps a pretty stenographer and comes home to dinner. WHEN a man declares that he knows his own mind, his wife may sometimes wonder why he seems so proud of the acquaintance. MARRYING a widower is like inheriting an heirloom; marrying a grass widower is like getting second-hand goods that somebody else has been anxious to get rid of.
MATRIMONY is a life job with long hours, small pay, hard work, no holidays and no chance to "give notice" if you get tired of it. AFTER all, a wife has her uses--even if its only as a protection against other ladies' breach of promise suits. A PRETTY wife in a soiled kimono affects a man like a pate de fois gras served on an old tin plate; it takes away his appetite--for love. IT always surprises a woman when the son who has been tied to her apron strings suddenly gets tangled up in some chorus girl's shoe strings. A MAN'S idea of a perfectly loyal, devoted woman is one who will deceive another man for his sake.
A GIRL'S idea of business is a place where she can meet some man who will take her out of it. IN THE "relation of the sexes" a man is so likely to regard his wife as the "poor relation." NO MAN refuses to give a good wife all the credit she deserves; but some of them are rather shy about giving her cash to the same amount. A WOMAN on her summer vacation soon discovers that a husband is not "a man of letters," but a man of off-hand notes and telegrams. A LOVER looks at women through rose-colored spectacles, an old bachelor through blue glasses, and a married man--through a microscope.
A MAN always feels deeply injured when his wife refuses to believe the story that he has worked at all the way up in the cab to make sound interesting and perfectly plausible. IT inspires a man with real awe and admiration, after he has spent all day Sunday and broken half the family tools fussing over a fractious lock, to see his wife come along and pick it with one hand and a hairpin. WHENEVER a man makes up his mind to give up anything, from a woman to a vice, it suddenly becomes so attractive to him that he begins to take a new and violent interest in it. THE hard part of separating from a husband or wife for summer vacation is trying to look sorry about it when you say good-by at the station.
TRAIN up a son in the way he should go--and then watch him go some other woman's way. MAKING hay while the sun shines is very tame sport beside making love while the moon shines. THE dollar sign is the only sign in which the modern man appears to have any real faith. IT IS a mistake to propose to a girl with whom you have been mooning all morning on the beach until you discover whether that pang you feel is really heart hunger or only the other kind of hunger; the two have such similar effects. YOU can lead a husband to the restaurant, but you can't make him order champagne--unless it's another woman's husband.
LOVE seldom follows marriage, unless marriage follows love. WHEN a man says that "circumstances" have forced him to break his engagement with you, it is pretty safe to conclude that "Circumstances" wears smarter frocks or has a more fascinating way of doing her hair. SOME bright day women will learn that it is as impossible to revive a man's interest in a girl whom he has ceased to love as to make him want stale champagne with all the fizz gone out of it. ALL the great tragedies are written about the woman who isn't married to some man, but ought to be; when as a matter of fact the most tragic figure on earth is the woman who is married to him and oughtn't to be.
THERE are two kinds of masculine hearts; the kind like a peach, soft and impressionable on the outside, but stony at the core; and the kind like a nut, seemingly impenetrable, but sweet and satisfying once you get through the shell. A MAN doesn't object to a girl who smokes cigarettes, wears three-ply collars and calls him "old chap" because he considers her immoral, but because he considers her just a bad imitation of himself. A WOMAN can do nothing wrong, as long as a man is in love with her, and nothing right after he ceases to be. THE only way to be happy with a man is to have such blind faith that you can believe him when he vows he never kissed another woman, even though the scent of the last girl's sachet still clings to his coat lapel.
MARRYING a woman, after you have kept her ten years waiting, is like buying a doll that has stood too long in the showcase. WHEN a man asks a girl for a kiss, she has to refuse him, but when he simply takes it, she has to take it, too. NOBODY scorns a woman for marrying money or a title; what they scorn is the sort of thing she usually marries along with it. THE woman whom a man idealizes is the one who keeps him guessing; who never lets him see how the wheels go round at her toilet table nor in her heart and head. SOME men regard home as nothing but a "rest cure."
TAXING bachelors only encourages them; a man always values anything more, even freedom, when he has to pay for it. THERE is a time of the year when a man will pay thirty dollars for a Panama hat that makes him look like thirty cents, and thirty cents for a drink that makes him feel like a millionaire. THE knots in the marriage tie which rub a man the wrong way are the "shalt nots"; those which chafe a woman are the "ought nots." THE social swim at present appears to be a whirlpool, wherein a man gets soaked with either weak tea or cocktails. IN a man's opinion a kiss is an end that justifies any means.
WHEN a man makes a woman his wife it's the highest compliment he can pay her--and usually it's the last. THE happiest wife is not always the one who marries the best man, but the one who makes the best of the man she marries. "WHO findeth a wife findeth a good thing," saith the Scriptures. Well, that's what most men are looking for nowadays. IT isn't the big vague vows he makes at the altar which a man finds it so difficult to keep or to get around, but the little foolish promises he made before he ever got there. IT IS as foolish to try to reform a man after he has lost his front hair as to try to tame a lion after he has gotten his second teeth.
IT isn't the things a man says that proves he loves you, but the things he tries to say and can't--the things that choke right up in his throat and leave him sitting dumb and miserable on your parlor divan. PHYSICIANS say the heart is an organ; but by the way some men manage to grind out the same old love songs over and over again it would seem to be more like a street piano. ONE whiff of an onion will do more to kill love than the breaking of the ten commandments. ALL a man demands of a woman is a knowledge of what she ought not to do, what she ought not to say and what she ought not to think. All a woman need know in order to wear a halo in her husband's eyes is how to keep it on straight.
MARRIED men should make the most successful fiction writers, because it takes a highly developed imagination to invent a different story for one's wife every night. DON'T marry a man merely because he can write nice long, soul-satisfying letters; wait until you find out if he can write equally nice long satisfactory checks. ONE man's folly is often another man's wife. THE woman who makes a man perfectly happy is the one who cares just enough to respond when he is interested and not enough to be interested when he doesn't respond. MARRIAGE is like twirling a baton, turning a handspring or eating with chopsticks; it looks so easy until you try it.
A MARRIED woman is always impressionable, because she has become so used to a total abstinence from flattery that a compliment from a man goes to her head like wine to the head of the teetotaler. REFINEMENT is what makes a man turn on his heel and go off to the club instead of staying at home and having a good, old-fashioned row with his wife. THE man who keeps his sentiment bottled up and his money lying in the bank is so narrow that he wouldn't take a broad view of anything, even if he saw it on a bargain counter at half price. THE biggest, boldest man that ever lived is built like a barge, and any little woman who puffs up steam enough can attach him to her and tow him all the way up the river of life.
A MAN is always able to restrain his jealousy as long as his wife wears untrimmed cotton flannel lingerie. TAKE a spoonful of violet perfume, a pound or so of lace, a dash of music, and serve under a summer moon--and almost any man will call it "love." A WIFE always feels perfectly safe in going driving with her husband, because she knows by sad experience that he will devote both hands and all his attention to the horses. A MAN whom wild horses cannot drag from the path of duty will sometimes get so tangled up in a pink ribbon that he will trip and fall right out of it. KISSES are love's assets, quarrels its liabilities.
BEAUTIES of the soul may be very fascinating, but somehow they aren't the kind a man looks for when he invites a girl out to dinner or for a spin in his automobile. AN OLD maid is an unmarried woman who has more wrinkles than money. There is nothing like a halo of gold dollars to keep a woman attractive to a green old age. THE things for which there is "the devil to pay," are the only sort which most men seem to consider really worth the price. AS a soul-companion, the main difference between a bulldog and a husband is that the dog can't talk--and the husband won't. A MAN loves a woman first tenderly, then madly, then dearly, then comfortably, and last dutifully.
SOME men are born for marriage, some achieve marriage; but all of them live in the deadly fear that marriage is going to be thrust upon them. DISTANCE lends enchantment; but too much distance between husband and wife is sure to end by one or the other of them finding another "enchantment." IN THE mathematics of matrimony two plus a baby equals a family; two plus a mother-in-law equals a mob; and two plus an affinity equals--a divorce. IT IS something of a shock to the sweet girl graduate who has spent her youth in digging up the Latin roots, studying the Greek forms and acquiring a working knowledge of French, German and Hebrew, to discover that the only language her lover really appreciates is baby talk.
WHEN a man tells his wife that he is "sorry" about anything he has done he doesn't mean that he's sorry he did it, but that he's sorry she found it out. FLIRTATION is like a pink tea, harmless but not exciting; love is like a dinner with seven kinds of wine, satisfying and exhilarating but apt to leave you with an uncomfortable feeling that you ought to have stayed away from it. A MAN'S wife is something like his teeth, in that he seems to be aware of her presence only when it becomes annoying or painful. ONE advantage in being a married man is that you are not haunted by the harrowing suspicion that every pretty single woman you meet may have matrimonial designs upon you.
A MAN'S sentiment is like cologne; he always offers you the cheap kind in large quantities. A FEW years with the "George Washington" type of husband, who goes about with a hatchet and is too honest to flatter his wife, must make her long for a nice, comfortable companion like Ananias. BEING clever at repartee means being able to say at the moment the brilliant thing which you usually don't think of until ten minutes later. ANALYZING your love for a woman is like dissecting a flower; by the time you have picked it to pieces and found out what it is composed of, its perfume and beauty are all gone. Sentimental botanists get about as much satisfaction out of life as dietetics out of a good dinner.
A SUMMER resort is a place where a man will resort to anything from croquet to cocktails for amusement and where a girl will resort to anything from a half-grown boy to an aged paralytic for an escort. WHEN a man becomes a confirmed old bachelor it is not because he has never met the one woman he could live with, but because he has never met the one woman he couldn't live without. MANY a man who promises before marriage to lift every care off a girl's shoulders won't even begin by lifting the ice off the dumb-waiter after marriage. ONE comfort in being a woman is that you have the right to cry; when a man sheds tears the poor thing always looks and feels as if he had been guilty of an immodest exposure of the soul.
DON'T fancy a man is serious merely because he treats you to French dinners and talks sentiment; wait until he begins to take you to cheap tables d'hote and talks economy. A MAN likes a wife who appeals to his lighter side, but the average man has so many lighter sides that no one woman could appeal to them all; and even if she could there is always his darker side and a peroxide blonde waiting around to appeal to it. A WOMAN'S idea in marrying a man is that she may save his soul; his idea in marrying her is that she may save his socks and his digestion. PEOPLE who marry "for a joke" certainly must be blessed with an awfully keen sense of humor.
THE girl whose hair is a little too gold, whose chin is a little too pink and whose laugh is a little too gay, apparently doesn't realize that even a siren couldn't attract a man if she sang too loud. THE "measure of a man" can usually be taken in half an hour's acquaintance, but the true measure of a woman is something that is known only to her husband and her dressmaker. "THE worst of certainty is better than the best of doubt," says the proverb; but when it comes to man's love for a woman the worst of uncertainty is better for it than the best of security. A MAN'S past is written on a slate which can be washed clean at will, but a woman's is written in indelible ink in Mrs. Grundy's reference book.
MANY a woman who cannot be bought with any amount of gold can be won with just a little amount of brass. IF MEN were absolutely certain that angels wear the sort of Mother Hubbard draperies in which they are usually painted instead of French corsets and sheath skirts, not one of them would bother about trying to get to heaven. THE poet who sang of "woman's infinite variety" must at some time have been the only young man at a summer hotel. THE man who lets the tailor pad his shoulders is very contemptuous of the woman who lets the dressmaker pad her skirts. NOWADAYS love is a matter of chance, matrimony a matter of money and divorce a matter of course.
SOME men are so material that a beautiful sunset would remind them of nothing but Neapolitan ice cream, and a flock of sheep on a green hillside would suggest nothing more inspiring than lamb with mint sauce. IN ancient times one drink of Lethe water made a man lose his memory and forget even his name. Oh, well, one drink will do that nowadays--but it isn't Lethe and it isn't water. "JOY cometh in the morning"--but more often to the widow in second mourning. EVERYBODY has adopted modern improvements and new methods nowadays except the stork, and he goes right along carrying on business in the same old way. No wonder he has lost so much of his fashionable trade to the up-to-date dog fancier.
A PRETTY girl in a peek-a-boo waist and a Merry Widow hat on her way downtown can sometimes create more excitement in the business district than a Wall Street panic or a fire. BEFORE marriage it fills a man with tenderness to have a girl slip her hand confidingly into his coat pocket; but after marriage somehow it fills him only with distrust. IT is one of the mockeries of matrimony that the moment two people begin to be awfully courteous to one another round the house it is a sign they are awfully mad. A MAN'S idea of being perfectly noble and honest with a woman is to be able to make her think he loves her without indulging in any incriminating statements to that effect.
MOST women appear to think that "'tis better to have been loved and bossed" than never to have been married at all. DISAGREEABLE habits, like disagreeable husbands and wives, are so much easier to acquire than the other kind and so much harder to get rid of. A WIFE'S indignation at the women who flirt with her husband is often tempered by her pity and astonishment that they should be so hard up as to waste time on a man like him. THE average husband has an idea that economy should begin at home--and end at the corner cafe. MANY a wife would be glad to exchange places with her cook on that lady's salary days and her evenings off.
A MAN'S idea of showing real consideration for his wife is to make sure that she won't find out what he is doing before he does anything that she would disapprove of. THE first child makes a man proud, the second makes him happy, the third makes him hustle, and the fourth makes him desperate. WHEN a man declares that making love to a particular woman "wouldn't be right," he really means that it wouldn't be safe; but he is too polite to say that. IN tragic moments we think of trifles; no doubt a girl who is being run down by an automobile stops to thank heaven that there are no holes in her stockings and a man that there are no incriminating letters in his pockets.
A MONTH of poker parties and summer girls can make a married man as anxious to get his wife back home again as a diet of champagne and ice cream would make him for a square meal of roast beef and baked potatoes. BETWEEN lovers a little confession is a dangerous thing. CALL a woman weak-minded and a man will wonder if you aren't jealous of her; but call her strong-minded and he will take your word without stopping to investigate. THE wife who insists on being useful instead of concentrating on being beautiful and amusing will soon find herself relegated to the shelf like a medicine bottle, instead of being kept near at hand like a wine bottle.
THAT sad, patient smile one sees on the face of a married woman may not come so much from heart-hunger as from a daily effort to listen to her husband's latest joke at the same time that she pacifies the cook, soothes the baby and looks for his lost collar button. HOPE springs eternal in the feminine breast as long as a woman has ambition enough to continue to curl her hair, and in the masculine breast as long as a man has self-respect enough to keep on shaving his chin. THE things a man wants in a sweetheart are no more like those he wants in a wife than the things he wants for breakfast are like those he wants for dinner; yet he never seems to despair of warming over the light menu and making it do for a regular diet.
WHY is a woman always so jealous of her husband's stenographer when his real affinity is just as likely to be somebody else's stenographer? IT IS not a man's morals but the manners that make him comfortable or otherwise to live with. A burglar or an embezzler can make his wife fairly happy if he will be prompt to dinner, agreeable at breakfast and will put up the portieres with a pleasant smile. NOTHING makes a woman so green with envy and mortification as her husband's ability to turn over and snore five minutes after they have had an exciting quarrel. OLD love, like old lamps, is apt to burn low and fitfully; it takes a new heart interest now and then to keep up the glow of life.
THE balance of power in the family usually goes to the husband or wife who has the largest balance in the bank. AMONG a man's sweethearts the first shall never be last, and the last can always be sure that she isn't the first. THE larger a man's girth the more expensive his flirtations; nothing but orchids and grand opera tickets can make a girl forget real embonpoint long enough to be sentimental. MEN don't talk about one another as women do--perhaps because they find it so much more interesting to talk about themselves. A FRANK husband and a kodak fiend teach a woman that truth is indeed stranger and more terrible than fiction.
ONE touch of highball makes the whole world spin. A MAN'S sense of honor is so peculiar that it gets out of working condition the minute he comes near a pretty woman. THE man who kisses a woman at the first opportunity is either a fool or a cad; the man who waits for the second opportunity is a philosopher; the man who waits for the third opportunity is a speculator; and the man who waits any longer is--a freak. THE girl who has entertained her fiance every evening for a three years' engagement may console herself with the hope that she won't be liable to see so much of him after marriage. 'TIS best for a man to be square, but a woman is more lucky to be round.
WHEN a man has waked up the whole family and half the neighborhood flinging empty beer bottles at a cat on the back fence he feels so refreshed that he can go right back to sleep and snore straight through a fire or a thunderstorm. IN the face of a man's childlike vanity it is so difficult for a girl to decide to be ready when he arrives and thereby look as though she had been waiting for him, or to keep him waiting and look as though she had been primping for him. A MAN will tell his troubles first to his God, next to his lawyer, then to his valet, and lastly--to his wife. A LITTLE "absent treatment" now and then is the best tonic for conjugal love; an ounce of summer vacation is worth a pound of divorce.
IT may cause a man sincere regret to get into a foolish flirtation, but the only thing that causes him real downright repentance is not to be able to get out of it. TO fascinate an intelligent man pretend to be silly; to attract a good man pretend to be naughty; to win a fool pretend to be clever; and to charm the devil pretend to be a saint. A GIRL loves to spell her soul out on paper, but a man can't see the use of writing a love-letter when he can compress his whole passion into one paragraph on a post card. IT is a sad fact that two people who go into matrimony with the noble idea of sharing one another's joys and ambitions so often end by sharing nothing but one another's towels and brushes and grouches.
A MODERN love affair is something like English plum pudding: it contains very little spice and sweetness and is mostly a matter of "dough." A FLIRT and his conscience are soon parted. A MAN'S idea of constancy is being perfectly devoted to some woman who is either dead or too indifferent to demand anything of him. THE whole art of winning at either cards or love consists in keeping a level head and not taking the game seriously; but, alas--when a man is playing for money and a woman for matrimony they are bound to take it seriously. WHEN mothers-in-law come in at the door love flies out at the window.
A CLEVER woman can sometimes make a fool of a man, but it takes a fluffy little thing with a baby face and no brains or morals to speak of to make him make a fool of himself. FAINT praise ne'er won fair lady. GOING through life without love is like going through a good dinner without an appetite--everything seems so flat and tasteless. IT is most provoking to a woman who is winning in a quarrel to have a man suddenly turn round and take the argument right out of her mouth--with a kiss. WHERE do all of the lost hearts go? Well, most of the masculine ones go "down where the Wurzburger flows."
THE hardest problem of a girl's life is to find out why a man seems bored if she doesn't respond to him and frightened if she does. MENTAL science never cured a man of love-sickness, because in the average man's love mentality plays so small a part. A MARRIED woman has an awfully small chance of learning anything about her husband's English vocabulary, for the simple reason that he never addresses her except in baby talk or swear words. A $30-A-WEEK clerk always feels it incumbent to take a girl to the theatre in a taxicab. It requires a bona-fide millionaire to drag her about in a five-cent street car with perfect eclat and no apologies.
WHETHER a girl looks indignant or happy after you have kissed her depends a great deal on how long she has been waiting for you to get up the courage to do it. TURNED-DOWN lovers tell no tales. WHEN a woman says "There are no secrets between my husband and me," it is a sure sign that she hasn't found out any of his. THERE are dozens of systems for winning at roulette, but the only system for winning at love is systematic flattery. LOVE in a cottage doesn't seem so appalling when you come to consider that there is such a thing as matrimony in a modern flat.
NO MAN is a really artistic lover who hasn't enough dramatic instinct to forget all other women while he is making love to one. IF it weren't for the tiresome wedding journey and the monotonous honeymoon, bridal couples could begin being happy right away. EVEN though the dulcet iciness in her voice ought to be more effective than a shriek of warning, a man will go right on telling his stout, blonde wife that she ought to dress like the slim brunette next door. THERE is something about a wife's tears that washes all the color and starch out of a man's love. WHEN married people can't come to terms marriage should come to a termination.
THE longest way round matrimony is the shortest way to happiness. THE reason a man is so often tempted is because most of the time that is what he is sitting around waiting for. FROM the stony silence into which the average husband sinks after the honeymoon there must be something almost unspeakable about matrimony. A WOMAN looks upon her first kiss as a consecration; a man regards it as a desecration. TIME and tide wait for no man, but the untied woman has to wait for any man who chooses to keep her waiting. IN fashionable circles one wife and a dog constitute a "family."
IT MAY be very noble of a man to have no secrets from the woman he loves, but it's rather hard on all the other women he has gotten over loving. A MAN who can marry the right girl and won't marry her somehow always ends by being made to marry the wrong one. MANY a good husband hasn't the nerve or the courage to be anything else. WIDOWS have all the honors without any of the trials of matrimony; a live husband is sometimes a necessity, but a dead one is a real luxury. MANY a man's idea of a wife is something decorative to be kept around the house and only taken out on show occasions like the jewels in his safe and the horses in his racing stable.
IN olden times sacrifices were made at the altar--a custom which is still continued. OF course every woman knows that the man she loves is a "brute"--but unfortunately that is one of the reasons why she loves him. THE kind of woman who holds a man's devotion forever is like a silky, self-satisfied Angora cat who takes her petting as a matter of course, never returns it, and never gets on his nerve by asking for more. IT isn't so much a man's sins and failings, but the air of conscious pride with which he accepts her comments on them that a woman can't forgive. THAT will be a great novel in which the author can make the man who owns the machine as fascinating as the chauffeur.
EVERY man honestly believes that franchise in the hands of a woman is like a loaded gun in the hands of a small boy--utterly useless and sure to do damage to somebody. WAD some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as men's mothers see us--but it wouldn't make us happy. ONE reason why a dainty little thing like a woman wastes her love on man-creature with a rough chin, stubbly hair and a smell of tobacco about his clothes is that he is the only thing in that line. A MAN will forgive a woman for almost any indiscretion sooner than for leaving her hair in the comb and for breaking the Ten Commandments sooner than for leaving her hot curling tongs where his fingers can get on them.
THE man who tries to mix his women friends has about the same unfortunate results as the man who tries to mix his drinks. 'TIS better to have kissed and paid the cost than never to have kissed at all. THE word "court," whether it refers to the way her husband won her or the place where he lost her, always has a pleasant sound to a grass widow. IF a woman could veil her thoughts and feelings as effectively as she veils her face she would be so fascinating that no man could resist her. WHEN it comes to love-making men are so unoriginal, that a sage, a fool and a "lovers' letter-writer" all sound exactly alike.
HUSBANDS are like Christmas gifts: you can't choose them; you've just got to sit down and wait until they arrive and then appear perfectly delighted with what you get. THE only way to be happy with a husband is to learn to be happy without him most of the time. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |