angel to deliver him is the Hinting Girl. She is a gentle grafter who
holds up every man she meets with a pair of innocent-looking blue eyes
that bid him stand and deliver just as effectually and efficiently as
if he were looking down the barrels of a couple of blue-nosed revolvers
in the hands of a highway robber. You will find these cheerful
workers, son, where you least expect them. The very highest society is
filled with girls of undisputed position and unquestioned morals, who
ruthlessly plunder every man they meet, and you will never encounter an
individual more to be feared than these bandits of the parlor.
Did you ever wonder why one girl receives so many more presents than
another, and why every man who passes lays some offering on her shrine?
Take it from me, this is the result of science and not mere chance.
Observe, closely, and you will see, when you call, that she steers the
conversation artfully around to the latest play, and before you know it
you have offered to take her to it.
Also, she has let you know that violets are her favorite flower, and
the date of her birthday. Before Christmas she artlessly confides
in you where there is the jeweled vanity, or the hand-painted fan,
that she has set her heart upon, and she couldn’t shout it at you any
plainer if she bawled it to you through a megaphone that she expects
you to come across, and will think you a piker if you don’t.
Beware the Hinting Girl, son. She is the woman who is accessory before
the crime of half of the embezzlements of trusted clerks who go wrong,
and who, if she got her deserts, would stand in the prisoners’ dock
by the side of the poor, weak, trembling boy who has stolen to buy
her jewels or to give her a good time. And she makes the sort of wife
whose husband rises up and sits down to a never-ending chant of “Gimme!
Gimme! Gimme!”
Then there’s the Girl With a Past. Very often she has been more sinned
against than sinning. Probably her morals are just as good as your
own, son; but, even so, such marriages rarely turn out happily. For we
have to face the naked fact that, while a man may love a woman well
enough to forget and forgive her indiscretions, society, which is not
in love with her, remembers them all. And it reminds her husband that
it recalls them. The man who marries a Woman With a Past is pretty
much in the same fix as the man who hires a reformed embezzler to be
his cashier. He hopes he will run straight, but he keeps an eye on
the cash box—a situation which doesn’t make for domestic felicity. Of
course, there are women who reform and gather in their wild oats crops
and ever after raise nothing but garden truck around their doorstep,
but even while their husbands are devouring their domestic cabbages
and onions there rarely comes a family spat in which they do not throw
in their wives’ teeth the kind of farmers they have been. The truth
is that it takes a big man and woman to defy the conventions. That is
what makes it safest for those of us who are little people to play the
game according to the rules laid down by Hoyle. And one of these rules
is that women must keep their skirts clean. By and large it is a good
rule, son, for it means the purity of race, the integrity of society
and a lot of other things that keep this old world going.
Then there’s the Weeping Girl. Whenever you meet with a gentle,
sweet, soft, babyish-looking little girl, with a chin that trembles
and big eyes that overflow with tears at the slightest provocation,
and who can cry without her nose getting red, fly, son, fly. She will
fasten herself upon you, and when you try to make a getaway she will
cling to you and weep. And no man can behold unmoved a woman crying
for him, because he is such a good thing. You will stop to wipe her
eyes; and all will be over with you except the long, long years of
rainy matrimony when you will have to deal with a wife who cannot be
reasoned with or cajoled or coerced into doing anything she doesn’t
want to do, because you will be so afraid of starting another freshet
of tears.
Then there’s the Domestic Girl, who baits her hook with angels’ food.
You might go farther and do worse than marry the Domestic Girl, for
while romance is transient one’s appetite remains, and after one’s
illusions are gone it is a comfortable thing to have a good dinner to
fall back upon. Still, one must confess, the Domestic Girl is apt to
have only a bread-and-butter conversation, of which a man might tire
in time; so, unless your stomach is developed in excess of your heart,
walk warily when the Domestic Girl begins to inveigle you into little
meals for two that she cooks for you under a pink-shaded lamp.
Lastly, there is the girl who is just near you—the girl you work with,
or who lives in the same boarding house with you, or who comes to visit
your sister. Men who have escaped the dangers of all other women are
the victims of propinquity which unites them to ladies they couldn’t
otherwise have seen through a telescope. Somehow our very nearness to
the people with whom we are thrown every day keeps us from getting a
perspective on their faults and disabilities, and habit deceives us
into thinking that they are more necessary to us than they are. And so
we drift into the mismated marriages that keep the divorce courts busy
and the world salted down with the brine of our tears.
Therefore, if you perceive that Mamie, whom you thought vulgar at
first, no longer gets on your nerves; if you observe that Sadie, who
bored you when you first met her, is beginning to interest you with her
chatter about what “he said” and “I said,” and you discover that you
have quit being shocked by Carrie’s gum-chewing and Mabel’s grammar,
then, son, pack your trunk and leave while the leaving is good.
Otherwise, the Girl Next to You will get you sure.
But why amplify the list? Some day a girl will tag you, and you will
know you are “it,” and a million warnings could not save you from your
fate.
LVII
WHEN A GIRL LOVES A MAN
A youth asks me how he can tell whether a girl loves him or not. Well,
son, you can’t always tell. There are times when all signs fail, and
there is no man so clever, so discerning, so sophisticated that a
woman cannot fool him if she set her mind to doing so. For the many
generations in which women were entirely subservient to men, and in
which they had to get everything they had out of men, and in which
all their pleasures and perquisites depended on their wheedling and
cajoling men, have made them gifted liars and adept at befooling men.
However, the modern girl, being able to make her own living, and stand
upon her own feet, and therefore being to a large degree independent of
men, has less need to simulate emotions which she does not feel, and
so she has lost the fine technique of her mother and her grandmother
and her great-great-great grandmother. Flirting has become a lost
art, and the methods of the gold-digger are so crude and raw that any
man who is taken in by one deserves all he gets. The average girl is
almost brutally frank about the state of her feelings. She hasn’t even
subtlety enough about her to keep a man guessing.
But there is, of course, a sort of no-man’s land that lies between
liking and loving in which the girl wanders, herself as uncertain and
bewildered as you are. And, I take it, it is across this dangerous
terrain that you wish to be guided. Sally is dear and sweet to you.
She apparently enjoys your society, and you never have any trouble in
making dates with her. She is the best little pal ever. But what you
want to know is whether she cares for you just as she does for half a
dozen other chaps, or whether you are the ONLY ONE.
First, Is she willing to sit at home of an evening with you or not?
If she comes down with her hat on to receive you, or if she always
wants to step out somewhere, you have not touched her heart. She
regards you merely as a purveyor of good times, a theater ticket and
a dancing partner, and any other youth who had the price would do as
well. But things have got serious with her when she proposes to spend
the evening at home under a pink-shaded lamp. That shows that she has
begun to live a romance with more thrills to it than anything she can
see depicted on the stage, and that she thinks that Valentino is a poor
dub at love-making compared to you. Also it indicates that she desires
to isolate you, to cut you out from the herd and put her brand upon
you. Cupid is essentially a monopolist. Especially the Lady Cupid. The
first thing that a woman does when she falls in love with a man is to
try to shut him away from all other women. So long as a girl wants to
go in crowds there is nothing doing with her in the love line. If she
really cares for you, she will maneuver to get you off to herself.
Next. Observe how a girl treats your pocketbook. If she gets everything
out of you that she can; if, when you go out, she has to have a taxi
to convey her three blocks, although she can walk ten miles around a
department store without turning a hair; if she always suggests orchids
when flowers are mentioned, and invariably picks out the most expensive
places to dance and the highest-priced dishes on the menu, you may be
certain that she has no serious intentions concerning you. You are
merely the good thing that a merciful Providence has brought forward
for her sustenance. But when a girl begins to talk economy to a boy;
when she suggests going to the movies instead of to the theatre; when
she orders a ham sandwich instead of a chicken breast and mushrooms
under glass, it is an unmistakable sign that she is regarding his
bankroll as her own and is commencing to save up for furniture for her
future home.
Next—and this is an acid test—talk to the girl about yourself and
observe her reaction to it. Monologue along to her by the hour about
what you are doing, about what you have done in the past and what you
expect to do in the future. Tell her all about what you said to the
boss and what the boss said to you. Explain to her all the details of
the grocery business. Regale her with reminiscences of your childhood,
when you were a fat little boy with green freckles on your hands.
If she yawns in your face or if she listens with the expression of a
martyr being nailed to the cross; if she gets up and walks around the
room or turns on the radio or interrupts you to ask what you think
of the President’s foreign policy, you may as well abandon hope. Her
affection is merely gold plated, not the real thing. But if she laps up
your talk about yourself and asks for more; if she begs you to repeat
that darling story of how naughty you were to your nurse, and if she
sits, goggle-eyed with excitement, on the edge of her chair while you
relate how you sold a bill of goods to a hard customer, rest assured
that her heart is yours for keeps. For there are only two women in the
world, a man’s mother and the woman who is his wife or hopes to be his
wife, who want to hear him talk about himself.
Take note also of a girl’s attitude toward you. As long as she regards
you as an intelligent, husky, able-bodied man, capable of taking care
of yourself and with sense enough to come in out of the rain, her
regard for you is merely platonic. But when a girl suddenly becomes
anxious about the state of your health, when she worries over your
getting your feet wet and is afraid you are not getting enough
vitamines in your diet, when she warns you not to forget to put on your
overcoat if it is cold and to look out for automobiles when you cross
the street, then it is safe to begin pricing engagement rings.
Of course, there are other signs of love, such as a girl developing an
acute attack of domesticity and passing up the display of French frocks
in a window for that of aluminum pots and pans, and especially when she
begins dragging a man to church with her, which are not to be ignored.
But when a maiden begins to mother a chap and indicates that her idea
of spending a perfectly hilarious evening is just to be alone with him,
listening to him talk about himself, she is his for the taking.
LVIII
MARRIAGE LESSONS
What has marriage taught you?
“The chief thing that marriage has taught me,” said a man who has
had forty years of experience in matrimony, “is that women are human
beings. When a man acquires that piece of information it always gives
him a bit of a jolt, for most men never really think of women as
human beings at all. They think, according to their kind, of women
as angels, above all earthly passions, with no nerves or tempers, or
selfish cravings for pleasure and who find their joy in life in loving
the unlovable and forgiving the unforgivable and being a sweet, gooey,
sticky mass of gentleness and patience and unselfishness. Or they think
of women as being baby dolls to be dressed up and played with and put
on the shelf when they are tired of them. Or they think of women as
pieces of household machinery—sort of automatic, self-starting cooks
and carpet sweepers and washers and menders, who run on their own power
and who don’t even have to be oiled up with a few lubricating words of
praise now and then.
“And so husbands treat their wives according to their conception of
what women are, and that is why marriage is so often a failure and why
there are so many divorces. Women don’t want to be regarded either
as saints or toys or domestic conveniences. They want to be treated
as human beings and have their husbands give them the same sort of a
square deal a man gives his business partner.
“About nine-tenths of the spats that married people have are over
money. It gets on the husband’s nerves to have the woman eternally
dunning him for money. It seems to him that before he gets his hat
off in the evening she begins asking for a few dollars for this and
for that. Then the bills come in, and they are always bigger than he
expected, and he rows about it, and she thinks that he is stingy.
“The trouble is that the man isn’t treating his wife like a rational
human being. He is expecting her to be a miracle worker and run a house
on air. He is humiliating her and making her feel that he is a tyrant
by making her come like a beggar to him for every penny because he
has got an idea that women don’t mind panhandling. Furthermore, he is
expecting her to gauge her expenditures wisely, when she hasn’t the
faintest idea of what her resources are.
“I have found out that it saves friction over money to make my wife
as liberal an allowance as I can. I have found out that if you will
explain to a woman just exactly how the financial situation stands
in the family and why you can’t afford the thing she wants she will
not only do without it gladly but cut down her expenses in other ways
and help you to save. It is believing that their husbands are holding
out on them and not splitting fifty-fifty with them that makes women
reckless spenders.
“And I have found that a man is a fool who lies to his wife. In the
end she always catches up with him, and then she imagines things ten
times worse than they were. If a man telephones his wife that he is
going to stay downtown and meet a customer from Oshkosh and she learns
that he really played poker with the boys she pictures a scene of wild
debauchery and leaps to the conclusion that he is leading the double
life and he never hears the last of it. But if he tells her just what
he is going to do she is so flattered at being trusted and thought
broadminded enough not to begrudge her husband an evening’s pleasure
that she goes to bed and goes to sleep instead of waiting up for him
with a curtain lecture sizzling in her mind.
“Marriage has taught me that women think more of words than they do of
deeds and that a woman would rather have her husband tell her that he
loves her than to have him work his fingers to the bone for her and
never make her a soft speech. As long as a husband tells his wife how
beautiful she is and how he would like to deck her out in diamonds
and sables she is perfectly content to do without them and wear
hand-me-downs. It is only when she thinks that he doesn’t care whether
she has fine clothes or not that she gets peevish over not having the
finery that other women have.
“Marriage has taught me that in the family circle the hammer is a
boomerang that returns and annihilates the hammerer. If you knock your
wife’s cooking she says, ‘What’s the use of trying to please you?’ and
makes no effort to improve; but if you praise her dinners she breaks
her neck trying to make them better and better. If you criticize the
size of the bills she revenges herself by buying something that really
cost money; but if you tell her what a help she is to you and what a
marvelous manager, she becomes a nickel-nurser.
“If you find fault with her hat or her dress, you have to buy her a new
one; but if you tell her how becoming her last year’s costume is and
how it brings out her lines, she will wear it into shreds. Marriage
has taught me that if you let your wife know that you admire her and
appreciate her, that you are grateful to her for all that she does for
you and that you try to do all in your power to make her happy, she
will repay you a thousandfold and there is nothing she won’t do for you
and no fault she won’t overlook in you.”
LIX
THE SUPERIOR BUSINESS WOMAN
The other day a man killed his beautiful young wife because she was a
better “business man” than he was and made more money. The woman loved
her husband and was good to him. She was ambitious for him. She got
him a job with the people for whom she worked and tried to push him
along and help him in every way. But it simply was not in him to be the
go-getter that she was. She was a success and he was a failure. And in
the frenzy of morbid jealousy that this engendered in him, he slew her.
Thus vividly do we have brought to our attention one of the new
difficulties that the advent of women into the business world has
injected into the already complicated matrimonial proposition. It
makes the question of how the modern wife can best be a helpmeet to
her husband one that takes a Solomon in petticoats to answer. In olden
times the matter was perfectly simple. The woman who wanted to help
her husband along had only to be a good and thrifty manager, to pare
the potatoes thin enough and squeeze the nickels. She did her part in
building up the family fortunes by saving. But, in many cases to-day,
the old woman’s granddaughter is a crackerjack business woman who
sees that she can help her husband more by earning than by scrimping,
and that she can make more money in one year in business than she
could save in ten years by doing her own housework and wearing shabby
clothes. So, as long as she is working for their common good, the woman
cannot understand why her husband shouldn’t be just as willing for her
to help him by working in an office as in a kitchen, or why the wife
who does brain labor isn’t as good a wife as the one who does manual
labor.
But the great majority of women who continue to follow any gainful
pursuit after marriage find out that, while there is a new woman who
looks at everything in life from a new angle, there is no new man.
Women have changed in their relationship to man, but men stand pat just
where Adam did when it comes to dealing with women.
If you will notice, it is only women who prate about equality between
the sexes. Men take no stock in any such heresy. When a man tells a
woman that she is an angel and that he looks up to her and worships
her, it is one of the lover’s perjuries at which Jove laughs. In
reality he doesn’t mean a word of it. The very basic thing on which a
man’s love for a woman is built is his sense of superiority to her.
He wants to feel stronger than she is, wiser than she is, to be more
successful than she is. She must look up to him, revere him, ask his
opinion, be guided by his advice.
That is why the clinging-vine type of woman is so appealing to men,
and it is why intelligent, big-brained men so often marry morons and
are happy and contented with them. Their silly little wives do not
understand one word in five they say and are no companions to them, but
they satisfy the masculine demand to dominate the woman. When the case
is reversed, as it often is, and when the wife is the more intelligent,
the stronger character—when the gray mare is the better horse and
pulls most of the load—the marriage is invariably unhappy, and the
husband almost invariably either openly or secretly hates his wife.
His love for her is never strong enough to survive the hurt to his
vanity. His sense of inferiority to her keeps his nerves raw, and if
he is dependent upon her it turns his very soul to wormwood and gall.
I have never known a woman who supported her husband who received any
gratitude for it. He would eat her bread, but he did it as a snapping
dog that bites the hand that feeds it.
There is nothing that fills a woman’s cup of happiness so full and
overflowing as for her husband to achieve a notable success and be
great and famous. She glories in being Mrs. Explorer or Mrs. Engineer
or Mrs. Banker or Mrs. Author, and loves to shine in the reflected
glory. But the deadliest insult you can offer any man is to speak
of him as his wife’s husband and call him Mr. Mary Smith, although
Mary may have written the book of the year or have performed some
achievement that has made the world sit up and take notice of her.
Perhaps all of this is natural. Perhaps this cosmic urge that the male
has to dominate the female is something instinctive for which he is not
responsible.
But it makes the woman’s course a hard one to steer, for, curiously
enough, the weak man is often attracted to the strong woman, and there
is something maternal in the strong woman that wants to mother the weak
man and makes her feel that he only needs her to take care of him and
boost him and show him the way to success.
So the girl who is making a big salary marries the man who is making a
small one, and she tries to supply for him the business sense he lacks
and to galvanize him into a hustle of which he is incapable, and they
live scrappily ever afterward. Yet there is nothing we can do about
it as long as nature goes blundering along putting the brains and
talents of merchants and bankers and trust presidents into a lot of
women’s heads and making plenty of men who would have been wonderful
housekeepers and done perfectly lovely embroidery work if only they
hadn’t got the wrong sex.
LX
NEW IDEALS FOR OLD
The strangest thing in this age of strange things is the new
relationship that is growing up between the sexes. So many of the
ideals that have ruled us for centuries have been scrapped and swept
into the discard that the boy and girl babies of to-day are virtually
born into a new world where few of the conventions that ruled their
parents survive. Take the matter of financial independence, for
instance. Since the caveman days it has been held that the proper
attitude of woman was one of dependence on her lord and master. The
woman bore the children and kept the house, and the husband provided
the wherewithal to support the family. When a woman had property her
husband took possession of it on the day they were married. Virtually
every lucrative occupation was barred to women. When a man and a woman
went to any place of amusement the man would have been highly insulted
if she had offered to pay any part of the cost of the entertainment.
Man was the purse bearer, and his lordly gesture indicated that he had
the checking account of Mr. Rockefeller and that woman was a dear
little sweetie who was not to bother her poor little foolish head over
the cost of anything.
To-day the majority of women earn their living before they are married.
Financial independence has become so necessary to their happiness that
one of the potent sources of domestic discord is the inability of the
woman who has had her own pay envelope to do without it and reconcile
herself to taking whatever her husband gives her as recompense for her
hard work as a poor man’s wife. Also husbands are coming more and more
to begrudge spending money on their wives and are demanding oftener
and oftener that the wage-earning girls they marry shall keep on with
their jobs. Likewise, it is a common thing for the young women who go
out with young men to places of amusement to pay their own way and go
fifty-fifty on all expenses.