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[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A GUIDE TO MEN
A BACHELOR'S LIFE
IS ONE LONG
SOLO--USUALLY
A HYMN OF
THANKSGIVING
A GUIDE TO MEN
BEING ENCORE
REFLECTIONS OF A
BACHELOR GIRL
_by_
HELEN
ROWLAND
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED IN NEW YORK BY
DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY DODGE
PUBLISHING COMPANY, NEW YORK
To
FANNIE HURST
Who has discovered the secret of how to be happy, though wedded to an
art and to a man at the same time.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
Foreword _by_ Fannie Hurst 13
Overture 17
_Prelude_ 19
_Refrain_ 21
Bachelors 23
_First Interlude_ 27
True Love--How to know it 35
_Variations_ 38
Blondes 42
_Cymbals & Kettle-drums_ 44
What Every Woman Wonders 50
_Second Interlude_ 58
Brides 63
_Syncopations_ 66
Divorces 73
_Third Interlude_ 75
Widows 81
_Improvisations_ 83
Widowers 89
_Fourth Interlude_ 92
Second Marriages 99
_Intermezzo_ 102
Woman & Her Infinite Variety 109
Maxims of Cleopatra 112
_Finale_ 118
Curtain 125
ILLUSTRATIONS
. . . and interrupts him. 23
Places him on a pedestal . . . 35
Married to a human being . . . 63
In remembrance. 73
Half a love . . . 81
You may polish him up . . . 89
A brand new sensation . . . 99
A man just crawls away . . . 109
[Illustration]
FOREWORD
A SMALL phial, I doubt not, could contain the attar of the epigrammatic
literature of all time. Few of the perfumes of this diminutive form of
wit and satire have survived. Pretty and scented vaporings, most of the
thousands and thousands of them, that have died on the air of the
foibles of their day.
Yet how the pungent ones can persist! The racy old odors, which are as
new as _now_, that still hover about the political and amorous quips of
the Greeks. The nose-crinkling ones of the French, more vinegar-acrid
than perfumed, although a seventeenth-century proverb calls France "a
monarchy tempered by epigrams." The didactic Teutonic ones, sharply
corrosive.
The greatest evaporative of course of this form of _bon mot_ is mere
cleverness. Wit is the attar which endures. The wit of Pope and
Catullus, Landor, Voltaire, Rousseau and Wilde.
That is what Rapin must have had in mind when he said that a man ought
to be content if he succeeded in writing one really good epigram.
Helen Rowland stands pleasantly impeached for writing many. She has a
whizz to her swiftly cynical arrow that entitles her to a place in the
tournament.
She is not merely anagrammatical, scorns the couplet for the mere sake
of the couplet, and has little time for the smiting word at any price.
In the entire history of epigrammatic expression there are few if any
whose fame rests solely upon the brittle structure of the _bon mot_.
Martial, about whose brilliant brevities can scarcely be said to hover
the odor of sanctity, is, I suppose, remembered solely as a wielder of
the barbed word.
Miss Rowland is balanced skilfully upon that same slender trapeze, doing
a very deft bow-and-arrow act, her archery of a high order.
She wields a wicked bow, a kindly bow, a swift, a sure, a ductile bow.
Matrimony is her favorite target (so was it Bombo's and Herrick's and
even political Parnell had his shot at it) and her little winged arrows
are often bitingly pointed with philosophy, satire, wit and sometimes
just a touch of good old home-brew American hokum.
For this wise woman with the high-spirited bow behind her arrow, these
little pages speak eloquently.
FANNIE HURST.
[Illustration]
OVERTURE
Would you your sweetheart's secret seek to spell?
There are so many little ways to tell!
A hair, perhaps, shall prove him false or true--
A single hair upon his coat lapel!
[Illustration]
PRELUDE
THE sweetest part of a kiss is the moment just before taking.
Love is misery--sweetened with imagination, salted with tears, spiced
with doubt, flavored with novelty, and swallowed with your eyes shut.
Marriage is the miracle that transforms a kiss from a pleasure into a
duty, and a lie from a luxury into a necessity.
A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been
extracted.
A man's heart is like a barber shop in which the cry is always, "NEXT!"
The discovery of rice-powder on his coat-lapel makes a college-boy
swagger, a bachelor blush, and a married man tremble.
It takes one woman twenty years to make a man of her son--and another
woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him.
By the time a man has discovered that he is in love with a woman, she is
usually so fagged out waiting for the phenomenon, that she is ready to
topple right over into his arms from sheer exhaustion.
A man always asks for "just one kiss"--because he knows that, if he can
get that, the rest will come without asking.
Somehow, the moment a man has surrendered the key of his heart to a
woman, he begins to think about changing the lock.
There are only two ages, at which a man faces the altar without a
shudder; at twenty when he doesn't know what's happening to him--and at
eighty when he doesn't care.
[Illustration]
THE REFRAIN
[Illustration]
THERE'S so much saint in the worst of them,
And so much devil in the best of them,
That a woman who's married to one of them,
Has nothing to learn of the rest of them.
SOMEHOW, JUST AT
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL
MOMENT WHEN A
BACHELOR FANCIES
THAT HE IS GOING TO
DIE FOR LOVE OF A
WOMAN, ANOTHER
WOMAN ALWAYS COMES
ALONG AND INTERRUPTS
HIM
[Illustration: . . . and interrupts him.]
BACHELORS
THE modern bachelor is like a blotting pad; he can soak up all the
sentiment and flattery a woman has to offer him, without ever spilling a
drop.
A confirmed bachelor is so sure of his ability to dodge, that he is
willing to amuse every pretty girl he meets, by handing her a rope and
daring her to catch him.
A bachelor is a large body of egotism, completely surrounded by caution
and fortified at all points by suspicion. His chief products are wild
oats and cynicism; his chief industry is dodging matrimony; his
undeviating policy "Protection!" and his watch-word, "Give me liberty or
give me death!"
The average bachelor is so afraid of falling into matrimony, nowadays,
that he sprinkles the path of love with ashes instead of with roses.
The care with which a bachelor chaperones himself would inspire even the
duenna of a fashionable boarding school with envy.
A bachelor's idea of "safety first" consists in getting tangled up with
a lot of women in order to avoid getting tied up to one.
He is an altruist who refrains from devoting himself to one woman in
order that he may scatter sweetness and light amongst the multitude.
There is nothing quite so intriguing to a bachelor as flirting with the
"_idea of marriage_"--with his fingers crossed. He just loves to
"consider marrying" in the abstract and to go about pitying himself for
being so "lonely."
There are three kinds of bachelors: the kind that must be driven into
matrimony with a whip; the kind that must be coaxed with sugar; and the
kind that must be blindfolded and backed into the shafts.
If you want to be chosen to brighten a bachelor's life, first make it
dark and dreary; so long as women are willing to make his existence one
long sweet song, naturally he isn't anxious to exchange it for a
lullaby.
When a man actually asks a girl to marry him in these days of bachelor
comforts and the deification of single-blessedness, she has a revelation
of human unselfishness that stands as the eighth wonder of the world.
That tired expression on a bachelor's face is not so often the result of
brain-fag from an overworked mind as of heart-fag from overworking the
emotions.
Lovers look at life through rose-colored curtains; old bachelors see it
through a fog.
Somehow, a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of
beauty and a boy forever!
A bachelor fancies that it is his wonderful sixty-horse will-power that
keeps him from marrying, whereas it is nothing but his little one-horse
_won't-power_.
One consolation in marrying a bachelor over forty is that he has fought
so long and so hard to escape the hook that there is no more fight left
in him.
Never give up hope as long as a bachelor declares definitely, "No woman
can _get_ me!" Wait until he is so sure of his immunity that he sighs
regretfully, "No woman will _have_ me!"
The "vicious circle" in a bachelor's opinion, is the platinum one on a
woman's third finger.
A Bachelor of Arts is one who makes love to a lot of women, and yet has
the art to remain a bachelor.
[Illustration]
FIRST INTERLUDE
IN the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns--and turns--and turns!
There are lots of "sure cures" for love, but the quickest and surest
is--_another love_.
If there were only two women and one man in the world, the man would
marry the brunette and then spend the rest of his life peeping over her
shoulder and trying to flirt with the blonde.
A woman always embalms the corpse of a dead love; a man wisely cremates
it, and plants a new love in the ashes.
A fool and her money are soon courted.
A woman's pity for a man who loves her against her will may be akin to
love; but a man's pity for a woman who loves him without his permission
is a twin brother to boredom.
Marriage is the miracle which affords a woman a chance to gratify her
vanity, pacify her family, mortify her rivals, and electrify her
friends, all at the same time. Marriage is sweet!
Love is what incites the caveman to drag a woman around by the hair and
makes the civilized man permit a woman to drag _him_ around by the nose.
The heart of a woman is a secret sanctuary where she is constantly
burning incense and candles before a succession of idols of clay.
Nowadays, a man's faith in women and heaven seems to disappear with his
milk-teeth and to reappear again with his false teeth.
To most men "repentance" is merely the interval between the headache and
the next temptation.
Most bachelors regard the "flower of love" as a species of poison ivy.
Even Satan could find a woman to call him "Dearie," if he would simply
tell her that all he needed was "a beautiful woman's uplifting
influence."
A man may be guilty of stealing a girl's heart, but he always feels hurt
and indignant if she refuses to take it back again after he has finished
with it.
Woman's love--a mirror in which a man beholds himself glorified,
magnified and deified.
Always try to be the "guiding star" of a man's life, but never make the
mistake of fancying that you are his whole planetary system.
A woman must keep her conscience, her complexion and her reputation
snow-white. But a man is satisfied if he can just manage to keep his so
that they comply with the pure food laws.
Art is inspiring, but you can't run your fingers through its hair; a
career is absorbing, but you can't tie ribbons on the curls of your
brain-children; work is ennobling, but, alas, it hasn't got a shoulder
to cry on!
When a girl refuses to kiss a man he is never disconcerted; he is merely
astonished that she could be so blind to her own feelings.
A summer resort is a place where a girl spends half her time in making
herself alluring--and the other half in yearning for something to
"lure."
When a girl marries a man she is sadly aware that all his old
sweethearts are wondering _how_ she did it, and that all her old
sweethearts are wondering _why_.
Marriage will never be safe until we stop making it an "ideal" and begin
trying to make it a square deal.
Just before marriage a man's coat lapel acquires that grayish look which
comes from the constant contact with face powder, but it's wonderful how
soon it brightens up and gets back its natural color after the wedding.
Love is like appendicitis; you never know when nor how it is going to
strike you--the only difference being that, after one attack of
appendicitis, your curiosity is perfectly satisfied.
No matter how many men have tried to flirt with her, a girl will step
cheerfully up to the altar in the firm belief that she has found the one
perfect human being in trousers who will never look at another woman.
After marriage, a woman's sight becomes so keen that she can see right
through her husband without looking at him, and a man's so dull that he
can look right through his wife without seeing her.
A man recuperates so much more quickly from his remorse than a woman
does from her indignation that by the time she has forgiven him he is
tired of being good and ready to sin again.
Before marriage, a man will go home and lie awake all night thinking
about something you said; after marriage, he'll go to sleep before you
finish saying it.
A man can never understand how a woman gets so much joy out of leading
him all the way to the threshold of love and then sweetly closing the
door in his face.
Solitaire--the married woman's game.
A man's greatest conquest is self-conquest; his greatest possession,
self-possession; and his greatest love--Oh, well, you fill in the rest.
Why does a man take it for granted that a girl who flirts with him wants
him to kiss her--when, nine times out of ten, she only wants him to
_want_ to kiss her?
Plunging into a hasty marriage in order to escape from a foolish
entanglement is like rushing under a trolley car in order to escape from
a taxicab.
Nowadays a girl's favorite way of committing suicide for love of a man,
is to marry him and worry herself to death over him.
A good wife is always her husband's "guide, philosopher and friend";
also his guardian, digestion, conscience, time-table and valet.
A man never knows how to say goodby; a woman never knows _when_ to say
it.
A woman's greatest "right" is the right husband.
A woman might forgive a man for all his sins; it's that stained-glass
attitude with which he decides to "give them up" when he is tired of
them that exasperates her so.
[Illustration]
A MAN DOESN'T WANT
A WIFE WHO PLACES
HIM ON A PEDESTAL
OR KEEPS HIM ON A
FOOTSTOOL, BUT ONE
WHO WILL TAKE HIM
AS A MERE MAN--AND
LET HIM GO ON BEING
"MERE"
[Illustration: Places him on a pedestal . . .]
TRUE LOVE--HOW TO KNOW IT
TRUE LOVE is nothing but friendship, highly intensified, flavored with
sentiment, spiced with passion, and sprinkled with the stardust of
romance.
True Love can be no deeper than your capacity for friendship, no higher
than your ideals, and no broader than the scope of your vision.
True Love, in the cave man, is expressed by a desire to beat a woman,
and to pull her around by the hair.
True Love, in the Broadwayite, is expressed by an insatiable craving to
_buy things_ for a woman.
True Love, in a husband, is expressed by his willingness to give his
wife anything, from the tenderest piece of steak to a divorce, if it
will make her happy.
True Love, in any man, is the essence of unselfishness; and the most
selfish thing in the world. It is the selfishness that transcends
selfishness; the vanity that puts egotism in the shade.
True Love, in a bachelor, is exemplified by his willingness to marry a
woman--against all his instincts, his sense of self-preservation, and
his better judgment.
True Love, in a born flirt, is evidenced by his inability to think of
any _other woman_, while he is kissing a particular one.
True Love, in an author, is demonstrated by his self-restraint, in
refusing to make "copy" out of a love affair.
True Love, in a college boy, is expressed by his ability to think of
somebody besides himself for a whole hour at a time.
It is the flash of light, by which one sees clearly that to do for
another, give to another, and sacrifice for another, will get one the
most happiness out of life.
True Love, in the poet, is expressed in soul kisses, and by his
inability to do any work for days at a time.
We speak of "falling in love," as though it were a pit or an abyss; but
True Love is the light on the mountain-top, to which we must eternally
climb.
True Love is a relic of the Victorian Age.
It still exists, here and there, like the buffalo; but in the face of
eugenics, feminism, and the growing masculine determination not to
marry, it may some day have to take a place beside the Dinosaurus in the
Public Museum.
[Illustration]
VARIATIONS
FLIRTATION is a duel in which the combatants cross lies, sighs and
eyes--and the coolest heart wins.
Falling in love consists merely in uncorking the imagination and
bottling the common-sense.
In the medley of love a man's soul sings a sonata, while his heart plays
a waltz and his pulse beats to rag-time.
Better be a strong man's "rib" than a weak man's "backbone."
True love isn't the kind that endures through long years of absence, but
the kind that endures through long years of propinquity.
A man seldom thinks of marrying when he meets his ideal woman; he waits
until he gets the marrying fever and then idealizes the first woman he
happens to meet.
Love is what tempts a man to tell foolish lies to a woman and a woman to
tell the fool truth to a man.
It took seven hundred guesses for Solomon to find out what kind of a
wife he wanted; and even then he seems to have had his doubts.
The only thing more astonishing than the length of time a man's love
will subsist on nothing is the celerity with which it is surfeited the
moment it has any encouragement to feed on.
Even when a man knows that he wants to marry a woman, she has to prove
it to him with a diagram before he is really convinced of it.
A man is so apt to mistake his love of experiment for love of a woman
that half the time he doesn't know which is which.
Why is it that a man never thinks he has tasted the cup of joy unless he
has splashed it all over himself, as though it were his morning bath?
A man is so versatile that he can read his newspaper with one set of
brain-cells while he carries on a conversation with his wife with
another set.
A girl hides her emotions under a veil of modesty, a spinster under a
cloak of cynicism, a wife under a mantle of tact, and a widow under a
cloud of mystery--and then women wonder why they are "misunderstood."
Proposing is a sort of acrobatic feat, in which a man must hang on to
his nerve with one hand and to the girl with the other. If he lets go of
either, he is lost.
In love, as in poker, men play just to _play_--and then proceed to throw
away what has been easily won, without any thought of its value. Thus
gamblers so often die in poverty and Lotharios in loneliness.
Nowadays, a truly chivalrous girl will "lie like a lady" in order to
protect a trusting man's vanity.
The woman who fascinates a man is not the one who looks up to him as the
sun of her existence, but the one who merely looks down on him as one of
the footlights.
Don't doubt a man when he says, "I never loved like _this_ before." Each
time a man falls in love with so much more ease and facility that he
doesn't recognize it as the same old emotion at all.
The first time a man lies to his wife he is surprised to discover how
easy it is to do it. After that he is surprised to find out how hard it
is _not_ to do it.
A man always speaks of having "given" his heart to a woman as though he
had done something generous and noble; whereas, nine times out of ten,
she probably had to wrench it from him.
About the only things in connection with his wife for which a man shows
any respect after a few years of marriage are her reputation and her
toothbrush.
[Illustration]
BLONDES
NEXT to a mouse or a rich widow, there is nothing on earth that a normal
girl dreads so much as a blonde.
No matter how many brunettes a man may have married from time to time
you can always be perfectly sure that there has been a blonde in his
life.
A woman with dark hair and eyes may make men admire her, but in order to
make one of them _propose_ she must blondine her temperament down to the
roots.
The dusky Cleopatra may have succeeded in making fools of a few men, but
it took a dizzy little blonde like Helen of Troy to make a lot of men
make fools of _themselves_.
In order to be popular with men, in these days, a brunette must be
either brilliant, interesting, rich or beautiful; but a blonde doesn't
have to be anything but a _blonde_.
You may fight a brunette, dearie, as woman to woman, but when you fight
a blonde you fight a cherished masculine tradition.
Why is it that in all the novels and motion picture plays the vampires
and adventuresses have dark hair and black eyes, while the innocent,
persecuted angels are all blondes--whereas in real life it is always the
other way 'round.
Generally speaking, there are two kinds of blondes: blondes by birth and
blondes by preference. These are subdivided into golden blondes, diamond
blondes, strawberry blondes--and undecided blondes; that is, those who
have not yet decided on their favorite shade.
Sometimes illness turns a woman's hair gray, and sometimes it merely
turns it dark at the roots. A little peroxide is a treacherous thing!
All this talk about the "yellow peril" is nonsense. There is no more
danger in permitting your husband to employ a pretty blonde stenographer
than there is in throwing a lighted match into the wastebasket.
When love flies out of the window the tame cat and the sympathetic
blonde tip-toe in by opposite doors.
CYMBALS AND KETTLE-DRUMS
THIS is the great masculine question: Whether it is better to marry and
live in the constant fear of one woman's frown or to stay single and
live in deadly fear of every woman's smile.
"Conscience doth make cowards of us all"--but not until we've emptied
the bottle, tired of the flirtation and gotten our money's worth out of
the game.
Marriage--A souvenir of love.
Wanted: A wife who can broil a steak with one hand, powder her nose with
the other, rock the cradle with her foot and accompany herself on the
harp. (_Signed_) EVERYMAN.
When the girls admire him a young man takes it as a matter of course;
but when a widow selects him for her attention he thrills with the
knowledge that he is being stamped with the approval of a connoisseur.
Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve
you; after marriage, he won't even lay down his newspaper to talk to
you.
If Achilles' only vulnerable spot was in his heel, then his vanity must
have gone to his feet, instead of to his head.
You can't expect a woman to accomplish much in this life, since she is
busy every minute of it either trying to _get_ some man, trying to _get
along with_ one, or trying to _get rid of_ one.
A man's wife is something like his teeth: He never thinks of her unless
she happens to bother him.
Life is a tale that is "told": the monk tells his beads, the seer tells
fortunes, the lover tells lies--and a woman tells everything.
To collect books is a sign of culture, to collect jewels a sign of
wealth, but to collect husbands is a sign of paresis.
A modern bachelor makes love with his hand on his pulse and his eye on
the clock.
Oh yes, there is a vast difference between the savage and the civilized
man, but it is never apparent to their wives until after breakfast.
A sympathetic woman is like a rose which a man wears over his heart; a
stupid woman is like a cabbage which he keeps in his kitchen; but a
merely "clever" woman is like a dahlia--he knows he ought to admire her,
but he had just as lief do so from a distance.
While a woman is weeping over the ghost of a dead love in the graveyard
of memory, a man is usually off pursuing a lot of little new loves in
the garden of forgetfulness.
Life is like a poem or a story; the most important thing about it is not
that it should be long, but that it should be beautiful and interesting.
The older a woman gets the more trusting she becomes; at twenty a man
can feed her only diluted flattery; but at forty she can swallow it,
straight, without a quiver.
No girl who is going to marry need bother to win a college degree; she
just naturally becomes a "Master of Arts" and a "Doctor of Philosophy"
after catering to an ordinary man for a few years.
The average man takes all the natural taste out of his food by covering
it with ready-made sauces, and all the personality out of a woman by
covering her with his ready-made ideals.
Heaven is _not_ a mythical place. It can be found right down in the
heart of the man who has found the work he loves and the woman he loves.
An ideal lover is one with such a keen dramatic instinct that he can
convince himself of his sincerity--even when he knows that he is lying.
Love is a matter of chance; matrimony a matter of money, and divorce--a
matter of course.
Adam was the first man to "misunderstand" a woman.
A man is like a park squirrel; if you fling your favors or your charms
at his head he will never come up and eat out of your hand.
What a man calls his "conscience" is merely the mental action that
follows a sentimental reaction after too much wine or love.
In the School of Love, a man is forever just taking up a brand new
"study" and discovering that all the old loves were nothing but
"preparatory practice."
The eugenic idea of choosing a husband would be perfectly lovely, only
that a husband isn't a matter of choice, but of chance, accident or
blind luck.
Love is woman's eternal spring, man's eternal fall.
It isn't beauty, and it isn't cleverness, and it isn't clothes that make
a particular woman fascinating. It is just a sort of magnetic current
which seems to run around her and set her eyes a-twinkling--and a man's
heart tingling.
It is utterly useless to tell a man the honest truth. That is the last
thing on earth which a man ever tells a woman--so of course it's the
last thing on earth which he ever expects to hear from her.
The average man, like "all Gaul," is divided into three parts: his
vanity, his digestion and his ambition. Cater to the first, guard the
second and stimulate the third--and his love will take care of itself.
There is no such tonic for a man's nerve as a capricious wife and no
such softener for his backbone as a self-sacrificing one.
A man can sit in the moonlight and talk "New Thought" to a pretty girl
and at the same time look right into her eyes with all the old, old
ones.
Bohemia is an oasis in the desert of life where only the rich-in-dreams
may go and only the poor-in-purse may stay.
There is no way of two people really knowing each other until after they
are married and have to share the same dollar, the same table, the same
newspaper and the same chiffonier.
[Illustration]
WHAT EVERY WOMAN WONDERS
THERE are gardens full of flowers that I feared to pluck.
There are eyes full of promises that I dared not believe.
There are lips full of sweetness, from which I turned away.
I wonder if Paradise holds anything for me, one-half so beautiful
As the joys I have renounced for its sake!
A man's life is like a musical comedy; there is always one woman in it
who is the star--but it takes ninety-nine others to make up the
"ensemble."
Nothing so annoys a man as to have a woman "cheer him up," when he is
enjoying the exquisite luxury of feeling sorry for himself.
The modern girl's "perfect candor" has taken the sin out of
sincerity--and most of the sweet scent out of the flower of sentiment.
Without the Serpent, the Garden of Eden would seem a dull old place to
most men.
Love is neither a bonfire, nor a kitchen-fire; but an altar-fire, to be
kept burning forever with prayer and reverence.
In the language of love, "Forever!" means for quite a little while and
"Never!" means not until next season.
"A fool there was, and he made his prayer"--to two women on the same
party wire.
Love is a matter of give and take--marriage, a matter of misgive and
mistake.
Even a fool knows enough to laugh at a man's joke--but only a born Siren
knows enough to hang onto his coat-lapel and beg him to "Tell it again!"
Some men are born for matrimony, some achieve matrimony--but most of
them are merely poor dodgers.
There are many times when a woman would gladly drop her husband, if she
did not feel morally certain that some other woman would come right
along and pick him up.
Alas! In choosing a husband, it seems that you've always got to decide
between something tame and uninteresting, like a gold-fish, and
something wild and fascinating, like a mountain goat.
Perhaps the first time a young man actually realizes that he is married
is when he catches himself looking at other women with that strange,
new, wistful sort of interest.
It is at once the mission and the punishment of the flirt to go through
life tapping the hearts of men, that they may overflow--for other women.
The sweetest things in a woman's life are her "yesterdays"--the sweetest
things in a man's life are his "tomorrows."
The man who is fondly looking for a perfect angel almost invariably ends
by marrying some little devil who knows how to persuade him that her
horns are merely the signs of a budding halo.
Woman is to most men what "heart-failure" is to the doctors--something
that it is always convenient to blame any old thing on.
"The mind has a thousand eyes--the heart but one!"--and that usually
goes fast asleep, after marriage.
Philosophy is the only kind of "sweetening" with which to make life
palatable.
Estimated from a wife's experience, the average man spends fully
one-quarter of his life in looking for his shoes.
An "idealist" is a man who is content to worship a woman from afar--and
let some gross, unselfish materialist marry her and support her.
Changing husbands is about as satisfactory as changing a bundle from one
hand to the other; it gives you only temporary relief.
France may claim the happiest marriages in the world, but the happiest
divorces in the world are "made in America."
No doubt, even Solomon told each of his 700 wives that he had merely
_thought_ he loved the others, but that _she_ was the only girl he "ever
really cared for" in just that way.
Love is what makes a man appear blissfully happy, when a woman is
mussing up the precious wisp of hair across his bald spot.
Love is what makes a woman laugh delightedly when a man is telling her
for the second time, a story which she knew by heart before he told it
to her the first time.
All this "sex-antagonism" must have started when Adam brought in the
first rabbit and ordered Eve to make it into Chicken-a-la-King.
When a man takes a notion to marry, he doesn't start following it up--he
merely stops running away.
A woman is young until the light dies out of her last lover's eyes.
Whenever a pretty girl runs her fingers through his hair, a cautious
bachelor can't help thinking of what happened to Samson.
Success in flirtation, as in gambling, consists in "getting out of the
game" at the psychological moment before your luck begins to turn.
Being a husband's "economic equal" may be awfully noble and advanced;
but it usually means being all of his ribs and most of his vertebrae.
Men have been classified as "what women marry." They have two feet, two
hands and sometimes two wives--but never more than one collar-button or
one idea at a time.
When a man says, "Nobody understands me," don't fancy he is suffering.
He is merely trying to let you know, in a modest way, that he is a
profound, fascinating mystery.
A man snatches the first kiss, pleads for the second, demands the third,
takes the fourth, accepts the fifth--and endures all the rest of them.
After two years, an engagement doesn't need to be broken; it just
naturally sags in the middle and comes apart.
Eve had as much choice in the matter of a husband as any other woman.
She merely accepted what fate sent her, and pretended to have gotten her
"ideal."
It is not much comfort to be able to keep your husband's material body
in the house evenings, when his astral body keeps wandering off to the
club, every few minutes.
In love, sweet are the uses of diversity!
A woman's love "bursts into flower," but judging from the time it takes
him to discover it, a man's love must be developed by the wearisome
process of geological formation.
If a man and a diamond are big and brilliant enough, one doesn't mind a
few flaws in them; but, for some reason, Heaven knows why, a woman and a
pearl are expected to be absolutely perfect.
When Fate places a laurel wreath on the brow of a genius she hitches a
plough to his shoulders and holds a Tantalus cup to his lips.
It isn't the man who paints his virtues in three colors and begs her to
marry him, but the one who paints his sins in vermilion and begs her to
"save" him who usually wins the girl.
If you want a man to propose don't try to make your family coddle him.
Make them hate him, because a man never really "takes hold" until
somebody begins to pull the other way.
The man who falls in love at first sight never knows what has struck
him, and therefore mercifully escapes all the agonizing slow-torture of
feeling himself sink, inch by inch, into the quicksands of matrimony.
Never believe that justice is all you owe your husband; what every man
needs, from the woman who loves him, is faith, hope and charity--and
above all, _mercy_.
Even a coquette can be loyal to one man--until she prefers another; but
a man's heart is like a ferry-boat--always going backward and forward,
and never staying "docked."
Soft, sweet things with a lot of fancy dressing--that is what a little
boy loves to eat and a grown man prefers to marry.
SECOND INTERLUDE
TO find your mate--that is luck; to know him when you find him--that is
inspiration; to win him when you know him--that is art; and to keep him
when you've won him--that is a _miracle_.
A woman wastes more time in dreaming over a past flirtation than it
would take a man to start a half dozen new ones.
Flattery affects a man like any other sort of "dope." It stimulates and
exhilarates him for the moment, but usually ends by going to his head
and making him act foolish.
The only way to be happy in this world is to take men and flirtations as
they come--and _let them go_ as they go.
Almost any straight path of devotion will lead to a woman's heart. It's
this zigzagging from sentiment to cold fear and from adoration to
self-preservation, that makes the way so long and dangerous for the
average man.
Solomon may have been the most famous _husband_ who ever lived, but as a
_hero_ he isn't in it with the man who manages to get along happily and
contentedly all through life with just _one_ wife!
Woman! The peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text,
the cynic his grouch, and the sinner his justification!
Everybody seems to be going through life at automobile speed nowadays;
but alas, there are no sentimental garages by Life's wayside at which we
may obtain a fresh supply of emotions, purchase a new thrill or patch up
an exploded ideal.
A man's work lasts from sun to sun, but his excuses for staying late at
the office are never done.
Every man wants a woman to appeal to his better side, his nobler
instincts and his higher nature--and another woman to help him forget
them.
Never rush into a love affair. Love is a waiting game, which requires
nerve, concentration, and a poker face.
The average man marries one woman just in order to escape from a lot of
others--and then flirts with a lot of others just in order to forget
that he is married to one.
Once a girl's heart beat faster at the sound of her sweetheart's
footstep on the garden path; but now it requires the hum of a
twelve-cylinder motor-car to rouse her from her lassitude.
The one thing about love-making that the modern man simply can't
understand is that, in order to make it thrilling and interesting, he
must really put a little _love_ in it.
In the war of the sexes a woman hides her scars of battle beneath a
smile and a coat of rouge. A man goes about displaying his as proudly as
though they were medals.
Occasionally one meets a man who plunges into a love affair as he
plunges into the surf, but most of them just sit back lazily on the
beach and let the waves of emotion splash harmlessly over them.
[Illustration]
THE GREATEST SHOCK
A TEMPERAMENTAL
WOMAN CAN RECEIVE
IS TO WAKE UP AND
FIND THAT SHE IS
MARRIED TO A HUMAN
BEING INSTEAD OF AN
IDEAL
[Illustration: Married to a human being . . .]
BRIDES
"NEVERS" FOR THE "RIB."
NEVER ask him to kiss you. Make your kisses a privilege, not a duty; a
luxury, not a morning and evening "chore."
Never refuse to kiss him--but sometimes keep him waiting a little while.
Love thrives so much better on the stimulant of suspense than on the
anaesthetic of memory.
Never question him about his past love affairs. It is not the women he
_has loved_, but those he _has not yet loved_, who will bother you.
Never fling your old flames in his face. If you do he will soon cease to
be jealous of the men you "might have married" and begin to _envy_ them.
Never accuse him of being less ardent than he was before he married you.
Many a husband would never discover that he was no longer madly in love,
if his wife did not keep constantly reminding him of it.
Never chide him for the same fault more than once.
A man can become so accustomed to the thought of his own faults that he
will begin to cherish them as charming little "personal
characteristics."
Never refer to your own defects. A man always accepts a woman at her own
valuation; and he doesn't prize anything that advertises herself as a
"second."
Never laugh at him. Woman is supposed to be the only human joke and man
the only laughing animal--except the hyena.
Never _cry_ before him. A woman's tears soon wash all the color out of a
man's love; after the third deluge they have no power to move
him--except to move him out of the house.
Never threaten him, scold him nor argue with him. _Act!_ A woman's
arguments affect a man as water does a cat. He simply waits for them to
dry up--and then he goes out and does as he pleases.
Never doubt his word--even when you _know_ he is _lying_. A husband is
like religion: to give you any real comfort, he must be taken with blind
faith.
Never put him on a leash. The dog or the husband that has to be tied is
always the one that eventually has to be advertised in the "lost"
columns.
Never forget that marriage should be a privilege, not a prison; home a
refectory, not a reformatory; and wives jolliers, and not jailers.
[Illustration]
SYNCOPATIONS
A "SOUL-MATE" is seldom the siren who manages to drive a man to
distraction, but just the sympathetic little thing who always happens to
come along when he is _looking for distraction_.
Hanging on a man's word may flatter him, but hanging on his neck merely
frightens him.
Every gay dog has his day--after.
One may be loved forever! It is the vain desire to go on being a
"heart-breaker" after one's flirting days are over that constitutes the
real tragedy of age.
A man regards a woman's love first as an unattainable dream, then as a
boon, then as a blessing, then as a right, then as a matter-of-course--and,
last, as a punishment.
A man's idea of "preserving the unities" is to find out what side of an
argument his wife is on, and then take the other side, in order to keep
it from sagging.
After a bachelor's heart has been patched up, cut down and remodeled to
fit the romantic ideal of one girl after another, there is seldom enough
of it left to go all the way around the honeymoon.
There is no question of degree in matrimony. You can be a little bit in
love or a little bit ill; but you can't be a little bit married or a
little bit dead.
Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment
in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.
If your husband is wrapped up in his work from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. you
needn't bother to investigate his morals. Satan wouldn't waste his
talents trying to tempt a man with so little time and energy for the
devil's business.
You can't argue, frighten or nag a man into loving you just because he
"ought to"--because, dearie, love is not exactly a man's feeling for a
thought-censor, a creditor or a critic-on-the-hearth.
There are more ways of killing a man's love than by strangling it to
death--but that's the usual way.
In matters of the heart most men are still in a state of barbarism,
slightly tempered by woman.
A man is never old until his spirit is worn out, his rosy hopes have
turned gray, his illusions have faded and he has wrinkles on his heart.
An optimist is merely an ex-pessimist with his pockets full of money,
his digestion in good condition and his wife in the country.
Every time a man hits a woman's vanity he makes a dent in her love.
A man's first lie wounds a woman's heart, the second breaks it, the
third mends it, and all the rest simply harden it.
Dissimulation is the price of peace--but it's awfully hard for a married
woman to preserve the peace by deceiving her husband into thinking that
he is deceiving her, every time he tries.
Of course men are not so suspicious as women. A woman in love would be
jealous of a store dummy; but how can a man possibly suspect that any
girl on whom he may bestow himself could ever think of anybody else?
A good woman inspires a man, a brilliant woman interests him, a
beautiful woman fascinates him--but the considerate woman _gets_ him.
There never was a man too nearsighted to see the look of admiration in a
pretty woman's eyes.
WIFE: The woman from whom a man failed to escape and to whom he
complacently refers as "the little woman _I married_."
MARRIAGE: The intermission between the wedding and the divorce.
WEDDING: The point at which a man stops toasting a woman and begins
roasting her.
Most girls, nowadays, would give a lot for a few solid vows, a few
unshrinkable signs of devotion and a really convincing kiss.
It isn't a husband's disinclination to listen to his wife's
conversation, but that "I-am-ready-to-bear-with-you" expression with
which he does it that grates on her nerves so.
The average man has so much heart that he apparently thinks it a pity to
waste it all on one woman.
Alas! Why is it that when your cup of happiness is full _somebody_
always jogs your elbow!
Never judge a man's love by the ardor of his first kiss, nor by the
tenderness of his second, but by the eagerness with which he seeks the
third.
When it comes to making love, a girl can always listen so much faster
than a man can talk.
If nothing but their heart-strings became entangled, people would not
find the marriage tie so binding; it is a man's purse-strings and a
woman's apron-strings that really form the Gordian knot.
In love, a man loses first his head, then his vanity, then his
poise--and, last of all, his heart.
It is much more comfortable to be considered a "little devil" and get a
credit mark every time you do anything right, than to be considered an
"angel" and get a black mark every time you do anything human.
Love is a game at which a woman must play against stacked cards, and
without the slightest inkling of the trump.
A woman's last resort is henna--a man's Gehenna.
To a woman marriage is the beginning of life; to a man it is the end of
"liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Perfect wife: That which a married man always fancies he might have
gotten if he had kept on experimenting a little longer.
Why is it that, no matter how much a man thinks of one girl, he can't
help thinking of a lot of others at the same time?
Don't waste time trying to break a man's heart; be satisfied if you can
just manage to chip it in a brand new place.
IT IS QUITE CORRECT
TO SEND YOUR FORMER
HUSBAND A GIFT ON
THE ANNIVERSARY OF
YOUR DIVORCE, IN REMEMBRANCE
OF "THE
MANY HAPPY DAYS
WHICH YOU HAVE
SPENT--APART"
[Illustration: In remembrance.]
DIVORCES
LOVE, the quest; marriage, the conquest; divorce, the inquest.
Most marriages, nowadays, seem built for speed rather than for
endurance.
A divorcee is one who has graduated from the Correspondence School of
Experience.
Marriage, according to the merry Widow-reno, is a "perfectly lovely
experience to have _had_!"
Grass Widow: The angel whom a man loved, the human being he married, and
the devil he divorced.
Most actresses are married--now and then; most literary women--off and
on; most society women--from time to time.
In olden days, the lover cried, in burning words and brave,
"Oh darling, be my Queen, my Bride--and let me be your slave!"
But nowadays, he murmurs, over cigarette and tea,
"Say, when you get your _next_ divorce, will you (puff) marry me?"
When a woman obtains her second divorce, one hardly knows whether to
class her as a good loser, a bad chooser, or just a "poor sport."
Why is it that when a man hears that a woman has had a "past," he is
always so anxious to brighten up her present?
Many a woman's sole reason for getting a divorce is because she is tired
of holding onto heaven with one hand and onto a man with the other.
When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that they
"don't understand" one another, but a sign that they have, at last,
begun to.
That "just-after-the-divorce" feeling is not the exhilarating thing many
people imagine it. It is more like the mingled sensation of pain and
relief that comes the moment after you have removed a tight slipper and
before the ache has subsided.
Divorce is the Great Divide, over which most men expect to pass into the
Happy Hunting Grounds.
Reno! The land of the free and the grave of the home!
THIRD INTERLUDE
IN the abstract a man admires nobility and intelligence in a woman; but
in the concrete he always prefers a bird of Paradise to a wren, a
decoration to an inspiration and incense to common sense.
"Intuition" is what a man calls a girl's ability to see through him,
before marriage; "suspicion" is what he calls it, after marriage.
Satan, himself, could no doubt make any woman love him, if he took the
trouble to convince her that it was "her beauty that drove him to
Hades."
Of course, polygamy is dreadful; but, at least, an Oriental wife can
come within four or five guesses of knowing where her husband spends his
evenings.
Take care of a woman's vanity--and her love will take care of itself.
Ever since Eve started it all by offering Adam the apple, woman's
punishment has been to have to supply a man with food and then suffer
the consequences when it disagrees with him.
The wings of love are not clipped by marriage; they merely _molt_ for
lack of exercise.
All love is 99.44 per cent pure: pure imagination, pure vanity, pure
curiosity, pure folly or whatever else it happens to be.
Don't waste your tears on the girls a heart-breaker _should_ have
married and didn't; save them for the girl he _will_ marry and
_shouldn't_.
It requires a little moisture to make a postage stamp stick and a little
cold water of indifference to make a sweetheart stick.
There are only two kinds of perfectly faultless men--the dead and the
deadly.
In order to see a man in his most interesting colors a woman always has
to scrape off a lot of unnecessary whitewashing.
Marriage is a discord that turns "Love's Old Sweet Song" from a eulogy
into an elegy.
The height of the average girl's ambition is just about six feet.
You can always cure a man of love-sickness with "mental suggestion"
merely by suggesting to him that the girl is trying to marry him.
Marriage is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egotism
are extracted without an anaesthetic.
Jealousy is the false alarm that wakes us up from love's young dream.
The most successful men are not those who have been inspired by a wise
woman's love, but those who have perspired in order to gratify a foolish
woman's whims.
It is easier to keep half a dozen lovers guessing than to keep one lover
after he has stopped guessing.
A man's soul lies so close to his digestion that when he looks blue and
downhearted, a woman never knows whether to offer him a kiss, a meal, a
dose of philosophy or a dyspepsia tablet.
A woman is so complex that she can prove to a man by every possible
convincing argument that she feels nothing but platonic friendship for
him, at the same time that she is thinking how she would like to run her
fingers through his hair.
One reason why a man's life is so much fuller than a woman's is because
he spends nearly three-quarters of it in hunting up things for a woman
to do.
Oh yes, a woman always looks up to a brave, strong man whom she can
respect--and then nine times out of ten, goes and marries some pallid
weakling whom she can "mother."
A man spends his boyhood struggling against an education, his youth
struggling against matrimony and his middle-age struggling against
embonpoint; but sooner or later he succumbs to all of them.
No man wants an "equal" but an angel. If Satan himself should decide to
marry he wouldn't go around looking for a congenial little Satanette,
but for a paragon who had a pull with St. Peter.
[Illustration]
HALF A LOVE
IS BETTER
THAN NONE
[Illustration: Half a love . . .]
WIDOWS
A WIDOW is a fascinating being with the flavor of maturity, the spice of
experience, the piquancy of novelty, the tang of practiced coquetry, and
the halo of one man's approval.