to weep with one eye while she begins to flirt with the other.
When a widow comes in at the door, a debutante's chances fly out of the
window.
No matter how many wrinkles a widow may have in her face, she always has
enough at her fingertips to offset them.
Even a dead husband gives a widow some advantage over a spinster; the
very debts her husband left afford her something to boast about to the
unmarried woman who has only her own board bills to pay.
A girl takes a man for better or for worse--but a widow merely takes him
for granted.
Girls are the milk and honey which sweeten a man's life; widows, the
caviare and wine which relieve its flatness and give it spice and
piquancy.
A girl knows exactly what kind of man she wants to marry; but a widow
knows all the kinds she _doesn't_ want to marry, and usually makes a
safe selection by the wise process of elimination.
A widow's chief consolation in remarrying is probably that she finds it
less exhausting to sit up and wait for one man to come home evenings,
than to sit up and wait for a lot of them to go home.
Widows have all the honor and glory without any of the trials of
matrimony; a live husband may be a necessity, but a dead one is a
luxury.
Matrimony is the price of love--widowhood, the rebate.
IMPROVISATIONS
SPRING flowers are like spring love, so sweet and tender, but doomed to
fade quickly; it's in the autumn of life, or of the year, that we get
the hardy variety of either.
A man may honestly admire a superior woman; but when it comes to
marrying, he usually looks about for something far enough beneath him to
enjoy being ordered about and patted on the head.
A girl's heart is like her dressing-table--crowded with tenderly
cherished little souvenirs of love; a man's, like his pipe, is carefully
cleaned and emptied after each flame has gone out.
A man doesn't ask a girl to "name the day" any more; he merely pleads
guilty to loving her and then closes his eyes while she passes sentence
on him and decide when he shall begin "serving time."
When a woman reforms she bleaches her conscience down to the roots as
she does her hair; a man simply gives his a coat of whitewashing so that
he will have a nice, clean space in which to begin all over again.
When a bachelor sniffs through his letters before opening them in the
morning, it is not a sign that he is looking for dynamite, but that he
is looking for a note bearing a brand of sachet which he has mistaken
for some girl's "sweet personality."
At the awakening from love's young dream the woman's first thought is,
"How can I break his heart?" The man's, "How can I break away?"
A man falls in love through his eyes, a woman through her imagination,
and then they both speak of it as an affair of "the heart."
No, Clarice, a man's idea of being loved isn't exactly being followed
around with a hot water bottle, a box of pills and the eternal question:
"Do you love me as much as ever?"
One grass widow doesn't make a summer resort--but she can always make it
interesting.
When a man has baggy trousers nowadays it is from falling on his knees
to an automobile--not to a girl.
A black lie always shows up against the dazzling background of truth;
it's all the little white ones a man keeps telling you that can't be
spotted or distinguished from the rest of his conversation.
The only time when a sense of humor profits a woman anything is when she
can laugh at herself for having tried to charm a man by dazzling him
with it.
Most men fall in love with a sudden jolt, and wake up to find that they
are married to an "impulse."
It's a lame love that has to be carried through the honeymoon in a
three-thousand-dollar touring car.
In the mathematics of a bachelor one kiss makes a flirtation, two kisses
make one conquest, three kisses make a love-affair and four kisses make
one tired.
There are "chain-smokers" who light one cigarette from the dying end of
another--and there are also "chain lovers" who light one flame from the
dying embers of another.
Eve had one advantage over all the rest of her sex. In his wildest
moments of rage Adam never could accuse her of being "just like her
_mother_!"
Every woman has a different notion of an ideal husband; but every
woman's ideal lover is the same impossible combination of saint and
devil, brute and baby, hero and mollycoddle, that never is seen anywhere
off the stage or outside the pages of a "best thriller."
Love is a voyage of discovery, marriage the goal--and divorce the relief
expedition.
A man never can comprehend why a woman can't understand how he can be
dead in love with one girl and acutely alive to the charms of a lot of
others at the same time.
Jealousy is the tie that binds--and binds--and binds.
It is not the fear of being shipwrecked that keeps a bachelor from
embarking on the sea of matrimony; it is the awful horror of being
becalmed.
Nowadays most women grow old gracefully; most men, disgracefully.
A man can forgive a woman for having made a fool of herself over any man
on earth--except himself.
Eternity: The interval between the time when a woman discovers that a
man is in love with her and the time when he finds it out himself and
tells her about it.
The follies which a man regrets the most, in his life, are those which
he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.
In the average man's opinion the command, "Thou shalt not steal," does
not apply to a kiss, a heart, an umbrella, an hotel or an after-dinner
story.
To a woman the first kiss is just the end of the beginning; to a man, it
is the beginning of the end.
The qualities a man seeks in a bride no more resemble those he will want
in a wife than a cabaret rag-ditty resembles a lullaby, but two years
ahead is farther than any man can see when he is looking into a pretty
girl's eyes.
YOU MAY GROOM, YOU MAY POLISH HIM UP AS YOU WILL,
BUT THE MARK OF THE "M A R R I E D M A N" CLINGS TO HIM STILL.
[Illustration: You may polish him up . . .]
WIDOWERS
THE tenderest, most impressionable thing on earth is the heart of a
yearling widower.
Of course it is easier to marry a widower than a bachelor. A man who has
been through the Armageddon of _one_ marriage has no spirit of battle
left in him.
When a widow begins curling her hair, again, or a widower begins
worrying about his thinness on top, Cupid chuckles and gets out his
arrows and Satan smiles behind his hand.
In the matrimonial market a seasoned bachelor is just a shop-worn
remnant; a divorce is a cast-off, second-hand article; but a widower is
a treasured heirloom inherited only through death.
After his wedding day, a man usually tucks all the flattering adjectives
and tender nothings in his vocabulary away in a pigeon-hole and marks
them "Not to be opened until widowerhood."
Perhaps there may not be so much excitement in marrying a widower; but
there is a lot more comfort in getting something that another woman has
broken to double harness than in lashing yourself to a bucking bronco
fresh from the wild.
No matter how unhappy a man may have been with his first wife nothing on
earth will make him flatter her successor by acknowledging that she was
not a combination of Circe, St. Cecilia and the Venus di Milo.
The girl who marries a widower may be a sort of "second edition," but
the girl who marries a seasoned bachelor is apt to be a forty-second
edition.
When a widower vows he will "never marry again," listen for the wedding
bells! The "Never-agains" are the easiest fruit in the Garden of Love.
It's the "Never-at-alls!" who are harder than a newsboy's conscience,
colder than yesterday's kiss, and less impressionable than a
boarding-house steak.
If a woman could foresee how irresistible her husband would look with a
bereaved expression on his face and a black band on his coat sleeve, it
would give her the strength to live forever.
Some widowers _are_ bereaved--others, relieved.
A man may forget all about how to make love during ten years of
matrimony, but it's wonderful how quickly he can brush up on the fine
points again after he becomes a widower.
[Illustration]
FOURTH INTERLUDE
A MAN always looks at a woman through either the right or the wrong end
of a telescope, and thus always sees her as a divinity or a devil--never
as a human being.
Business girl's motto: "Better marry and be a poor man's slave than stay
single and be a rich man's stenographer."
When a clever girl lets fly the arrows of wit she should be careful to
see that a man's vanity is not the bull's eye.
It is difficult for a man to reconcile a girl's absorbing interest in
picture-hats, pearl powder, and Paquin models with real brains; but
somehow his own enthusiasm for baseball and golf never seems to him
incompatible with superior intelligence.
Don't fancy your husband has ceased to love you merely because he no
longer seems to notice your presence around the house; wait until he
gets so that he doesn't even notice your absence.
A good husband is one who will get up and lift the ice off the
dumbwaiter instead of lying back and lifting his voice to tell you how
to do it without "hurting your itsy bitsy fingers."
The shallower a man's love, the more it bubbles over into eloquence.
When his emotions go deep, words stick in his throat, and have to be
hauled out of him with a derrick.
To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a
little; to be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to
understand her at all.
A man with _savoir faire_ may scintillate in a crowd, but it takes a
"bashful man" to shine in a dim cozy corner.
Every bride fancies that she married the original "cave-man" until she
tries to persuade him to go out and argue with the furniture-movers.
What a man calls his conscience in a love affair is merely a pain in his
vanity, the moral ache that accompanies a headache, or the mental action
that follows a sentimental reaction.
It never pays to compromise! Cheap clothes, cheap literature, cheap
sports, cheap flirtations--a life filled with these is nothing but an
electric flash, advertising "something just as good."
Just at first, every man seems to fancy that it takes nothing but brute
force and determination to run an automobile or a wife; after the
smash-up he changes his mind.
Brains and beauty are an impossible combination in a woman--not
necessarily impossible to _find_, but impossible to _live with_.
When a woman looks at a man in evening dress, she sometimes can't help
wondering why he wants to blazon his ancestry to the world by wearing a
coat with a long tail to it.
When a man says he loves you don't ask him "Why," because by the time he
has found his reason he will undoubtedly have lost his enthusiasm.
Pshaw! It is no more reasonable to expect a man to love you tomorrow
because he loves you today, than it is to assume that the sun will be
shining tomorrow because the weather is pleasant today.
Sending a man a sentimental note, just after he has spent the evening
with you, has about the same thrilling effect as offering him a
sandwich, immediately after dinner.
A "good woman," according to Mrs. Grundy, is one who would scorn to
sacrifice society for the sake of a man but will cheerfully sacrifice
the man she marries for the sake of society.
The flower of a man's love is not an immortelle, but a morning-glory;
which fades the moment the sun of a woman's smiles becomes too intense
and glowing.
The sweetest part of a love affair is just before the confession when
you begin discussing love in the abstract and gazing concretely into one
another's eyes.
Marriage is a photogravure made from the glowing illusions which Love
has painted on the canvas of the heart.
A woman may have to reach heaven before she tastes supernal joy; but to
taste supreme punishment she has only to watch the love-mist die out of
a man's eyes.
Nothing frightens a man like a woman's stony silence. Somehow in spite
of his lack of intuition, he has a subconscious premonition that her
love is _dead_ when she is too weary and disinterested to "_answer
back_."
The satisfaction in flattering a man consists in the fact that, whether
you lay it on thick or thin, rough or smooth, a little of it is always
bound to stick.
Love is a furnace in which the man builds the fire, and forever
afterward expects the woman to keep it glowing, by supplying all the
fuel.
The gods must love summer flirtations--they die so young.
A man may have heart enough to love more than one woman at a time, but
unless he is a fatalist he should have brains enough not to try it.
When love dies a wise married couple give its ashes a respectful burial,
and hang a good photograph of it on the wall for the benefit of the
public.
[Illustration]
EVERY TIME A MAN
FALLS IN LOVE HE
FANCIES THAT HE HAS
JUST DISCOVERED A
BRAND NEW SENSATION;
BUT, ALAS, IT ALWAYS
TURNS OUT, LIKE THE
HOTEL SOUP, TO BE
JUST THE SAME OLD
"STOCK" WITH A DIFFERENT
FLAVORING
[Illustration: A brand new sensation . . .]
SECOND MARRIAGES
HINTS ON HOW TO CONDUCT ENCORE PERFORMANCES OF THE CEREMONY
A BRIDE at her second wedding does not wear a veil. She wants to _see_
what she is getting.
Always send your former husband a notice of your marriage; true
politeness consists in giving pleasure to others.
If you meet your ex-husband's fiancee, treat her with sympathetic
courtesy. Remember that she is more to be pitied than scorned.
If the bridegroom does not show up, marry the best man. After a few
weeks you will not be able to notice the difference between them. Either
will make you the same old excuses, tell you the same stories and give
you the same "stock" kisses in the morning.
When your second husband begins to speak wistfully of your first
husband, do not chide him; remember that misery loves company, and
perhaps it is a comfort to him to think that some one else has been as
foolish as he has.
Never consider your wedding a settled thing until you have gotten the
man to the altar. The primary rule for marrying is "First catch your
husband!"
Besides, there's many a slip 'twixt the license and the certificate--and
you may let him slip.
In selecting husbands, always consider that it is quality, not quantity,
that counts.
One or two marriages, like one or two drinks, may not have any visible
effect upon you. But don't make it a custom.
A woman marries the first time, you know, for love, the second time for
companionship, the third time for a support--and the rest of the time
just from habit.
When marrying a second time refrain from asking your friends what they
think about it. Remember that they all think you are a fool.
[Illustration]
INTERMEZZO
A MAN'S kisses are first reverent, then rapturous, then tender, then
casual, and last--charitable.
The hardest thing in life is to discover the exact geographical location
of a man's grouch--whether it is in his tooth, his vanity or his
digestion, or is just a chronic condition of the whole system.
Being in love is like a fascinating spin at will in an automobile; being
married, like a trolley trip on rails, with somebody ringing the bell at
you every few minutes.
A woman's love is composed of maternal tenderness, childlike
inconsistency, torturing jealousy and sublime unselfishness--and how is
a man ever going to comprehend a mixture like that?
Alas, why is it that the most popular and fascinating women are so often
the last to marry, and then nearly always pluck either a broken stick
from the tide of life or a brand from the burning?
Some women can be fooled all of the time, and all women can be fooled
some of the time, but the same woman can't be fooled by the same man in
the same way more than half of the time.
A woman always wants her photograph to flatter her, but a man is
perfectly satisfied if he gets one that looks as fascinating and
impressive as he thinks he does.
A jealous husband can put two and two together--and make fourteen.
When a man hesitates to propose to a girl he is never quite sure whether
it is the fear of being "turned down" or the fear of being "taken up"
which paralyzes him.
Spring is the time of the year when the eternal monotony of the daily
grind gives a man brain-fag--and the eternal monotony of any one girl
appears to give him heart-fag.
A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man and
takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.
Of course, a girl hates to wound a man; but sometimes, after a painful
parting, it would seem so much more artistic if he would only _remain_
"wounded" just a little longer.
Making a man promise to drop a woman simply excites his sympathy for
her, so that, before he has fairly cut the string, he is anxious to tie
a knot in it again.
The hardest task of a girl's life, nowadays, is to prove to a man that
his intentions are serious.
Love, without faith, illusions and trust, is--Lord forgive us--cinders,
ashes and dust!
A man who strays for love of a woman may sometimes be reclaimed; but the
man who strays for love of amusement or love or novelty will never "stay
put" for any girl.
Most girls, nowadays, would give almost as much for a little genuine
sentiment and a really convincing kiss, as for a genuine "old master"
and a really convincing novel.
There are a hundred things that the cleverest man in the world never
_can_ understand--and ninety-nine of them are women.
Many a man who is too tender-hearted to pour salt on an oyster will pour
sarcasm all over his wife's vanity and then wonder why she always
shrivels up in her shell at the sight of him.
A grub may become a butterfly, but the man who marries a butterfly,
expecting to turn her into a grub, should remember that nature never
works that way.
A married man's hardest cross is not to be able to brag to his wife
about the women who "tried to flirt with him."
Plato has lured more men into matrimony than Cupid. A man can _see_ an
arrow coming and dodge it, but platonic friendship strikes him in the
back.
Many a man has started out to "string" a girl, and gotten so tangled up,
that the string ended in a marriage tie.
Habit is the cement which holds the links of matrimony together when the
ties of romance have crumbled.
He that telleth a secret unto a married man may prepare himself for a
lot of free advertising; for, lo, the conjugal pillow is the root of all
gossip.
To make a man perfectly happy tell him he works too hard, that he spends
too much money, that he is "misunderstood" or that he is "different;"
none of this is necessarily complimentary, but it will flatter him
infinitely more than merely telling him that he is brilliant, or noble,
or wise, or good.
After a woman has lain awake half the night in order to be able to call
her husband in time to catch his train it's rather hard to be hated for
it, just like an alarm clock.
A man expects a woman to laugh at all his jokes, admire all his bon
mots, agree with all his opinions, and be blind to all his faults--and
then he scornfully wonders why women are so "hypocritical."
A diamond and a lump of coal are merely two varieties of carbon; but
they are as different as the two things which the right wife and the
wrong wife can make of the same man.
Sometimes man proposes--and then keeps the girl waiting until the Lord
kindly interposes.
[Illustration]
A WOMAN
FLEES FROM
TEMPTATION,
BUT A MAN
JUST _CRAWLS_
AWAY FROM IT
IN THE CHEERFUL
HOPE
THAT IT MAY
OVERTAKE HIM
[Illustration: A man just crawls away . . .]
WOMAN--AND HER INFINITE VARIETY
(A LEAF FROM ADAM'S DICTIONARY.)
WOMAN--A divine creation for the comfort and amusement of mankind.
RIB--That part of man's self of which he thinks the least and brags the
most.
WIFE (The Inferior Fraction)--The excuse for all a man's sins, the cause
of all his failings, the keeper of his conscience, the guardian of his
digestion, and the repository of his grouches.
BETTER-HALF--The half that is always left at home.
COQUETTE--Any woman who is so unreasonable as not to return a man's
affections.
FLIRT--Any woman, over whom a man has insisted on making a fool of
himself.
OLD MAID--An unmarried woman with more wrinkles than money.
BACHELOR GIRL--An unmarried woman with more money than wrinkles.
KITTEN--Any woman under sixty for whom a man feels a temporary
tenderness.
QUEEN--A pretty woman whom a man has not yet kissed.
"IDEAL"--The particular woman, to whom a man happens to be making love.
CLINGING VINE--A woman who allows her husband to think that he is having
his own way.
HELPMATE--A combination of playmate, soul-mate, and light-running
domestic.
GODDESS--An impossible woman, who exists only in novels and in a man's
imagination.
PARAGON--The kind of woman a man ought to marry, wants to marry, intends
to marry--and never does.
PESSIMISM IS A MAN'S
NATURAL REACTION
AFTER TOO MUCH
OF ANYTHING--WINE,
LOVE, FOOD, FLIRTATION
OR OPTIMISM
MAXIMS OF CLEOPATRA
1
THESE three things Man feareth: Oysters out of season,
A Babe that plays with fire, and a Woman who can _reason_!
2
Last year's sandals and yesterday's fish,
Last night's kisses and last week's wish
Are, to a Man, things gone and past;
Likewise _the woman before the last_!
3
The soul of a man is white--or black, or yellow, or dun;
But a woman's soul is a rainbow and a Roman sash in one.
4
Empty the words of the prayer, when the Pharisee prayeth aloud;
Empty the words of love, when he praiseth thee in a crowd.
Yet, he that is cold in the crowd, but seeketh thine ear when alone,
In the land of the Great God Isis by the name of "Cad" shall be known.
5
As the pearl that I dropped in the glass can never again be mine,
So many a pearl of woman's love hath a man dissolved--in wine.
6
Geese walk not alone; sheep will follow sheep;
So this little maxim I would have ye keep:
Would ye conquer _all_ men, make a fool of _one_--
The rest will turn toward thee, as lilies to the sun.
7
The young man calleth for wine, the old for crystal water.
Seek not to enslave a _boy_ till thou art thirty, Daughter.
8
When the game is over, vain the loser's sigh.
To thy parting lover, wave a gay good-by!
'Neath the storm-cloud bending, see the lily laugh.
If Love's reign be ending--write his epitaph!
Deck his grave with iris; blot away his name.
Isis and Osiris, make thy Daughter _game_!
9
Flatter him boldly, Daughter, be he old or wise or callow;
For there is no meed of flattery that a man will fail to swallow.
Yet, after a time, desist; lest perchance, in his vanity,
He wonder why such a demi-god should stoop to a worm like thee!
10
Call the bald man, "Boy;" make the sage thy toy;
Greet the youth with solemn face; praise the fat man for his grace.
WHERE IS THE SWEET,
OLD-FASHIONED WIFE
WHO USED TO GET UP
AT 6 O'CLOCK IN THE
MORNING AND COOK
HER HUSBAND'S
BREAKFAST? GONE,
GONE, ALAS, WITH
THE SWEET OLD-FASHIONED
HUSBAND
WHO USED TO COME
HOME AT 6 O'CLOCK
IN THE EVENING AND
_STAY THERE_
FINALE
ALL the love routes lead to a kiss--but some men make love with the
directness of an express train, some as haltingly as a local and some
with the charm, smoothness and variation of a "special."
When a man complains of the girls who "pursue" him, don't forget that
the mark of a real "girl-charmer" is his dead silence concerning all
women except the one to whom he happens to be talking.
A man's idea of displaying "resolution" appears to be first to find out
what a woman wants him to do, and then to proceed "resolutely" not to do
it.
Presence of mind in love making is a sure sign of absence of heart; no
man begins to be serious until he begins to be foolish.
The girl a man marries is never the one he ought to marry or intended to
marry, but just some "innocent bystander" who happened to be in the way
at the psychological moment.
A woman's heart is like a frame, which holds only one picture at a time;
a man's is more like a cinemetograph.
A man's love is not actually dead until he begins subconsciously to
think of his wife as the person who makes him wear his rubbers, mow the
lawn, put up the fly-screens, and explain where he has been all Saturday
afternoon.
The average man is so busy backing away from the girls he ought to marry
that he usually backs right into the arms of the one woman under Heaven
that he _ought not_ to marry.
A man is like a motor-car which always balks on the trolley-tracks and
runs at top speed down hill; a wife is the human brake that prevents him
from going to destruction.
When a girl refuses a man his greatest emotion is not disappointment,
but astonishment that she should be so blind to her own luck.
Nothing bores a man so much as for a woman to give him _all_ her
love--when he wanted only a _little_ of it.