_Dear Pierrepont:_ Who is this Helen Heath, and what are your intentions
there? She knows a heap more about you than she ought to know if they're
not serious, and I know a heap less about her than I ought to know if
they are. Hadn't got out of sight of land before we'd become acquainted
somehow, and she's been treating me like a father clear across the
Atlantic. She's a mighty pretty girl, and a mighty nice girl, and a
mighty sensible girl--in fact she's so exactly the sort of girl I'd like
to see you marry that I'm afraid there's nothing in it.
Of course, your salary isn't a large one yet, but you can buy a whole
lot of happiness with fifty dollars a week when you have the right sort
of a woman for your purchasing agent. And while I don't go much on love
in a cottage, love in a flat, with fifty a week as a starter, is just
about right, if the girl is just about right. If she isn't, it doesn't
make any special difference how you start out, you're going to end up
all wrong.
Money ought never to be _the_ consideration in marriage, but it always
ought to be _a_ consideration. When a boy and a girl don't think enough
about money before the ceremony, they're going to have to think altogether
too much about it after; and when a man's doing sums at home evenings, it
comes kind of awkward for him to try to hold his wife on his lap.
There's nothing in this talk that two can live cheaper than one. A good
wife doubles a man's expenses and doubles his happiness, and that's a
pretty good investment if a fellow's got the money to invest. I have met
women who had cut their husband's expenses in half, but they needed the
money because they had doubled their own. I might add, too, that I've
met a good many husbands who had cut their wives' expenses in half, and
they fit naturally into any discussion of our business, because they
are hogs. There's a point where economy becomes a vice, and that's when
a man leaves its practice to his wife.
An unmarried man is a good deal like a piece of unimproved real
estate--he may be worth a whole lot of money, but he isn't of any
particular use except to build on. The great trouble with a lot of these
fellows is that they're "made land," and if you dig down a few feet you
strike ooze and booze under the layer of dollars that their daddies
dumped in on top. Of course, the only way to deal with a proposition of
that sort is to drive forty-foot piles clear down to solid rock and then
to lay railroad iron and cement till you've got something to build on.
But a lot of women will go right ahead without any preliminaries and
wonder what's the matter when the walls begin to crack and tumble about
their ears.
I never come across a case of this sort without thinking of Jack Carter,
whose father died about ten years ago and left Jack a million dollars,
and left me as trustee of both until Jack reached his twenty-fifth
birthday. I didn't relish the job particularly, because Jack was one of
these charlotte-russe boys, all whipped cream and sponge cake and
high-priced flavoring extracts, without any filling qualities. There
wasn't any special harm in him, but there wasn't any special good,
either, and I always feel that there's more hope for a fellow who's an
out and out cuss than for one who's simply made up of a lot of little
trifling meannesses. Jack wore mighty warm clothes and mighty hot vests,
and the girls all said that he was a perfect dream, but I've never been
one who could get a great deal of satisfaction out of dreams.
It's mighty seldom that I do an exhibition mile, but the winter after I
inherited Jack--he was twenty-three years old then--your Ma kept after
me so strong that I finally put on my fancy harness and let her trot me
around to a meet at the Ralstons one evening. Of course, I was in the
Percheron class, and so I just stood around with a lot of heavy old
draft horses, who ought to have been resting up in their stalls, and
watched the three-year-olds prance and cavort round the ring. Jack was
among them, of course, dancing with the youngest Churchill girl, and
holding her a little tighter, I thought, than was necessary to keep her
from falling. Had both ends working at once--never missed a stitch with
his heels and was turning out a steady stream of fancy work with his
mouth. And all the time he was looking at that girl as intent and eager
as a Scotch terrier at a rat hole.
I happened just then to be pinned into a corner with two or three women
who couldn't escape--Edith Curzon, a great big brunette whom I knew Jack
had been pretty soft on, and little Mabel Moore, a nice roly-poly blonde,
and it didn't take me long to see that they were watching Jack with a
hair-pulling itch in their finger-tips. In fact, it looked to me as if
the young scamp was a good deal more popular than the facts about him,
as I knew them, warranted him in being.
I slipped out early, but next evening, when I was sitting in my little
smoking-room, Jack came charging in, and, without any sparring for an
opening, burst out with:
"Isn't she a stunner, Mr. Graham!"