iliiiili 
 
A L.BERT R. MANN 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 AT 
 
 ORNELL UNIVERSIT\ 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924089613610 
 
WHY MEN REMAIN BACHELORS 
 AND OTHER LUXURIES 
 
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WHY MEN REMAIN 
 
 BACHELORS 
 
 AND OTHER LUXURIES 
 
 By 
 LILIAN BELL 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 " THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID " 
 
 JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 
 The Bodley Head : New York: MCMVI 
 
Manm 
 
 SPEC. COLL. 
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 Copyright, 1906, 
 By JOHN LANE COMPANY. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGS 
 
 Why Men Remain Bachelors 9 
 
 The Management of Wives .... ... 21 
 
 The Management of Husbands 33 
 
 The Luxury of being Stupid 45 
 
 The Wisdom of Marriage .57 
 
 Wanted — A Career 69 
 
 The Young Girl in Love 81 
 
 How Men Propose 95 
 
 The Ethics of Flirtation 107 
 
 The Broken Engagement 119 
 
 On THE Loneliness OF BEING Unloved 131 
 
 On the Tendency to Crabbedness 145 
 
 Making the Best of It i6i 
 
 The Crisis in Marriage 177 
 
 Modern Mothers 189 
 
 The Understanding Mother 203 
 
 On Waking Up in the Morning 215 
 
 The Assurance of Women 227 
 
 On the Art of Giving Gifts 241 
 
 Young Men as Guests 253 
 
 On the Joys of Self Pity 267 
 
 The Joys of Selfishness 283 
 
 On the Joys of Vulgarity 295 
 
 The Extravagance of Ignorance 309 
 
WHY MEN REMAIN BACHELORS 
 
 IT will undoubtedly disturb all complacent bache- 
 lors and unwed widowers to know the truth on 
 this subject. They think they are in the pos- 
 session of a dozen excellent reasons why they 
 are unattached, whereas there is but one, and that 
 one is that the Only Girl did not allow them to pro- 
 pose ! If she had, there would now be no bachelors 
 on earth. Dances would be kindergarten affairs; 
 dinners would be conducted for the married only and 
 authors would be confined to the bread-and-butter 
 article of love or the problem novel. 
 
 Of course this statement is a shock to your nerv- 
 ous system, oh ye, of the slightly thinning hair. 
 Doubtless you would much prefer to lie a little and 
 take part in some magazine contest which asks why 
 you are as you are, saying that girls are too frivo- 
 lous, too selfish and too expensive for you to consider 
 as possible helpmates, and you can write effectively 
 and get your stuff printed (without pay, however) 
 in excellent periodicals and you will raise a laugh 
 and amuse your intimates by confiding later that the 
 contribution signed G. L. was really yours. Then 
 when they ask what G. L. stands for you will tell 
 
 9 
 
lo WHY MEN REMAIN BACHELORS 
 
 them that to you it means Great Luck. To the Only 
 Girl it would read Got Left. 
 
 For there was an only girl. In every man's life 
 there is an Only One. He may be married and she 
 may now be his wife. He may be married and she 
 may not be his wife, but only a delicious memory. 
 She may have been so grand a woman that she 
 would not lead him on, so that he may not know that 
 he ever would have loved her, but she knew it. In- 
 stinctive women can generally tell during the first 
 stages of a mere acquaintanceship whether he could 
 be lured on, or if he is hopeless, and all this while he 
 is trying to decide on the colour of her eyes! It 
 often happens that before a man has had time to ask 
 his host the name of " that dandy girl in pink " 
 whom he has just been talking to, the " dandy girl 
 in pink " knows that he is her property, and that he 
 is going to propose ; has nicely balanced the chances 
 of her marrying him and, when he left to ask what 
 her name was, she was just moving into their first 
 apartment. 
 
 Why do men remain bachelors? Don't ask them ! 
 They don't know. Ask us. 
 
 Of course bachelors never admit this, even to 
 themselves, because most men, and all bachelors are 
 conceited. Women for purposes of their own, have 
 spoiled and led them on, not only to keep all their old 
 illusions about their charms and attractions but fur- 
 
WHY MEN REMAIN BACHELORS n 
 
 nished with new ones by the flattering tongues of 
 the clever women they meet, who may consider them 
 possible husbands or only Good Things which, in 
 the interest of the sex, ought not to be allowed to es- 
 cape. Now spinsters are not so easily misled. A 
 woman who has remained unwed until she has to 
 recourse to facial massage, knows her place and gen- 
 erally has had the sense to forget marriage and go 
 into business. At least she has left off contesting 
 her position with girls. But a bachelor who has to 
 hold his newspaper at arm's length to read even the 
 headlines, regards men up to thirty as mere lads and 
 believes all the debutantes as devoted to him as they 
 pretend to be. Alas ! Why can't the man see that the 
 girls are only devoted to his automobile ? Why does 
 he not notice that when a dance is to be sat out, it is 
 never with him, but always with The Other Fellow ? 
 Why ? Why ! Because he has been so flattered that he 
 believes his bald head will hold its own with Jack's 
 football crop, and if Reason does step in sight long 
 enough to tell him to hold off for a little, he really 
 thinks he has disappointed the girls because he hasn't 
 proposed to them. Perhaps he has. It is always a 
 disappointment when an automobilist drops off the 
 list, but most of us could bear up under the blow if 
 he would only lend us the machine occasionally ! 
 
 No, the real truth is that men are not half as at- 
 tractive as we make them believe they are and when 
 
12 WHY MEN REMAIN BACHELORS 
 
 we let some of them remain bachelors it is not be- 
 cause we couldn't get them, but it is because we have 
 other uses for them. 
 
 For bachelors are useful, and by bachelors I mean 
 those men who are popularly supposed to be hope- 
 less celibates as distinguished from marrying men. 
 Women always know the difference and often with- 
 out being told. Marrying men have two ways of 
 communicating to a waiting world that they are in 
 the market. One is by confiding it to some married 
 woman who takes an interest in them and the other 
 is by their actions. When it is the latter, anybody 
 can tell what the matter is. Even other men notice 
 it and when that happens the symptoms must be 
 rather pronounced. As a result, his stock, so to 
 speak, has depreciated in value, for no girl cares to 
 marry what almost any girl can have. 
 
 For example if a man says to his wife, " By the 
 way I met Grover to-day," and then goes on smoking 
 for a few moments before adding, " Do you know, I 
 believe old Grover would rather like to marry," his 
 wife immediately thinks that her sister would not be 
 the wife for him at all, even before she has had time 
 to answer her husband's remark. Whereas, had he 
 said " I met old Grover to-day and asked him out for 
 the week end. He is crazy about golf and I want 
 him to try our links ! " she mentally invited two girls 
 for the same time and decided that Grover would do 
 
WHY MEN REMAIN BACHELORS 13 
 
 nicely for either of them. Such, alas ! is partly con- 
 trariness of women and partly our feminine horror 
 of an Easy Mark. 
 
 Yet so-called marrying men make better husbands 
 than confirmed bachelors who are caught wild and 
 mentally chloroformed into submission to their fate, 
 for the marrying man, while tractable and somewhat 
 undiscriminating, is also home loving and of do- 
 mestic character. He will love his wife, welcome 
 children and sacrifice his own comfort for theirs, but 
 he is rather inclined to value red flannel above high 
 heels and to invest in coal against next winter rather 
 than to send his wife to a summer hotel where she 
 might disport herself with her kind. But after all 
 she has safety and the creature comforts and her 
 husband's society to look forward to, whereas the 
 woman who marries' a bachelor may incur debts 
 without being reproved, because he was used to them 
 before he married her. She may have her own way 
 because her husband wants his, but she must re- 
 sign herself to being a club widow fully one-third of 
 the time. 
 
 Some women, being also domestic, and realizing 
 this, permit an occasional eligible bachelor to get 
 away, although feeling sure that they could have 
 him if they set about it. So it is quite amusing to 
 see a bachelor pluming himself on having escaped an 
 attractive girl, who had decided not to take him any- 
 
14 WHY MEN REMAIN BACHELORS 
 
 way. She deliberately bated her trap with cheese 
 because she wanted to catch a domestic mouse. If 
 she cared to land a mountain trout, it is quite likely 
 that she knew its craft and wariness and that only 
 the most delicate flies and skillful hand could accom- 
 plish her purpose. Yet the mountain trout was 
 fairly chuckling to think he did not eat the cheese ! 
 Tut ! The girl let him get away on purpose. 
 
 However, to speak of the usefulness of bachelors 
 — they are excellent to use to lure the Real Thing on. 
 No girl cares to capitulate too suddenly and in such 
 a case, a bachelor's real reason for existence is satis- 
 factorily explained. The advent of an eligible 
 though hopelessly confirmed bachelor has been 
 known to inflate a tardy wooer with a very frenzy 
 of ardour for a girl who had selected him for her 
 husband the first time she talked to him, but whom 
 she had found to be somewhat slow in deciding that 
 she was the one woman in the world for him. 
 There is something strangely irritating to the hus- 
 band-man, be he only in embryo or the Real Thing, 
 in the advent of the complacent, well-groomed, at- 
 tractive bachelor. The mere sight of his sleekness 
 reminds the husband of his own unvaleted condi- 
 tion ; of the different ways in which they are obliged 
 to spend their money; of the difference in their 
 ideals; of the different values they set on life; of the 
 width of their respective paths and the husband-man 
 
WHY MEN REMAIN BACHELORS 15 
 
 wants the bachelor to get away from the woman he 
 loves. It is the fighting instinct of the male animal 
 to protect his own. 
 
 He may not know that he even loves a certain girl, 
 but let an eligible bachelor happen along and he at 
 once decides, not only that he loves her, but that he 
 wants to marry her and right away too, and as for 
 that bachelor, let him get off the earth ! 
 
 Many a happily married wife with a brood of 
 lovely little children playing about her feet, owes 
 the satisfaction of her heart and the whole of her do- 
 mestic safety and happiness to the interference of 
 some hopeless, woman-fearing bachelor at a critical 
 point in her courtship. 
 
 Have bachelors their uses in this world? 
 
 Women are clever and they get their own way in 
 all that concerns marriage much more than anyone 
 knows. They study their man, and if they discover 
 that he is selfish and set in his ways and extravagant, 
 they realize that, even though he has more money 
 than the Other Man, less of it will come their way. 
 Money is of no earthly use unless you can get hold 
 of it, and your confirmed bachelor is so accustomed 
 to spending all he earns on himself that he seldom 
 makes a good husband. So your careful woman, 
 who is looking out for a Good Thing, knows this 
 and lets him get away without a scratch, pluming 
 himself on having outwitted her at every turn, 
 
i6 WHY MEN REMAIN BACHELORS 
 
 whereas the only reason she did not allow him to see 
 that she knew she could have him if she chose was 
 because she wanted to have the occasional use of his 
 automobile after her marriage to the Other Fellow, 
 and she knew he would never come near her again 
 if she allowed his love to become self-conscious. Oh, 
 how clever a clever woman can be 1 
 
 And so bachelors have really persuaded not only 
 themselves but their little world of acquaintances 
 that the reason they do not marry is because their 
 ideals are too high. They are too old-fashioned, 
 they say, to find any affinity in the up-to-date, elbow- 
 sleeved golfer; the bare-headed runabout driver; the 
 goggle-eyed chaufifeuse; the high-heeled, low- 
 necked two-stepper; the college broad-jumper or the 
 captain of the basketball team. They cannot bring 
 themselves to believe that such young women will 
 make wives and mothers to suit their ancient tastes. 
 It gives them a queer feeling to think of the mother 
 of their children, as she sits rocking a cradle, allow- 
 ing her thoughts to run on the objects of such a girl- 
 hood as most modern maidens can boast, with none 
 of the sweet old-fashioned accomplishments which 
 go to make up a home, at her command. Verily 
 there is something to be said on the side of the 
 bachelors. 
 
 But when I boldly assert that there is not an un- 
 married man on earth to-day, no matter how old; 
 
WHY MEN REMAIN BACHELORS 17 
 
 no matter how set in his ways; no matter how 
 broken-hearted; no matter how callous; no matter 
 how confirmed a woman hater, whom some woman 
 could not marry if she would, — let them examine 
 their inmost hearts and see if I am not correct. Is 
 there no shadowy presence, whom the quiet of an 
 evening at home, a shaded lamp, an open fire and a 
 good cigar do not evoke to keep you company? Is 
 not the vacant chair on the other side of your hearth- 
 stone sometimes occupied by the sweet memory of a 
 lost might-have-been ? Perhaps she was a mite of a 
 girl in short frocks for whom you robbed birds' nests 
 in your school days. Perhaps no one has ever come 
 so close to you in all your after life as that clear-eyed 
 little woman of eight, but she is there — the one 
 feminine creature which has kept you a bachelor all 
 your days. 
 
 You think you are bachelors of your own 
 volition? My dear sirs, you are bachelors by the 
 courtesy of women ! 
 2 
 
THE MANAGEMENT OF WIVES 
 
THE MANAGEMENT OF WIVES 
 
 IT is not often that women will admit that wives 
 are managed, but once in a while, truth, like 
 murder, will out. 
 
 It is far pleasanter to bend our thoughts to 
 the way we manage men, both as sweethearts and 
 husbands, than to pause in our mad career, when we 
 find ourselves doing things we don't want to and in 
 a way we hate, and wonder why we are doing them. 
 If we are honest, we will be obliged to admit that 
 there is a man at the bottom of it. Everytime. And 
 of course it is the man we are in love with, which 
 sometimes means a husband. 
 
 In popular fiction, proverbs and cartoons, hus- 
 bands are pictured as stupid animals, blind, perverse, 
 born to be managed by some women and always, 
 always devoid of tact. Whoever heard the phrase 
 " As tactful as the proverbial husband ? " Whoever 
 heard anybody say " As clever as a husband ? " 
 
 But the pathetic and absurd truth of the matter is 
 that when a husband is clever, he is twice as clever as 
 his wife, for when he is managing her the most, she 
 hugs to her heart the fond belief that she is man- 
 
 21 
 
22 THE MANAGEMENT OF WIVES 
 
 aging him and that he is at best, a stupid old dear, fit 
 for nothing else than to be steered along the path 
 she thinks he ought to travel in. 
 
 I have sometimes been accused of saying harsh 
 things of men — God love them ! — but if so, here is 
 where I make the amende honorable. I respect them 
 more than they think. 
 
 If women believe that men are stupid, men know 
 that women are contrary, and a clever man acts on 
 the suggestion. 
 
 In matrimony a clever man is one who gets his 
 own way without his wife's knowledge. If then, 
 he discovers that mere flattery will cause her to ask 
 him which he prefers, salad with the dinner or as a 
 separate course, when hitherto she has held out for 
 the latter against hint and pleading, why he would 
 be not a fool, but a wise man, if he flattered her. If 
 however, she is " onto him," as Jimmie would say, 
 and knows that his compliments are put up for the 
 occasion, why then he must try something unique. 
 He must run down some other woman. That would 
 work, I believe, with any woman, from the president 
 of the Equal Suffrage Society of her town to the ice- 
 cream-soda girl. 
 
 However, few, few are the men clever enough to 
 know this, or every woman I know would have her 
 neck under the yoke. 
 
 Another thing the tactful husband does is to let 
 
THE MANAGEMENT OF WIVES 23 
 
 his wife cry. I don't mean that he drives her to 
 crying, or that he lets her weep while he stands un- 
 sympathetically by with his hands in his trousers 
 pockets, his feet apart and a sardonic grin on his 
 face. I mean that when an emotional woman needs 
 a good cry, he realizes that it will relieve the tension. 
 He does not get up and rage about and kick foot- 
 stools out of the way and say, " Oh, for Heaven's 
 sake ! stop crying, or you'll drive me to drink ! " 
 
 No! He goes and pats her shoulder soothingly 
 and says : 
 
 " There, little woman ! I'm sorry the cook has 
 left and your new gown hooks up on the bias, but 
 cheer up ! Let's go out and have a jolly little dinner 
 and to-morrow I'll write that tailor a letter that will 
 make his hair curl." 
 
 Then she looks up through her tears and thinks 
 how handsome and big and strong and glorious he 
 is, and before the dinner is over, she has thought up 
 two ways in which to economize and so pay for the 
 extravagance of his order to the waiter. For the 
 common purse is not elastic and she knows it. 
 
 Now that is not the end either. For days, yes, for 
 weeks afterward, that wife will remember how com- 
 forting her husband was when her heart was so 
 racked that she didn't care whether she lived or died, 
 and her soul will expand with gratitude until she will 
 begin to pity every woman she knows because their 
 
24 THE MANAGEMENT OF WIVES 
 
 husbands are of such inferior clay and not to be 
 named in the same day with hers. 
 
 Now when a woman compares her husband to 
 those of other women in that spirit, it is not difficult 
 to imagine that she will invent some way in which to 
 show him what she thinks of him, for gratitude is an 
 objective virtue and demands deeds to prove its 
 being. And when her heart is in that softened state, 
 the first thought which occurs to her is the subject of 
 their last dispute. How could she have held out 
 against such an angel of goodness as Jack ? Selfish 
 creature that she is! Well, thank Fortune! it is 
 not yet too late to give in now, and just as soon as he 
 comes home, she will tell him so. 
 
 Does that husband manage his wife? 
 
 The clever man — and by that I mean, in this con- 
 nection, the tactful man — is one without nerves. Or 
 if he possesses them, he has them under control. He 
 is not a fussy man. He may be as particular as you 
 please. He may be a perfect old maid in the way he 
 cares for his clothes. He may be so much of a 
 gourmet that the dinner is spoiled for him if there 
 is no sauce tartare and cucumbers with the fish. It 
 may be that he cannot eat his breakfast if the cook 
 has not carefully trimmed the bacon before broiling 
 it. Nevertheless his temper and his nerves are 
 under control and he remedies these things without a 
 display of temper or enfuriating his wife. There are 
 
THE MANAGEMENT OF WIVES 25 
 
 many noiseless and insinuating methods of getting 
 your own way. It isn't always best to rip up the 
 carpet and break the furniture and kick the cat. 
 
 I heard of one amusing incident which bacon re- 
 minds me of. An extravagant man married to a 
 thrifty, nay a stingy wife, who was inclined to be a 
 little selfish and forgetful of her husband's taste, 
 habitually allowed the bacon to come on the table 
 with enough of the rind on it to make it taste. He 
 mentioned it several times but it produced no effect. 
 His wife always marketed and dealt at the least ex- 
 pensive shops, where delicacies were not even kept. 
 
 At about the sixth lapse of wife and cook com- 
 bined, he went to a high-priced butcher and ordered 
 a dozen glass jars of bacon already sliced and 
 trimmed. 
 
 The price of it nearly sent his wife into hysterics. 
 She saw half her week's profit out of the market 
 money disappear at one fell swoop. So she took it 
 back and when they obligingly refunded the money, 
 she went into her kitchen and held a heart-to-heart 
 talk with her cook which not only settled the bacon 
 question once and forever but it improved the coffee 
 and lightened the rolls. Furthermore, and this is the 
 test of the good housekeeper, she did not trust to the 
 cook's promises, but she went herself into the 
 kitchen, for the first week or two, and saw to it per- 
 sonally that the meals were sent up to her husband's 
 taste. 
 
26 THE MANAGEMENT OF WIVES 
 
 Of course this is only an example of tact in an in- 
 dividual case. Thousands of women, who are not on 
 an allowance, could not be reached in that way, but 
 this man was clever enough to master the governing 
 motives of his wife's character and to touch her 
 mental make-up where she was most susceptible to 
 a reminder. 
 
 However, for general practice and without refer- 
 ence to special cases, the man who manages his wife 
 successfully is the one who keeps his wife always 
 good tempered, happy and contented. The happy 
 woman is most frequently the grateful woman. Of 
 course there are many instances of happiness making 
 women selfish and callous, just as there are numer- 
 ous cases of the neglected and unhappy wife who still 
 hopes to win her husband back by courtesy and un- 
 selfishness. It seldom works, however. And I have 
 further observed that the most utterly selfish wives 
 generally have the most indulgent husbands. It is 
 an exasperating sight and almost puts a premium on 
 selfishness. 
 
 But a counteracting thought is that the happiest 
 marriages are those where wife and husband strive 
 to see who can be the most unselfish — who can give 
 the most to the other. It is a fine art — the art of 
 living together. Nor does it demand for each one to 
 be wholly unselfish. The rarest pleasure comes in 
 occasionally accepting a real sacrifice from the other ; 
 
THE MANAGEMENT OF WIVES 27 
 
 accepting it graciously, frankly, generously and with 
 wholesome appreciation of its worth. 
 
 Sometimes to accept such a sacrifice is an absolute 
 necessity to the recipient's happiness. If a fishing 
 husband is married to a society wife, who would be 
 wretched at a farmhouse near the trout streams, 
 while he could gain quite a little amusement from 
 golf links, it is his positive duty to substitute a minor 
 for a major amusement and go with his wife to a re- 
 sort where she can show her clothes. Women who 
 love silk linings seldom can find any companionship 
 in trees and wild flowers. The tactful husband 
 humours his wife, for he knows that in her gratitude 
 she will allow him to join a stag party and to go 
 fishing while she very willingly stays at home with 
 the children. Oh, it pays to humour a woman ! 
 
 There is, however, a type of woman of which I 
 would hesitate to speak if I did not believe she is 
 often misunderstood and mistaken for another type. 
 That is the contrary woman. The woman of small 
 mind. The woman who wants to do a thing just be- 
 cause someone has told her not to. The woman who 
 thinks it is clever to do as she pleases, no matter who 
 objects, under the mistaken idea that she is thus 
 showing her independence. That woman is seldom 
 managed by her husband, mostly because he is too 
 angry at her most of the time, to take the obviously 
 easy method of getting his own way. With this 
 
28 THE MANAGEMENT OF WIVES 
 
 style of woman I have no patience. I am like her 
 husband. I won't bother with anyone so flimsy. 
 
 But the other type of woman — the emotional, 
 highstrung woman — the very feminine woman — the 
 woman of the whimsical imagination — the woman 
 of the eager interest in things — she it is who, from 
 pure femininity appears to be the contrary animal 
 we women are always pictured by the Sunday 
 papers. Possibly she is contrary, if to go against 
 tradition or strike out new paths is to be contrary. 
 Perhaps she does change her mind a dozen times a 
 day and disbelieve to-day what she averred yester- 
 day. Possibly the mysterious and forbidden do ap- 
 peal to her imagination. Therein lies her charm. 
 Woman's infinite variety should never be mistaken 
 for woman's stubborn mulishness. 
 
 Yet American men make good husbands to even 
 little fools. They live peaceably with even contrary 
 women, and love them — ay, even honour them! 
 Respect them beyond their worth and indulge them 
 far beyond their deserts. To live quietly with a 
 quarrelsome woman; to manage a contrary woman 
 — that is what the American man can do — is doing 
 in thousands of unpretentious homes to-day — their 
 heroism undreamed of by their neighbours and least 
 of all realized by themselves. But there they are — 
 the unnamed, unhonoured heroes of the eternally 
 commonplace. 
 
THE MANAGEMENT OF WIVES 29 
 
 No one but the American man would do it. But 
 he is trained in a thousand different ways and from 
 a thousand different sources in a chivalry toward all 
 women, and this chivalry always includes his wife. 
 Among other races, chivalry sometimes includes the 
 wife. Here pulpit, press, public example and private 
 opinion from the lowest round in the social ladder 
 down to the highest, the American man is made to 
 be the knight errant to all women. He rescues them 
 from a real danger with the crowd looking on — 
 and that is comparatively easy. He lives with one 
 ill, fretful, complaining, cross-grained woman and 
 never lets her know that she is not as lovely and at- 
 tractive as when first he met and loved her. Even a 
 president of the United States did this. She never 
 knew what others saw in his devotion to her. Peo- 
 ple say he managed his wife well. I say he loved her 
 well. Ah, that is the secret. American husbands 
 love their wives. 
 
THE MANAGEMENT OF HUSBANDS 
 
THE MANAGEMENT OF HUSBANDS 
 
 THIS subject has never yet been given the 
 dignity which it deserves. It is too often 
 treated with the flippancy of a newspaper 
 paragraph, while the truth of the matter 
 is that a wife who manages her husband successfully, 
 arrives in domestic economy at the dignity of Am- 
 bassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenepotenti- 
 ary to the highest court in the land — the Court of 
 the Happy Family. 
 
 Tact in the hands of a man becomes diplomacy 
 and this he exercises in governing foreign policies. 
 Tact in the hands of a woman becomes genius and 
 this she exercises in governing domestic man. 
 Anglo-Saxon diplomacy when it degenerates into 
 trickery becomes Oriental. Feminine tact when it 
 descends into trickery becomes vulgarity. 
 
 But in both government diplomacy and feminine 
 tact the appearance of secrecy is largely superficial, 
 for the man does not live whose vanity is not tickled 
 by the knowledge that his management is a subject 
 of consideration with his wife and when all is said 
 and done the best of men enjoy being managed. 
 
 It is a flattering thought. It must be a pleasant 
 
 3 33 
 
34 MANAGEMENT OF HUSBANDS 
 
 contemplation for a peppery man to see a warning 
 look from someone who knows his weak points 
 when dangerous subjects are broached. It saves irri- 
 tation. It must be a highly satisfactory sensation to 
 feel that certain things are not permitted in his pres- 
 ence because it is well understood that he will fly 
 into a passion and break the furniture if they occur. 
 It saves the furniture. 
 
 It conduces to a man's importance to know that 
 these prejudices of his are appreciated by his wife 
 and it feeds his vanity when he realizes how grace- 
 fully she avoids them. 
 
 Yet those who have eyes to see below the surface, 
 see what pitiable figures some of these men cut 
 whose weaknesses force their wives into a course of 
 action naturally hateful to a refined woman. I have 
 heard the unthinking and the unseeing bitterly con- 
 demn a woman who made the noblest struggle I ever 
 witnessed to keep her husband to herself and her 
 home intact for the sake of her children, because, 
 forsooth, when her husband became infatuated with 
 a pretty woman, the wife lent herself to the little 
 game and pretended a liking for the pretty woman's 
 weak and vapid husband in order to keep up the ap- 
 pearance of quartette friendliness. The four went 
 everywhere together. People talked. She bore it 
 with dignity. She was more cruelly maligned than 
 the other three because her strength of character was 
 
MANAGEMENT OF HUSBANDS 35 
 
 known and this seemed to witness its breaking down. 
 But this brave woman knew her husband. She knew 
 he would tire of the woman's pretty face if she could 
 eliminate the charm of secrecy and keep matters ap- 
 parently open and aboveboard. Whatever anguish 
 she may have suffered in her heart, she buried there. 
 She clung to her policy. Her tact never deserted 
 her. At all times she was ready to do her husband's 
 bidding with the pretty woman's silly husband for a 
 companion, submitting to be bored by his inanity for 
 the sake of keeping an eye on her husband. That 
 woman was fighting for her husband; for her chil- 
 dren; for her home and for her life, with what re- 
 sult? That her best friends condemned her for a 
 willing accomplice. They call her a married flirt. I 
 call her a noble woman. They say she is worthy of 
 no consideration. I believe her worthy of a martyr's 
 crown. / know the pretty woman's husband ! 
 
 This so-called management of husbands often 
 means a tragedy of home-keeping. The manage- 
 ment of even the best of men requires a courage, pa- 
 tience and tact which no one can exercise who has 
 not an intuition bordering on genius, for greater 
 than the art of writing a book, or the art of painting 
 a picture is the art of living together. To keep the 
 happiness of a home unbroken is to lay hold on im- 
 mortality. The example to noisy boys and thought- 
 less girls of a mother who keeps things moving 
 
36 MANAGEMENT OF HUSBANDS 
 
 smoothly, provided this mother also possesses the 
 genius of imparting her knowledge, is to lay the 
 foundations of other tactfully conducted homes, and 
 her genius for managing the next generation of 
 husbands and for providing manageable husbands 
 for the next generation of tactful girls reaches for- 
 ward through countless years. 
 
 This genius of tactfulness is purely American, for 
 by tact, I mean the pure and wholesome article of 
 Anglo-Saxon origin which has nothing to do with 
 the corrupted and corrupting article of certain for- 
 eign nations, whose women have the name of being 
 fascinating through their knowledge of men. An 
 American woman's knowledge of men is builded on 
 universal motherhood and is as pure as love itself. 
 That is why a good wife infuses a certain maternal 
 quality into her love for her husband. His weak- 
 ness, of mind or body, draws on that peculiar 
 mother-love which is in the heart of every good 
 woman whether she ever marries or not. Leniency 
 toward little faults partakes of that protecting 
 quality which is the mainspring of a mother's love 
 for the helplessness of her baby. Mary Wilkins in 
 her book, " The Portion of Labor," has the charac- 
 ter of a woman, Cynthia Lennox, who loves a man, 
 Lyman Risly, but who never loves him well enough 
 to marry him until, through an accident he becomes 
 blind. The author calls this a moral deformity in 
 
MANAGEMENT OF HUSBANDS 37 
 
 Cynthia's character, and intimates that her love for 
 her blind husband was warped and twisted from its 
 purely normal character. I beg to differ with the 
 distinguished author in her interpretation. She has 
 drawn Cynthia's character with a true knowledge of 
 perspective, for she made her love helplessness to the 
 extent of actually stealing a lost baby girl and keep- 
 ing her for three days while the town searched and 
 the distracted mother nearly went mad, yet when 
 the baby grew up, Cynthia was perfectly indififerent 
 to her because she was no longer helpless. The truth 
 of the matter is that Cynthia's love was largely 
 maternal. This quality overbalanced all others, and 
 so caused her love for Lyman Risly to blossom only 
 when he became blind and needed her help. But if 
 this sort of love is warped or unnatural, the love of 
 many women for their husbands partakes of this 
 same unnatural character, for I claim that in all 
 rightly constituted women the element of maternal 
 love enters into their love for their husbands and 
 that Cynthia was not unnatural when she permitted 
 him to hang about her for twenty years without dis- 
 covering that he was absolutely dependent upon her 
 all that time. She became natural when she dis- 
 covered her own " deformity " and married him and 
 behaved herself as a reasonable woman should. 
 
 This maternal element in woman's love for man 
 explains many strange and otherwise inexplicable 
 
38 MANAGEMENT OF HUSBANDS 
 
 marriages. The woman begins to love the man when 
 he casts aside all other considerations and demon- 
 strates his actual need of her. That appeals to the 
 maternal and so she marries him. 
 
 Women, particularly the stiff-necked, independent 
 breed which seems to infest our land in these latter 
 days, driving out the homelier qualities of the old- 
 fashioned woman, who was gentle and loving and 
 tactful, seem to regard this matter of managing men, 
 of using diplomacy with them or being respectful of 
 their whims and idiosyncracies, as beneath the dig- 
 nity of their so-called, newly found " independence." 
 They consider it an affront to their feminine man- 
 hood, if I may be allowed the paradox, to be ex- 
 pected to be the one who should do the adjusting. 
 If they cannot marry up-to-date men and each go his 
 own way without any adjusting on either side and 
 carry the idea of " comradeship " through marriage, 
 why let the man do the adjusting, say they. 
 
 That is sheer vanity. Most of women's boasted 
 independence is sheer vanity. Women were not 
 made to be independent of men, and it is my private 
 opinion that that is why mice were created! To 
 show them the fallacy of a misnamed independence ! 
 Imagine a woman not screeching when she saw a 
 mouse ! It would be grounds for divorce. 
 
 This foolishness about independence from men is 
 utter nonsense. Women were created the weaker 
 
MANAGEMENT OF HUSBANDS 39 
 
 vessel several thousand years ago and it is a little 
 late to try to mend matters now. Besides, there is 
 so much more responsibility and dignity in our posi- 
 tion as it now exists. The president of a company 
 generally lends the value of his name, but the gen- 
 eral manager does the work. The president's office 
 hours are from eleven fifty-five to twelve every other 
 Thursday, while the General Manager draws the 
 salary and runs the whole company, the president 
 included ! 
 
 It requires much more skill to be general manager 
 than president of a company. And the woman who 
 does not enjoy the exercise of her feminine gifts, 
 who does not really love so to manage her husband 
 that he forgets office worries and headaches and a 
 tired back and lawsuits in the radiance she casts 
 around him in his home is no true woman and I 
 make free to state that she has lost much of the 
 sweetness of true love. 
 
 There is a positive exhilaration to be derived from 
 bringing all one's efforts to bear upon a husband 
 whose business worries have pursued him from the 
 office. There is a genuine delight in fighting with 
 the unknown anxieties which his love will not permit 
 him to unburden at home. It brings out all the tact 
 and patience and diplomacy, all the charms and 
 graces of a woman's character to transform a cross, 
 tired, worn-out husband into a new man — ^just by a 
 good dinner and a little tact. 
 
40 MANAGEMENT OF HUSBANDS 
 
 But to manage a husband when there are so many 
 kinds of husbands requires more than any other one 
 thing a thorough study of your subject. " To meet 
 your husband with a smile," which is the old-fash- 
 ioned rule for all ills is enough to make a nervous, 
 irritable man frantic. Never grin at your husband 
 before you know what is the matter with him. Look 
 him over before you do anything. You ought to 
 know how to treat him. Don't sing or hum if he has 
 a headache or begin to tell him the news before you 
 have fed him. If there is one rule to lay down — 
 which there is not — or if I were giving automatic 
 advice — which I am not — I should say that most 
 men come home like hungry animals and require 
 first of all to be fed. 
 
 But after all, women are clever and they know 
 that they can do anything if they will only give 
 enough solid thought to the subject. 
 
 If a woman who finds her husband difficult to 
 manage would only use the ingenious devices to 
 manage him agreeably which she employs to surprise 
 a secret from him, there would be no necessity for 
 the subject to be mentioned in print. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 This, being the secret of the whole matter is not to 
 be mentioned to a soul. It is entirely between our- 
 selves, as you may readily see when I ask you if it 
 
MANAGEMENT OF HUSBANDS 41 
 
 isn't one of the most delightful of paradoxes to learn 
 the views of one of these so-called " managed hus- 
 bands," and to find that he is exercising even more 
 skill in managing his wife than she is in managing 
 him ? The truth of it is that in my private opinion 
 men manage their wives quite as often as it is the 
 other way about, and men are even more clever at it 
 than women because fewer women realize that they 
 are being so dealt with that their foibles and weak- 
 nesses are being utilized as the means by which their 
 husbands get their own way. Our natural conceit at 
 being acknowledged to be the diplomatic social 
 agents of society blinds our eyes to the fact that 
 sometimes, nay, oftener than we think, we are 
 " managed " wives, and that the diplomacy to which 
 we fondly believe we possess the exclusive right has 
 been sharpened to the fine edge of finesse by the men 
 we — er — manage ! 
 
THE LUXURY OF BEING STUPID 
 
THE LUXURY OF BEING STUPID 
 
 SO much is being said on the subject of higher 
 education and so many clubs have been 
 formed for the avowed purpose of self cul- 
 ture that many an immature thinker is mis- 
 led into the belief that the most highly cultivated 
 sensibilities bestow the greatest amount of happi- 
 ness upon their proud possessor. 
 
 But that is a popular fallacy. Ask the musician 
 with the trained ear if cultivation has increased his 
 enjoyment of music, and, if he is honest, he will 
 declare that knowledge has simply increased his 
 pain when the tenor flats or when the oboe is out 
 of tune. Ask the man who loves the drama why 
 he never goes to the theatre and he will tell you it 
 is because he loves the drama too much to see it 
 abused. Ask the purist in language why he does 
 not read current fiction. Ask the purist in pronun- 
 ciation why he never goes to lectures or to the 
 theatre. Ask the ultra refined why they take no 
 interest in humanity. Ask the philosopher why he 
 has lost all the comforts of the religion of his 
 youth. Ask the brilliant talker why he does not 
 go more into society and they will one and all tell 
 
 45 
 
46 THE LUXURY OF BEING STUPID 
 
 you that they know too much. They have educated 
 themselves out of all power to enjoy themselves in 
 common things. They are over-cultivated, super- 
 sensitive, ultra refined and therefore the most of 
 the time superlatively miserable, for the perfect 
 seldom appears .either in concert, opera, theatre, 
 book, philosophy or dinner party. 
 
 Did you ever long for a witty tongue? Ask 
 the unfortunate possessor of it, especially if the 
 unhappy wretch chances to be a woman, if she 
 enjoys even her most brilliant sallies. She will tell 
 you that even the kindest heart may be led astray 
 by an opportunity too good to be missed, and one 
 pointed shaft of wit may end the friendship of 
 years. No matter how hard you may try to be good, 
 a genius for wit may be your undoing and no 
 matter how your heart may ache afterward, the 
 mischief has been done. So if you knew how cor- 
 dially most witty men and women are hated, you 
 would be glad you are just as you are, whatever 
 that may be. 
 
 The mental responsibility which comes with edu- 
 cation, even if it be only one's awakened sense of 
 responsibility as citizen, hostess or friend, brings 
 so much discomfort to the ease loving that I per- 
 sonally have come to the conclusion that the career 
 which holds out the greatest promise of comfort 
 with the least responsibility would be that of a pet 
 
THE LUXURY OF BEING STUPID 47 
 
 cat in a family of kind-hearted people. Sometimes 
 when I have seen a Mexican asleep in the sun before 
 his adobe hut, my allegiance to a pet cat existence 
 has wavered, but not for long. 
 Observe. 
 
 A cat in a family of kind-hearted people pre- 
 supposes first of all that she will be allowed the 
 best of everything, for no animal which exists can 
 excel a cat in preempting the softest bed, the sun- 
 niest window, the warmest corner, the daintiest 
 food — in short, the best the house affords, be it 
 palace or hovel. And if you never have given much 
 thought to this phase of it before, while familiar 
 with cats, it only goes to show the unobtrusive, 
 feminine tact of a cat. Did you ever notice the 
 difference between the manners of a cat and dog 
 both bent upon achieving the hearth around which 
 the family were gathered ? 
 
 The door opens and in bounces the dog, with 
 sharp barks of welcome and joy. He dashes across 
 the floor, knocks against chairs, jumps and licks 
 your hanging hand, thumps his tail against your 
 legs, wriggles his body in an ecstacy of enjoyment, 
 then darts for the hearth rug, panting, licking his 
 chops, snapping his eyes and bumping the floor 
 with his tail. That is the masculine of it. 
 
 Enter the cat. Softly she steals across the floor, 
 pausing to rub against each one in turn, arching 
 
48 THE LUXURY OF BEING STUPID 
 
 her back for the expected caress, and purring her 
 thanks. Having silently ingratiated herself with 
 each one, having been greeted with " Poor pussy ! " 
 in commiserating tones by the more sympathetic 
 of her admirers, she softly steals into the warmest 
 corner and curling herself into a graceful coil, she 
 yawns and extends her claws for a moment, then 
 her head sinks into a little nest of fur and with 
 a purry sigh, the cat is asleep. I have seen women 
 get the best of everything with all the silent tact 
 of a cat. 
 
 Now a dog feels his responsibility. If you take 
 him for a walk, he feels that he must do something 
 for you. He works for your entertainment. There- 
 fore you think a dog clever. On the other hand 
 take a cat as your companion. She never works 
 unless she wants her chin scratched. Therefore you 
 call a cat stupid. But who wouldn't be willing to 
 be as stupid as the unenlightened consider cats, to 
 get as much out of life with as little exertion? 
 
 Cats are capable of sufficient cultivation to make 
 them acceptable dinner guests, if they went into so- 
 ciety, yet they will not go in for higher education. 
 A cat when she first enters a human family, catches 
 mice from instinct, but in an incredibly short space 
 of time, she ceases to eat them. She kilts and 
 leaves them, preferring bits of chicken breast and 
 cream. She only eats steak when there is no 
 
THE LUXURY OF BEING STUPID 49 
 
 chicken and drinks milk when there is no cream. 
 After that point in her culture is reached she only 
 catches mice for exercise and to keep her figure. 
 And you human beings who harbour her, encourage 
 her in her daintiness and yield her the softest cush- 
 ions and the warmest corners, because you think she 
 is too stupid to know that other people want them. 
 Ah ! Is she stupid ? She is simply taking advantage 
 of her reputation for stupidity and getting the best 
 of everything by the way. Think of it! To eat 
 all you want of the best there is; to sleep all day 
 and all night and yet be always delightfully drowsy 
 and contemplative; to jump into people's silken laps 
 at any moment you choose, secure in your welcome, 
 assured of having your fur rubbed the right way; 
 permitted to express gratitude by sleepy purrings; 
 being able to get gloriously intoxicated on catnip 
 and suffer no headache in the morning; never feel- 
 ing an atom of responsibility about anything or 
 anybody — good Heavens! Isn't it simply madden- 
 ing that we can't all be cats? 
 
 Of course personally I find certain objections to 
 being a cat, the greatest of which is being chased 
 by energetic bull pups and forced to move rapidly 
 up a screen door and cling there until rescued. An- 
 other is being limited in my expressions of the 
 emotions of surprise, anger and what not, simply 
 to inarticulate growls and hisses with the silent 
 4 
 
50 THE LUXURY OF BEING STUPID 
 
 accessory of arching my back. It would be a great 
 deprivation, the way I feel now, to deny me lan- 
 guage. But on the other hand I have always wanted 
 to express my gratitude by purring instead of writ- 
 ing notes and paying dinner calls. And I wouldn't 
 care how depressingly stupid my friends consid- 
 ered me if they would only let me. 
 
 Oh, the utter luxury of stupidity ! Did you ever 
 give a dinner party and have one perfectly stupid 
 man as a guest? And for sheer sublimity, doesn't 
 Mont Blanc by sunrise pale in comparison to the 
 lymphatic way he mentally goes to sleep and snores 
 on the cleverness and responsibility of the other 
 guests ? 
 
 The stupid men and women in society are simply 
 usurping the prerogatives of pet cats. And, like 
 unto cats, I do not believe that they are a third 
 as stupid as they pretend to be. But their being 
 adorned with either gold or family or position of 
 some sort, compels society to accept them and invite 
 them constantly, whether they work to be entertain- 
 ing or not. They find that the inertia of stupidity 
 is a form of luxury unknown even in the lavish 
 days of Lucullus et al., and so they curl their paws 
 up under their heavy, double chins and sleep peace- 
 fully, pillowed upon the responsibility of the poor 
 but clever, who have to make good or they know 
 they will eat no more, save at their own expense. 
 
THE LUXURY OF BEING STUPID 51 
 
 So many stupid people are fat, I used to think 
 obesity a sign of intellectuality removed. Then I 
 met others and changed my mind. I have found 
 that attenuation of the intellect as often goes hand 
 in hand with attenuation of the body, as the other 
 way about, so that there is no outward and visible 
 sign that the stupid wear, by which the responsible 
 may recognize and avoid them. 
 
 If lawmakers only realized how those who hold 
 society together by mental responsibilities as hosts 
 and guests, actually suffer backache from carrying 
 the weight of the stupid and conscienceless, they 
 would at least frame a law compelling the bores to 
 wear some sort of a badge or button by which their 
 heaviness could be recognized and avoided except 
 when absolutely necessary to encounter them. If 
 ever I get into the legislature, I shall introduce a 
 bill compelling all born mentally handicapped by 
 weight, to wear straw in their hair. This will not 
 only distinguish them from the hayseeds, but will 
 indicate that unless you care to go into real exertion, 
 you would better keep away from persons so 
 adorned. 
 
 Privately I think that persons who won't even try 
 to be entertaining ought to be put to death, but 
 there are so many people who object to capital pun- 
 ishment on principle, no matter what the crime, 
 
52 THE LUXURY OF BEING STUPID 
 
 that publicly I dare only to advocate imprisonment 
 for life. 
 
 You may think I am frivolous, but I do consider 
 it such a shame to betray a thinking human being 
 into a three-hour imprisonment during a fashion- 
 able dinner, beside an indolent fool w^ho won't even 
 make an effort to lift your gloom, that I think they 
 might at least be bulletined, such as this : 
 
 "I am a millionaire bachelor; baldheaded; fifty 
 years old; selfish, and I hate to spend my money. 
 I am stupid by inheritance, and will do no more 
 work than an Indian chief. If a pretty and at- 
 tractive girl cares enough for the perquisites to 
 serve out a life sentence with me at hard labour, the 
 reward will be matrimony." 
 
 After that, the responsibility is all the girl's. I 
 have no objection to a person's deliberately en- 
 countering stupid men and women. What I hate 
 is being trapped by them. 
 
 But I have observed that those persons who are 
 endowed with the requisites of money or position 
 to which the world bows down, regardless of colour, 
 nationality or mental equipment, often take advan- 
 tage of their position to feign a stupidity which 
 they do not deserve. They do this for three reasons. 
 One is because they possess the arrogance of power. 
 Another because they fondly imagine that this gives 
 them the right to be indifferent to other people's 
 
THE LUXURY OF BEING STUPID 53 
 
 opinion of them. And the third because they realize 
 the utter luxury which a reputation for stupidity 
 aflfords. Nothing is asked — nothing is expected of 
 the stupid. Their lack of wit is construed into a 
 lack of understanding of society's requirements and 
 the result is a perfect debauch of laziness. 
 
 Think of the fat old men and women who infest 
 society clad in a diamond studded panoply of mental 
 inertia ! 
 
 And think of the eager, youthful cleverness of 
 those brilliant minds kept lean by constant exercise 
 of intellectual sword practice, and the realization of 
 their responsibility toward society. 
 
 Yet how tired the poor things must get carrying 
 the weight of the adipose tissue of the ninety and 
 nine somnolent stupid! 
 
 I used to know one girl so clever and so con- 
 scious of her social responsibilities that every host- 
 ess selfishly shifted the whole burden of entertaining 
 a roomful onto her willing young shoulders, which 
 so wore upon her that toward the end of her first 
 winter her mother found the girl's physical health 
 actually suffering. 
 
 The doctor was called in and to him the mother 
 said: 
 
 " She feels the responsibility of every gathering 
 where she is a guest to be entirely hers. The weight 
 of the stupid have broken her down, doctor ! " 
 
54 THE LUXURY OF BEING STUPID 
 
 Heigh ho! Who would not be a sleepy, purring 
 cat, lying on the hearth rug in everybody's way, 
 yet conscious that the whale family are too kind- 
 hearted to kick her, because they feel such a pity 
 for her stupidity? 
 
THE WISDOM OF MARRIAGE 
 
THE WISDOM OF MARRIAGE 
 
 THERE is a fine art which is much neglected 
 among us, and that is The Art of Living 
 Together, not so much the art of the wife 
 living with her husband or a husband 
 with his wife — to avoid domestic friction of that 
 sort is something one must learn or face the divorce 
 court. But I mean the art of being a smooth run- 
 ning wheel in the great machinery of the world — 
 the art of not squeaking or slipping a cog or strip- 
 ping the gearing or otherwise disturbing the har- 
 mony of the huge engine of human life. 
 
 Nor is it odd that this art is neglected, when 
 you come to think of it, for most people are ignorant 
 of the existence of such a craft, and if informed of 
 it, declare it of no importance. But this is not so, 
 for the man who studies into its necessities, dis- 
 covers that it covers the whole ground of domestic 
 science. The man who is clever enough to under- 
 stand that unless he makes a good citizen, he can 
 not expect good government, will also be shrewd 
 enough to see that unless he makes a good son, he 
 cannot expect harmony in his father's house. And 
 
 57 
 
58 THE WISDOM OF MARRIAGE 
 
 if these two important facts are comprehended, he 
 will not need to be told that to make a good hus- 
 band will insure the happiness of one woman and 
 to be a good father will round out his share of the 
 responsibility in the balance of the universe. He 
 has earned his right to live, move and have his 
 being together with his fellow beings, for he has 
 successfully learned the difficult art of living to- 
 gether. 
 
 Most men learn to live, but they learn to live 
 apart. They round out their individualities at the 
 expense of their integral value. 
 
 The qualities of meekness and unselfishness which 
 go to form that great moving power of the world — 
 Love — are what are uppermost in the minds of the 
 thoughtful when they speak of the wisdom of mar- 
 riage. Marriage is wise for many reasons, but 
 that which appeals to the pedagogic mind is that it is 
 a gigantic and universal educator in domestic 
 science. 
 
 Marriage not only protects the feeble virtue, but 
 it develops new and unexpected virtues. The selfish 
 daughter often changes into the most unselfish of 
 wives. The thoughtless son often makes the most 
 attentive of husbands to an ailing wife. The 
 feather-headed girl who wasted her father's money 
 makes a thrifty, even penurious wife, because she has 
 married a poor man out of whose salary she must 
 
THE WISDOM OF MARRIAGE 59 
 
 save something every month if they ever expect 
 to rise in the world. 
 
 Many are the anxious fathers and mothers all 
 over this land, who have economized painfully to 
 send their sons to college and their daughters to 
 boarding schools, who are now reaping the almost 
 inevitable domestic inharmony which higher edu- 
 cation brings in its train. This scheme of educating 
 the mind seems to have turned out a dismal failure, 
 for the sons can do nothing so gracefully as they 
 can dress and dance; can do nothing with such 
 energy as they can loaf and shirk; can do nothing 
 so enthusiastically as they can smoke and drink. 
 While the girls come home with more airs than 
 knowledge and seemed to have learned nothing so 
 thoroughly as contempt for the furnishings of the 
 home and for their father's and mother's opinions. 
 
 That is what higher education does for the empty- 
 headed youth of this land. Happy the parents who 
 can see their girl or boy come home from four 
 years of college and have a different tale to tell. 
 
 Then follows a year or two of astonished grief 
 on the part of the parents of the first named, (which 
 strikes the casual observer to be largely in the pre- 
 ponderance), for the two reasons that the majority 
 of college students are sent, rather than choose to 
 go of their own accord; and because the inherited 
 riches which permit most of our youths to attend 
 
6o THE WISDOM OF MARRIAGE 
 
 college, breed fewer brains than does inherited 
 poverty. 
 
 Then after these years of grief, astonishment, 
 regret and mental readjustment, the parents come 
 back to first principles and realize that nothing but 
 the wisdom of marriage can save their imperiled 
 children. What is that but a tardy recognition of 
 the indestructible fact that love is the greatest thing 
 in the world? 
 
 Love is a university which has turned out more 
 great and good men and women than are enrolled 
 among the alumni of every college in the world put 
 together. It is the one school which needs no 
 chaperon in the dormitory, no proctors on the cam- 
 pus. It is the only school which understands the 
 derivation of the word education and draws out 
 instead of stufifs in. Therefore the uneducated 
 mother, who, if poor has deprived herself of actual 
 necessities in order to give her daughter the higher 
 education which she herself lacks, strikes hands with 
 the rich mother whose selfishness has caused her 
 to send her daughter to school in order to rid her- 
 self of the responsibility of the mother-education 
 without which any girl is poor indeed, and both, 
 looking deep into their own hearts and far back 
 in their own past, see that, after all, it is love 
 which their children lack and they turn eagerly to 
 the thought of " a good safe marriage." 
 
THE WISDOM OF MARRIAGE 6i 
 
 Yet the mother of this dissipated, weak, charac- 
 terless son has no compassion on the nice girl she 
 is so anxious to save her son by. The father of 
 the frail, frivolous, brainless daughter looks upon 
 the sensible, manly suitors for her worthless hand as 
 legitimate prey, nor does he even display the legend 
 over his doorway, " Sauve qui peut." They are 
 lured to their doom by every device known to 
 fashionable society and soon — all is over. The 
 manly man finds himself tied to a wife with per- 
 haps actual vices, which his love, his wisdom, his 
 patience are expected to subdue. Then when his 
 eyes are open, he can look back and see the baits, 
 the lures, the traps set for his capture. His life may 
 be wrecked, but who cares? Certainly not the 
 parents of the girl, for has she not made " a good 
 safe marriage ? " 
 
 There ought to be some law by which a husband 
 thus flagrantly deceived could return a drunken 
 or drug-taking wife to her parents, marked " Dam- 
 aged Goods," and compel them to take her ofif his 
 hands. 
 
 And these dissolute young men so often are fur- 
 nished with excellent women for wives on the same 
 principle of self-preservation. A driven-to-the-wall 
 father once said to a clever and sensible girl " Oh, I 
 wish you would marry my son. It would make a 
 man of him 1 " Thank you kindly," she said, " but I 
 
62 THE WISDOM OF MARRIAGE 
 
 prefer a man already made ! " Sometimes they don't 
 hesitate to come out openly and tell the girl of their 
 son's weaknesses, hoping perhaps, to appeal to her 
 vanity or to the maternal instinct which prompts so 
 many good strong women to " mother " their weak 
 husbands. I know a woman who is more of a 
 mother to her husband than she is to her own 
 children, partly because her children are self-reliant 
 and partly because the husband makes a bigger 
 baby of himself every year because his wife permits 
 it and humours him. 
 
 Did you ever stop to examine into the character 
 of the children of certain marriages ? How Nature 
 compensates herself and adjusts the balance of cir- 
 cumstances ! That alone proves the wisdom of 
 marriage — especially for fools. 
 
 If the father is a ne'er-do-weel, or the mother 
 either weak, ill or depraved, does the family starve 
 to death? Very, very seldom. No. You will see 
 a little seven-year-old woman among the brood of 
 incompetents, whose eyes are deep and whose heart 
 is strong. She it is who washes, dresses and 
 mothers perhaps even the older children. Nature 
 has reached out and adjusted the balance and the 
 pendulum of life still swings to and fro. 
 
 Or there will be some clear-eyed boy who all too 
 early is called into the battle of life to play a man's 
 part, solely because a man's heart beats underneath 
 
THE WISDOM OF MARRIAGE 63 
 
 his tiny shirt. Oh, the little hands — the little hands 
 in this world which are doing the work of men and 
 women! Let no importunate newsboy show me 
 his babyish hand, no matter how dirt-smeared, for 
 the size of it — so little — goes to my head and steals 
 away my brains. He has me — if he only knew it. 
 And he generally does. 
 
 The selfish mother, who never knew the joy of 
 giving up her own will to another human being, 
 either husband or child, is compensated by such 
 an unselfish, rugged devotion from an adoring little 
 son or daughter that her eyes are often opened and 
 she sees herself in all her hateful, soul-nakedness. 
 Women are sometimes reformed by their own 
 children, who are innocent of the intention or the 
 need of reform. 
 
 Is there wisdom in marriage? There is, even if 
 you have to be divorced in order to learn it. A 
 man who has lived with a wild hyena of a woman 
 learns to appreciate the angel whom he gets in the 
 next trial, and the woman who has married a human 
 jackal will let her next husband smoke all over the 
 house, she is so pleased to see him around under 
 foot all the time. 
 
 Marriage is such an educator in the Gentle Art 
 of Living Together that when both husband and 
 wife have been what you call high rollers, if they 
 separate and each marries again, you will find them 
 
64 THE WISDOM OF MARRIAGE 
 
 strangely different. The husband has seen the folly 
 of side-stepping and the wife doesn't care for 
 " little dinners " as she once did. " Little dinners " 
 are sometimes like charity. 
 
 The marriage ring is not so much a bond, which 
 the cartoonist portrays holding a struggling man and 
 woman prisoner. It is more of an arena where you 
 see the animals perform. All sorts of capers are 
 cut in the arena of the marriage ring. There will 
 be the immaculately clad ring master with the whip ; 
 the lady in pink satin who can charm a snake or 
 tame a bear; the performing poodle; the sly cat who 
 steals the honest dog's meat ; the trapeze lady whose 
 smile is painted on for fear her tears for her dying 
 baby will wash it off; the clown whose chalky face 
 would grow whiter if it could, when he thinks of 
 his sick wife; the dog- faced man; monkeys capering 
 to an admiring public who love to see even an ani- 
 mal make a fool of himself. Walk up! Walk up, 
 spinsters and bachelors, old men and young women ! 
 Look at the arena of the marriage ring. Is it not 
 an education to see how bravely they smile and 
 pirouette and perform for your edification? But 
 what do you know of the tears, the patience, the 
 forbearance, the hardly won smile and the con- 
 cealed anguish that little gold band has engendered ? 
 
 The wedding ring is a symbol of more value to 
 civilization than any other emblem in the world. 
 
THE WISDOM OF MARRIAGE 65 
 
 except the cross. The cross and the ring have 
 lifted humanity to a plane it never otherwise could 
 have attained. All good and all blessedness follow 
 in the train of these two, and no nation can count 
 herself among the powers of the earth which does 
 not respect, revere and protect them both. 
 
WANTED— A CAREER 
 
WANTED— A CAREER. 
 
 WHEN I hear a woman whining because 
 she has no career, the thought comes 
 into my mind, " Here is either a woman 
 who is very vain or she is imposed 
 upon in her family life." 
 
 I use the word " whining " advisedly, for the 
 woman with an assured talent seldom whines be- 
 cause she has no opportunity to use it. She gets 
 out and chases up an opportunity and closes with 
 it before it can get away. 
 
 But the woman who sits down before a mag- 
 nificent picture or over a fine novel, or after hearing 
 a great soprano and says, " Oh, I wish I had a 
 career," generally has nothing to cultivate, nor the 
 wit to evolve an understanding. 
 
 If it were an honest desire to earn money for a 
 worthy purpose which impelled women to sigh for 
 careers, that would be a dififerent matter. One 
 would then feel inclined to help, rather than dis- 
 courage the aspirant. But too often it is merely 
 the excitement, the glamour of the thing which 
 attracts, and generally the material attracted is very 
 fluffy, feathery stuff. Did you ever notice what' 
 
 69 ' 
 
70 WANTED— A CAREER 
 
 sort of insects are attracted by a candle? Only 
 moths — born but to perish in the flame of their 
 desires. Moths are the epitome of foolishness. 
 They seem to lack brains more than any other 
 winged things. 
 
 A woman of this sort who wants a career, if she 
 had one, would doubtless turn out to be a careering 
 woman. Lack of balance will make any woman 
 career. 
 
 There are, however, two rules to be observed 
 by women who long for careers. The first is, dis- 
 cover your limitations. Sit down and think over 
 the things you are positive that you cannot do. 
 That will soon narrow you down to the few, the 
 very few that you can. Then examine carefully into 
 your equipment. First, have you the patience, per- 
 severance, courage and good sense necessary to 
 make a success of a career, should opportunity 
 offer. Secondly have you the time to pursue it. 
 
 " Genius," says Carlyle, " is an infinite capacity 
 for hard work." If you are indolent by nature, or 
 in delicate health, don't try to be a genius, for you 
 will only spoil a good sleeper. Better be a graceful, 
 well-dressed, cheerful woman, and a permanent oc- 
 cupant of the sitting room sofa than a disgruntled 
 author, who is fit for nothing but to be a critic. 
 
 There is no such thing as luck in careers. Those 
 who seem to have it had some keenness which the 
 
WANTED— A CAREER 71 
 
 unsuccessful lacked, perhaps in choosing a career 
 which promised a swift reward ; perhaps in knowing 
 the pubHc ; perhaps in creating opportunities. 
 
 I do not believe that opportunity ever does very 
 much knocking at anybody's door. It is my opinion 
 that a spade is a most useful implement in digging 
 opportunity out of its winter quarters. 
 
 The career of an actor looks easy, doesn't it? If 
 you have a good figure and you can recite " Curfew 
 shall not ring to-night," so that everybody at the 
 church sociable tells you that it made the shivers 
 go down their backs, don't dream that you can, 
 in a week's time, get a position in a sextette, and 
 in a month's time marry a senile millionaire. Good 
 actresses are the hardest worked women I know 
 anything about. I would rather be a stenographer 
 than an actress if I were looking for a soft job. A 
 stenographer at least gets more time to sit down 
 than a successful, star actress. 
 
 You little pink-cheeked, stage-struck girl, did 
 you think it was all rouge and footlights and late 
 suppers ? It is more likely to be refusing late sup- 
 pers, in order to get a little sleep. Studying every 
 waking hour, rehearsing morning, noon and night, 
 not so much because the star needs it, but to make 
 up for your stupidity and yours and yours, you 
 who think it is so easy to be a star. Did it ever 
 occur to you that the successful have to work twice 
 
72 WANTED— A CAREER 
 
 as hard in this world, to make up for the unsuc- 
 cessful who can't do even their subordinate work? 
 Did you ever stop to think that a genius has to 
 work twice as long in order to make up for the 
 fools who retard his work? A woman who has 
 obtained a career is often injured by the envious 
 malice of women who are too stupid to secure one 
 for themselves. Indeed, if you only knew it, it 
 takes courage and lots of it, for a woman to attempt 
 a career. 
 
 Now the main trouble with women who claim to 
 want a career is that they mistake the case. They 
 mean that they want something which they now 
 lack, and they think a career would fill that lack. 
 If they are unhappy, they mean that they want to be 
 happy, and they think that a career would make 
 them so. But it wouldn't. 
 
 If they are happily married, they mean that they 
 lack excitement and they think a public career would 
 furnish it. But if they knew the secret desires of 
 most women in public life, I wonder, I simply won- 
 der, if they could believe what they would hear. 
 
 You women with farms, do you know that many 
 of the famous actresses whose pictures you cut out 
 of magazines and paste upon your walls, care more 
 for their eggs and poultry than they do for your 
 applause when you go to the city for the express 
 purpose of seeing your idols act? Do you know 
 
WANTED— A CAREER 73 
 
 that these actresses would give a good deal to know 
 what you know about the care of calves and gos- 
 lings and squabs and lambs and colts and their 
 infantile diseases? Women in the public eye get 
 their happiness out of the simple things you spurn 
 beneath your heel. 
 
 They call their careers work. They call your 
 work play, and they look forward, from the glare 
 of the footlights, to the time when they can go to 
 bed as early as you do and get up as early as you 
 do and tend chickens and flowers and do the very 
 things that you think are a bore. 
 
 Ask any woman who has risen to the top of the 
 ladder of fame what her ambition in life is. They 
 will one and all tell you that it lies in some simple 
 domestic line. They will tell you that their public 
 career satisfies only one-half of them, and that is 
 always the artificial half. The real side is the 
 domestic side which is hidden from the eye of the 
 world. 
 
 Ask the opera singer who coins millions with her 
 voice, which she would rather lose, her voice or her 
 children and see what she says. She would rather 
 be dumb forever and beg from door to door in 
 pantomime than lose those little fat toddlers at home 
 in some land foreign to you. Why, it is for them 
 she toils and travels and subjects herself to hard- 
 ships, broken sleep, changes of climate which may 
 
74 WANTED— A CAREER 
 
 any day bring ruin to her voice and above all, separa- 
 tion from and anxiety for those she holds dearest — 
 all of which would drive you, cosy housewife with- 
 out a career, crazy. She is working just as hard as 
 you are, only in a different way, and for the same 
 thing. To bring comfort to those she loves. 
 
 If all the successful women in the world; all the 
 women who have risen to the top of their respective 
 arts or crafts, could send one word and message to 
 all the women who yearn after a public career, that 
 one word would be " Don't " and the message would 
 be " Try to find contentment in your own lot, for we 
 do not find it here." 
 
 Contentment does not come from careers. Con- 
 tentment is a restful quality. It brings peace and 
 quiet in its train, and the very foundation of a career 
 is ambition, unrest, competition, anxiety, struggle 
 and fight. Women who are in the public eye drop 
 their careers when they want to rest. 
 
 Yet a curious thing about the public is that after 
 all, it applies the wrong test to the successful 
 woman. The public demands " Have you reached 
 the top? Have you left music, sculpture, literature 
 and pictures behind you which will live? " 
 
 That is not the test. The public should demand, 
 " Have you left good children behind you who will 
 live ? " And the woman who hasn't, has not 
 achieved the highest good. 
 
WANTED— A CAREER 75 
 
 If those single women who have done the best 
 work in their respective arts, should tell the truth, 
 they would declare that they knew they would have 
 been happier married and the mother of children. 
 That is woman's natural career and an unhappy 
 married woman is a freak. So is a woman with 
 a career. Both are outside of what God and Nature 
 intended them to be. 
 
 An unmarried man is not a freak, for men are not 
 born to be married, but women are, and it should be 
 the ambition of every woman in the world to have 
 children. The world would be a great deal better 
 and a great deal happier place to live in, if every 
 woman were eager to be a better mother than hef 
 neighbour, rather than to cherish the ignoble am- 
 bitions which envy, jealousy and the thirst for 
 vulgar display incite. 
 
 Public women should be judged as mothers. 
 Wouldn't you hate to be, you women with careers ? 
 Are you ready to go before a mother's convention 
 and let the neighbours testify as to what sort of a 
 mother you are making and what sort of children 
 you are turning out upon an unprotected world ? 
 
 If the neighbours could have the disposition of the 
 children of women who think they possess genius, 
 there would be a good many small funerals. 
 
 Now if you think the career of a mother is not 
 worth while, just listen to this. 
 
76 WANTED— A CAREER 
 
 Famous scientists declare that genius always de- 
 scends through the mother. That ought to take 
 some of the conceit out of man, but it doesn't. 
 
 The greatest men give the credit of their greatness 
 to their mother's training. Would you rather be 
 the mother of an Abraham Lincoln or the author of 
 a summer novel ? 
 
 A woman who is a careless or an indifferent 
 mother, incapable of bringing up her children, may 
 well turn to a career, because she is not fitted for 
 her natural vocation. Eve was the first example of 
 this. She was such an incompetent mother that one 
 of her children killed the other. After this public 
 failure in the natural line, she got discouraged and 
 turned to dressmaking for a career. Many a 
 woman has followed in her footsteps since with no 
 better equipment for the career she has chosen than 
 failure in her mother vocation. That is about the 
 reason why so many divorcees choose the stage. 
 
 Often too, the women who thus whine after 
 careers are women happily married and with a little 
 family looking up to their mothers as the prettiest, 
 loveliest and best creatures on earth. Such women 
 would be quite satisfied if some fairy godmother 
 would wave her wand over their heads and they 
 should suddenly find themselves queens. Yet, with 
 a kingdom ready made at hand, peopled with the 
 most loving of subjects, they look abroad for a great 
 work and sigh " If we only had careers ! " 
 
WANTED— A CAREER 77 
 
 You can't all paint pictures or carve statues or 
 write books, but you can learn how to be wise, com- 
 petent, firm, tender mothers. You can paint pictures 
 on little brains, carve statues in little characters, 
 write books in little lives whose influence will live 
 forever. Such a career would make men count you 
 a greater woman than if your image were found 
 worthy to fill a niche in the Hall of Fame. 
 
 There is no career in the world which offers such 
 opportunities to women as that of being good and 
 wise mothers. None which is so little crowded. 
 None which offers such rewards. It calls forth your 
 highest wisdom, your deepest study, your best ef- 
 forts. It makes demands upon your brain, your 
 heart and your life. It is a career whose heights are 
 never completely scaled while life lasts, and is the 
 only one which brings with it a constant, daily 
 knowledge that you are doing the best you can with 
 your life. 
 
 No career brings that certainty to a woman's heart 
 except the career of motherhood. 
 
THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 
 
THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE. 
 
 LET us begin at the very beginning and be 
 sure first of all that you are in love. For 
 what is love and what is being in love? 
 A little reasoning and a little serious 
 thought on this subject will not do you any harm, 
 provided you can think whether you are in love or 
 out of it, for to be able to think is a great and an un- 
 common gift. First of all there is a difference be- 
 tween loving a man and being in love with him. 
 You have found a man you think you can live with, 
 but have you found a man whom you know you 
 cannot live without ? Do you love the way he loves 
 you, or do you love love itself, or are you in love 
 with the man? If you think you are in love, and if 
 you believe that you love the man himself and not 
 the way he makes love to you, ask yourself these 
 questions. 
 
 What would you give up for him? Would you 
 leave your home, your mother and your father? 
 Would you be willing to give up your sister and 
 your brother and never see any of your friends again 
 and go away with him to a foreign country or out 
 on a lonely farm or be banished with him to a desert 
 6 8i 
 
82 THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 
 
 island, if you could not get him without these sacri- 
 fices? If he should lose the money he has and be 
 crippled for life so that he could never earn another 
 dollar, would you be willing to go out into the world 
 and earn both your living and his, or to die trying? 
 Is there enough character, mentality and power to 
 make something of his life in the man himself ? Has 
 he a mind which would be a store-house for your 
 mind for the coming years ? Is his treatment of you 
 and of his friends and of his business as upright and 
 generous as would lead you to believe that he would 
 be steadfast and faithful to you after you had given 
 up everybody and everything for him? Have you 
 studied his family? Have you watched his father 
 and his mother? Have you had an opportunity to 
 mingle in their home life? Do you know whether 
 his mother was a woman capable of training a son 
 and have you ever stopped to think whether he has 
 acquired all the graces of character and the external 
 courtesies, which are so pleasing, just by accident, 
 and that later on he may grow into the objectional 
 bore that his father is, or the selfish, shallow, nar- 
 row-minded person that his mother has become ? In 
 other words, have you any solid foundation for be- 
 ing in love with this particular man, or are you and 
 he and your love for each other just careless acci- 
 dents, which the first reverse or the first quarrel 
 would obliterate or destroy ? 
 
THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 83 
 
 If you cannot answer the most of these questions 
 satisfactorily to yourself, you are not in love and 
 have no right to be engaged and the sooner you 
 break it ofif and turn your mind to other things the 
 better it will be for you. There is no such thing as 
 a happy marriage based on respect, or to find a home, 
 or to better one's social condition, or for money. 
 The only solid foundation for marriage is a love 
 which will bear all disappointments, all reverses, 
 sickness and disaster in whatsoever form it comes, 
 with the thankfulness that it has come to you two to- 
 gether and that you need not bear it alone. Mar- 
 riage is a double burden-bearing, double joy-giving 
 promise, which fulfills itself only in its completeness, 
 when based on the love which will bear the search- 
 light of the questions I have asked. 
 
 In marriage the sole right you have to better your 
 condition is that you take into your heart the joy of 
 a great and enduring love. If with it there should 
 come riches, and the open door to society, oppor- 
 tunities of travel and an entrance to a world of cul- 
 ture, you could not have obtained without this mar- 
 riage, that is a gain which comes as an accessory and 
 for it you may be as thankful as your nature will 
 permit, but these very joys of ease and luxury may 
 prove the undermining of your love and the de- 
 struction of your happiness, for the real true love in 
 li^e is strengthened with the strength to defy even 
 
84 THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 
 
 death itself by pain and sorrow and what the world 
 calls disaster. 
 
 A man and a woman who are not drawn together 
 closer by hardship and poverty and sorrow and 
 whose love is not broadened and deepened and made 
 more tender by a grief which reaches to the depths of 
 the soul, either were never in love with each other, or 
 else have no depth of character on which to build a 
 life worth living. But at the begitming no young 
 heart can bring itself to believe these truths, al- 
 though older ones know them to be the foundation of 
 married life. Therefore the young woman who be- 
 lieves that she has promised to marry the man of all 
 others with whom she would live her life according 
 to the marriage service, would perhaps do well to 
 think a little over a few suggestions as to her con- 
 duct. 
 
 In the first place be dignified. Be dignified with 
 your own family, and avoid as much as possible the 
 idle and vulgar jesting on a sacred subject which 
 every engaged girl suffers from more or less. Do 
 not be too confidential about what your lover says 
 and does, even to your own mother. Above all 
 avoid telling your " best friend." Those sacred 
 confidences will never be appreciated by anyone. 
 The curse of America above the curse of any other 
 nation on this round globe to-day, is the curse of 
 being an unsentimental and ridicule-loving nation — 
 
THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 85 
 
 a nation which has so long feared to express or ap- 
 prove of any emotion or tender sentiment that it is 
 gradually growing to be permanently bereft of them. 
 No American born with tender sentiment and gen- 
 erous emotion, whether of love, religion or friend- 
 ship, could count five friends to whom he would dare 
 express his innermost thoughts on these subjects 
 without fear of our national bugbear, ridicule. 
 
 Remember this, and believe it whether you wish 
 to believe it or not. No matter how much interest is 
 expressed in your engagement or your love, tell no 
 one how you feel nor betray your lover's confidences. 
 Things which you might say to your best friend or 
 to your mother might sound perfectly proper as you 
 speak them when you are wrought up to the point of 
 seeking sympathy in your joy, but before you speak, 
 ask yourself how it would sound when repeated, for 
 it always is repeated and generally laughed at. 
 Next, if you are a generous young soul and very 
 much in love, you will find it a most tempting 
 thought to discuss your lover with his family. 
 Avoid this! Avoid any confidences on your own 
 part, although if you can control yourself, I would 
 advise you to study his family in order to know what 
 in the future you may avoid. You will learn many 
 little secrets of his character, his likes and his dis- 
 likes, which may help you in your understanding of 
 him when he is your husband, but under no circum- 
 
86 THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 
 
 stances make any confidences on your own part, for 
 you will be quite safe in believing that his family, 
 especially his mother, regards you as an interloper 
 and is jealous of her son's love for you. If you go 
 on this plan you may find that in your specific case, 
 I am wrong. If that be true and you should flatter 
 me by following my advice, you will be pleasantly 
 disappointed and you will not only have lost nothing 
 yourself, but you will have gained in dignity and 
 self-respect in your own eyes. 
 
 It seems to be a curious fact that a mother should 
 so often be jealous of her son's love for another 
 woman and so seldom jealous of her daughter's love 
 for a man. It may be accounted for in the old 
 rhyme, 
 
 " My son 's my son till he gets him a wife, 
 But my daughter 's my daughter all her life. 
 
 Perhaps it is a comfort for a mother to have her 
 daughter depend upon her and consult her almost as 
 much after marriage as when she was a girl at home. 
 Perhaps it is hard for this same mother to see her 
 son so cheerfully break all home ties and establish 
 a family and a home of his own in which she may 
 not meddle nor advise, but it is cruel and malicious 
 of her to allow the public to discover her jealousy or 
 to compel her new daughter-in-law to suffer thereby. 
 
 But this fact of a mother's jealousy of her son's 
 
THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 87 
 
 wife has been brought home to me by innumerable 
 confidences of girls whose marriages were otherwise 
 extremely happy. 
 
 For another thing make your engagements as 
 short as possible and your marriages as long as pos- 
 sible. After your mind is once made up with all 
 seriousness and due regard for your future happi- 
 ness, marry without considering the bettering of 
 your fortunes or the conventionalities. If the man 
 you are to marry is a suitable life partner and you 
 are really in love with each other, it is not only ab- 
 surd to wait the conventional length of time, but it 
 is a menace to your happiness. 
 
 Two young married women were talking to me 
 the other day and one of them said : 
 
 " I was engaged three months and I never saw my 
 husband's family until we went to visit them on our 
 wedding tour, and thank Heaven I didn't, for if I 
 had known what kind of people they were, I never 
 would have dared to trust my happiness to their son 
 and brother, for a more uncongenial, provincial, 
 shallow family never existed. I should go insane if 
 I had to live with them a month, nor can I under- 
 stand how such a man as my husband, so cultivated, 
 so broad-minded, so entirely a gentleman, could have 
 sprung from such stock." 
 
 I couldn't help reminding this girl of the pond lily, 
 the purest flower that grows, which springs from 
 stagnant water and green slime. 
 
88 THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 
 
 She laughed and added that they disapproved of 
 her with all the strength of their narrow natures. 
 
 The other girl said, " My husband's home life was 
 made so wretched and disagreeable to him that he 
 ran away from home and came to the city without a 
 cent in his pocket, earned money in any way he could 
 until he studied law and was admitted to the bar. 
 For this offense his father disinherited him. When 
 I married him I allowed him to do in his own house 
 everything which was forbidden in his father's, with 
 the result that he the most domestic of men and we 
 have the happiest sort of a married life. But his 
 mother and sister denounce me wherever they go for 
 having ruined his character and alienated him from 
 their sweet home influences, simply because I allow 
 him to smoke all over the house." 
 
 Now here were two examples of mother's jeal- 
 ousy of the happiness their sons found in another 
 home than theirs and with other women. 
 
 Therefore I repeat, stand on your own dignity. 
 Better begin your married life on your husband's in- 
 come, if it is barely enough to support you both, 
 than to accept financial assistance from either his 
 family or yours, which will give them the right to 
 direct your expenditures or to look into your icebox. 
 Remember that you are starting a home of your own 
 where you are to be the sole mistress and your hus- 
 band the sole master. You are founding a family 
 
THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 89 
 
 and entering into the most dignified station in life. 
 Therefore see to it that you put your neck under no 
 yoke which later you might be willing to give half 
 your possessions to remove, but the precedent will 
 be established and you will have done it yourself. 
 Arrange to keep house even if you can only afford 
 two rooms and only to keep a servant half of the 
 time, for boarding for two young people is one of 
 the worst mistakes that you can make. Not only 
 must you undergo the gossip of the boarding house 
 or hotel, but you will find yourselves sharing in it 
 unconsciously and degenerating to the level of 
 boarding house brides and grooms. 
 
 Above everything else arrange to live alone. No 
 roof was ever built large enough to cover two fami- 
 lies. For your husband's sake do not arrange to 
 have your own mother live in the same house for 
 your own convenience or hers any more than you 
 would care to have your husband foist his mother 
 upon you. No matter how much more economical 
 or apparently convenient this plan would be, make 
 it one of your cardinal principles to avoid it. Live, 
 if necessary, upon half your husband's income and 
 devote the other half cheerfully to the support of any 
 of his dependent relatives, but never as long as you 
 have strength to say no, permit them to get a foot- 
 hold in your house during the first few years of mar- 
 riage. Life even alone is difificult enough at first for 
 the man and woman who have decided to live it to- 
 
90 THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 
 
 gether. It becomes complicated and unbearable if 
 a third is in the family, for sharp tones, quick words 
 and little misunderstandings, which of themselves 
 could be explained away by a word and a smile, 
 grow into silences, averted faces and even quarrels 
 when there is another and an alien in the family to 
 sympathize or condemn. 
 
 For the same reason that it is unwise to discuss 
 your lover's tenderness and virtues with any living 
 soul, it is worse than unwise to discuss his faults. 
 Suppose he is selfish. Perhaps you are too. No one 
 is so quick to detect selfishness as the selfish, for he 
 wants the same thing that you want! Remember 
 that you are the only person in the world who can 
 mend his faults and you can only do that through 
 tactful love. Your husband will undertake your 
 support, but you must undertake his education, for 
 few husbands grow ready made. They are the 
 result of evolution and you must be the process. 
 
 I once heard the most delicious reproof adminis- 
 tered by a woman to her husband in the observation 
 car of the Pennsylvania Limited. An elderly 
 woman was brought in who seemed half fainting. 
 All the chairs were occupied, and someone ex- 
 claimed : 
 
 " She ought to have the most comfortable chair 
 here!" 
 
 Whereupon the lady turned to her husband and 
 said: 
 
THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 91 
 
 " Then, Roger, give her your chair ! " 
 
 The man blushed crimson for he had made him- 
 self most offensive to the other passengers by ap- 
 propriating desirable chairs all during the journey. 
 The passengers all smiled when he scrambled up — 
 and his wife continued to occupy her camp stool 
 brought in from the platform. 
 
 But he was an exception and let us be thankful 
 that we do not see his like every day. 
 
 All life is selfish. All love is selfish and therefore 
 in order to be the most selfish and obtain the most 
 from life and love I can give the young person in 
 love this one maxim, which is unfailing. Strive to 
 be the one to give the most, if you would be happiest. 
 If you suffer a lack do not avenge yourself by with- 
 holding more, but look for an opportunity to pour 
 out a generous measure and shut your eyes to the 
 past. It is the easiest thing in the world to forget 
 a small trouble if you are in love. Make it your per- 
 sonal business to make your lover happy. What a 
 delightful commentary on your understanding of 
 the word " love " it would be if people said of you 
 " Her husband seems to be the happiest man I ever 
 saw ! " You will find this the surest way in the 
 world to obtain an overwhelming happiness for 
 yourself. By that you know that I do not mean to 
 be abject or slavish. I am pre-supposing you to be 
 a young person of sense and one with a soul to save. 
 
92 THE YOUNG GIRL IN LOVE 
 
 If not, you will not have read me this far, so you will 
 not know that you are not worth saving ! 
 
 The view which the ordinary young person takes 
 of love is all wrong. She thinks that being in love 
 brings happiness, and therefore she takes her lantern 
 and goes a-hunting for it. Alas ! To many, being 
 in love brings pain — more pain than gladness and 
 only the wise ones know how to transform the pain 
 into a joy of suffering for the loved one. 
 
 To be in love is to know anxiety in the hour of his 
 illness and apprehension over his weakness; to feel 
 responsibility which you must bear for yourself. No 
 one can even share it with you to lighten your bur- 
 den. To be in love is to have half your life go with 
 him when the door closes, and to live only for his re- 
 turn. It is to have all your selfish desires lose shape 
 and resolve themselves into ambitions for him. It 
 is to find your happiness in his ; your ideals to take a 
 more virile form ; your hopes a loftier aspect. It is 
 to forget yourself and your eager search for happi- 
 ness and to merge your whole existence into a prayer 
 to do more, to give more, to be more, not for the ap- 
 proval of your little world, but, closing the door on 
 all in the great Without, to pour yourself and all 
 that you are and all that you hope to be into the 
 small enclosed Within — for his sake. 
 
 That is to be in love. 
 
 Are you? 
 
HOW MEN PROPOSE 
 
HOW MEN PROPOSE 
 
 IF there is a living man to-day who ever pro- 
 posed to a woman and knows how he did it 
 or what he said or how he came to say it, I 
 would like to know where he is, for it is a 
 subject upon which most men are profoundly ignor- 
 ant. Yet their wives know all about it and even the 
 most grand-motherly of them will pause in the knit- 
 ting of their children's children's socks to bridle and 
 blush and look knowing if the question is broached 
 of how men propose. 
 
 All of which leads to the belief that women have 
 more to do with the proposing than the men them- 
 selves. For if men planned the campaign carefully 
 and led up to the declaration deliberately, it is more 
 than likely that a few of them at least, would re- 
 member something about it. No business deal; no 
 change of residence ; no journey to Europe ever took 
 place in their lives that they could not tell you just 
 when the idea came to them first, what induced them 
 to undertake it and just how they felt while they 
 were performing it. 
 
 All except their proposal ! That is a misty blur in 
 their memories and except for the marriage certifi- 
 
 95 
 
96 HOW MEN PROPOSE 
 
 cate which their wife framed and hung over the 
 bureau, they might not sometimes realize that they 
 ever said anything on the subject at all. 
 
 I have read a great many magazine articles advo- 
 cating that proposing should come from woman in- 
 stead of from man, and I always mentally reply : 
 " Why, dear sirs and mesdames, it does anyway ! " 
 Perhaps the man did say the words but the woman 
 selected the time and place and so deserves the 
 credit. Will the question ever be decided? Samp- 
 son planned the battle of Santiago but Schley spoke 
 the words, and forever and a day the discussion will 
 go on as to who deserves the credit. But the real 
 question is " Was the battle won ? " And the real 
 answer is " There is glory enough for all." 
 
 I dare say that most men have a dual feeling after 
 the proposal is over — one of surprise that they did it, 
 the other of relief that it is over. The woman, as a 
 rule, has but one — a complacent pride in having 
 made him do just as she had planned. No wonder 
 the men are a bit dazed. No wonder they rub their 
 eyes in looking back. They want to see clearly into 
 a mirror over which a woman's cleverness has 
 breathed a mist. 
 
 Oh, don't get excited, the few of you who pursued 
 your own special Her for over a year or several, 
 trying to get a chance to say the fatal words. Don't 
 tell me the details of your despairing chase over two 
 
HOW MEN PROPOSE 97 
 
 continents. Don't refuse to admit that she had you 
 hypnotized ! I say that you were doing just exactly 
 what she wanted you to do, and that she was holding 
 you off while she tried to forget the Other Fellow. 
 Did you think that it was Fate which always inter- 
 vened and prevented the hot words from pouring 
 from your eager lips ? 
 
 I am guilty of wondering if any woman in the 
 world was ever honestly surprised by an offer of 
 marriage, or if the words " This is so sudden " was 
 ever a sincere expression of amazement. Women 
 are so intuitive in the matter of love making and 
 know all about a man's feeling for them so long be- 
 fore he even suspects it himself that men are really 
 handicapped by their ignorance. 
 
 Still they do very well. 
 
 Of course there is a good deal of planning on the 
 woman's part to bring the man to the point where he 
 wants to propose. That is a woman's prerogative 
 and girls of fifteen are sometimes as capable at it as 
 a beauty of thirty. Some of our grandmothers were 
 married at fifteen, I hasten to add, lest I shock those 
 who are opposed to child labor, and do you think 
 that her fine, firm, clever, wrinkled old hand, with 
 whose usefulness you are so well acquainted and 
 which governed the family fortunes for fifty years 
 or more, was not shyly raised to beckon her mate, 
 when it was smooth and dimpled and young ? Has 
 
98 HOW MEN PROPOSE 
 
 she ever let any crisis escape her since ? Then why 
 think that she was dazed by that First Great 
 Crisis? 
 
 No, women always have a hand in tlie selection of 
 a husband, but they are handicapped in that they are 
 generally obliged to confine their operations to the 
 men whom Fate throws in their path. Few of them 
 have the opportunity or the courage to start out and 
 enlarge their horizon or to meet men of other climes 
 or in other walks of life. Perhaps as women grow 
 more emancipated, they may do this, but they are not 
 doing it now. And why should they not, pray ? Is 
 it any more unwomanly for a woman, in selecting 
 her husband, to think what sort of a father he will 
 make to her children, than for a man to take into 
 consideration the sort of a mother this or that 
 woman will make? Not at all. And the woman 
 who is a real woman and who wants children, will 
 think this very thing, over which there is a deal of 
 false and spurious modesty wasted, before she allows 
 a certain man to propose. 
 
 How do men propose? It is a wonder that some 
 of them are ever permitted to propose to anything. 
 
 Each man makes love and proposes according to 
 his kind. Sometimes the mere wording of his pro- 
 posal gives the keynote to his character. I know of 
 one man who proposed to his wife in these abrupt 
 words, which were never led up to by any tender 
 
HOW MEN PROPOSE 99 
 
 nothings, but were blurted out, without warning. 
 He said : 
 
 " Say, Jess, I'm going to marry you." And Jess 
 modestly looked down and blushed and lisped out: 
 "Are you, John?" 
 
 So then they were engaged. 
 
 Now he was a sharp, shrewd business man with 
 little sentiment. He knew Jess to come of a good 
 family, that she was sweet, clever and " a good fel- 
 low." He also believed that she would make a good 
 wife and mother, and so she has. 
 
 He considered her possibilities a long, long time 
 before he decided to put the question to her, even in 
 the brief form he used. But Jess knew all that time 
 that he was going to just as well as she knew it after 
 he had done so, and so did I. She met and liked his 
 family, knew that his father could promote him 
 (which he has done) that the son was a money 
 maker (which he has proved to be) and that he 
 would turn out what is called " a generous pro- 
 vider." All of which has come true. He thinks he 
 held off of his own accord and we three have had 
 many a friendly laugh over his tardiness in propo- 
 sing, since. But Jess and I know that she could have 
 led him to the point months before, had she been so 
 minded. 
 
 It is rather amusing ito catch her eye, sometimes, 
 at a dinner party, where personal reminiscences 
 
loo HOW MEN PROPOSE 
 
 are going on, for Jess is one of those few women 
 who are so clever that they are willing to hide their 
 cleverness in order to gain their point. 
 
 The shy man, to mention the antithesis of Jess's 
 husband, is quite as difficult and slow to land but 
 from opposite reasons. The shy man, also fre^ 
 quently makes an excellent husband and is generally 
 found attached to the aggressive, self-poised woman. 
 It requires no stretch of the imagination to believe 
 that such a woman did the proposing, but you may 
 be far from the truth even there. Proposing re- 
 quires a sort of plunge ; a burst of courage ; a bravery 
 which must be pumped up for the occasion and that 
 sort of thing your shy man is used to. He cannot 
 even ask a girl to take a walk with him without per- 
 spiring under his hat band, so he is accustomed to 
 being afraid and going home without having done it 
 and then longing for it in secret and finally, goaded 
 to desperation, of making a bolt for it. That is a 
 history of his daily emotional life, consequently it 
 is quite likely to be true that after the girl has de- 
 cided which shy man she wants, she simply sits down 
 and waits until his emotion gets to the exploding 
 point. She really doesn't have to work as hard as 
 Jess did, for Jess never dared lose sight of her man 
 for even a few days lest some other girl should be 
 working along her lines, perhaps possessing attrac- 
 tions which she lacked, whereas the self-poised girl 
 
HOW MEN PROPOSE loi 
 
 could go away for six months and come back to find 
 her shy man lying upon her doorstep just where she 
 had left him. A great deal of humble, touching, 
 gratitude is mixed up in a shy man's wooing, and 
 unless the girl is foolish enough to let him become so 
 well fed that he feels his oats and comes to realize 
 his true worth, he makes the best of husbands. But 
 the shy man who finds himself, loses the charm 
 which made him mainly attractive. A naturally shy 
 man whose wife has been careless enough to over- 
 flatter him becomes jaunty. Need I say more? 
 
 The progression which the world is according 
 woman, is leading to a new basis for marriage. 
 Women are demanding more in a husband — not 
 from a husband. They are not contented to take any 
 old thing and put up with it just simply in order to 
 be married, for the life of the bachelor girl is so full 
 of possibilities and the business woman of to-day 
 is a factor in life which no one can afiford to ignore. 
 Women divorce their husbands now for far less 
 cause than they used to be obliged to furnish and 
 while we deplore this, it marks a period in our pro- 
 gression and is making the men sit up. 
 
 This logically leads to another result. It is no 
 longer a sign of a girl's popularity or prowess in the 
 hunting field to exhibit a goodly row of scalps hang- 
 ing from her belt. Girls have their aims, and are as 
 proud in those days of a record at golf or a tennis 
 
I02 HOW MEN PROPOSE 
 
 championship as their elders used to be of the reputa- 
 tion of a syren. 
 
 Men who are slow to realize this change are likely 
 to receive jolts. A man of this sort once said to a 
 modern girl, in rather a fretful way : 
 
 " You know that I am going to propose to you 
 some day, don't you ? " 
 
 The girl was a true daughter of Eve and for a 
 moment it was a temptation to her to lead him on — 
 to pretend amazement, as he wished her to — to blush 
 and look down. But her good sense came to the 
 rescue and her commercial instinct saved the day. 
 She did not want him as a husband, but he was too 
 intelligent and agreeable either to waste or to lose. 
 He bade fair to marry an interesting girl (after she 
 herself had released him) and she wished to keep 
 him as a friend after she had married the Only One. 
 So she said : 
 
 " No, I do not know it, and what is more, neither 
 do you. For you are not going to do it." 
 
 " Why, you are never going to refuse me when I 
 do ? " he said in a fright so real that it was both flat- 
 tering and pathetic. 
 
 " I pray every day, ' Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion,' " she replied, thus delicately bolstering his self- 
 love. " So please don't tempt me to marry you by 
 asking me to. I am so weak, I might yield and then 
 we should both be sorry forever and a day." 
 
HOW MEN PROPOSE 103 
 
 "But why? Why should we be sorry?" 
 
 " Because we are not suited to each other. We 
 have not the same tastes. We do not admire the 
 same things nor have the same ideals. You are con- 
 servative. I am too radical. The things you ap- 
 plaud in me as a friend, or even a sweetheart, you 
 would condemn in me as a wife. You think you 
 could reform me but you couldn't, and you would 
 turn into such a prig and bore me so unmercifully 
 that I would be obliged to kill you and marry some- 
 body else just for a rest." 
 
 Such wilful exaggeration diverted him and he pre- 
 tended to be vastly amused. But he thought it over 
 in private and had the good sense to agree with her. 
 He never proposed. He married a nice girl; the 
 other girl married The Only Man and the four often 
 go to the theatre together. 
 
 So the psychological moment may just as often 
 turn out to be the one in which a woman wards off 
 a proposal as one in which she leads a man on to 
 make one. For now that women realize how much 
 they have to do with how and when a man proposes, 
 they are no longer proud of their power to win pro- 
 posals. 
 
 To make a man propose nowadays is so easy it is 
 like stealing candy from a baby. 
 
 Nice women don't do it. 
 
THE ETHICS OF FLIRTATION 
 
THE ETHICS OF FLIRTATION 
 
 NONE but a nation which has reached the 
 highest point in civilization can boast of 
 flirtation in its most refined and admira- 
 ble form. But lest you mistake the true 
 meaning of the term " flirtation " let me hasten to 
 give the definition I attach to the word as I use it in 
 these pages. If you confound it with the hollow 
 coquetry and sensual gallantry displayed by Gallic 
 nations in their before-marriage manoeuvres, you 
 will utterly mistake and misread every word herein 
 contained. If your ethics of life are so low as to 
 include a knowledge of the cheap street acquaint- 
 anceship struck up between ignorant shopgirls or 
 factory hands and flashy clerks, which are often 
 characterized as " flirtations," you will be making 
 an even more humiliating mistake. 
 
 Flirtation as I define it for the purpose of this 
 sketch is the dainty, coquettish, clean-minded Amer- 
 ican article, known and practiced by the most refined 
 and respected women. Therefore it will at once be 
 seen, that only a nation which places woman on the 
 highest pinnacle of respect and which accords to 
 
 107 
 
io8 THE ETHICS OF FLIRTATION 
 
 woman as a factor in our national history the great- 
 est privileges, can boast of being the home of the 
 flirtation between women and men — a flirtation un- 
 chaperoned, clean, healthy, piquant, alluring and 
 wholly necessary in the problem of marriage. And 
 only America may lay claim to that boast, as only in 
 America is flirtation found in its original purity. 
 
 If there are any who claim that even England 
 should be included in that statement, it only goes to 
 show an ignorance of the English character as well 
 as of the English acceptance of the term flirtation. 
 
 If there are others who object to the suggestion 
 made that the problem of marriage demands flirta- 
 tion, let me explain a bit further. 
 
 I do not believe in an idle flirtation, to wile away 
 an empty summer which otherwise would bore. 
 Nor do I believe in a deliberate flirtation which has 
 no possible hope of ultimate marriage. If marriage 
 is utterly out of the question and either or both are 
 foredoomed to another, then a flirtation becomes a 
 vicious and hateful thing, wicked in its conception 
 and an iniquity in its fulfilment. This therefore, 
 wipes from the face of the social map, flirtations be- 
 tween married men and women, either with each 
 other or with an unattached partner. 
 
 But if there is an honest, no matter how faint, 
 possibility that a certain bachelor and a certain spin- 
 ster may eventually marry, then and there is a flirta- 
 
THE ETHICS OF FLIRTATION 109 
 
 tion not only permissible but almost, from a femi- 
 nine point of view, imperative. 
 
 Before we go any further let me put a few ques- 
 tions. Do any of you who may object on moral or 
 ethical grounds, to flirtation in any of its manifold 
 forms, know of a single case where a man's heart 
 has been broken by a flirtation ? In the second place, 
 were you ever engaged in a legitimate flirtation ? 
 
 Now a legitimate flirtation is one where the 
 woman does not know her own mind, and therefore 
 is obliged to lead a man on in order to discover her 
 own estimate of him. 
 
 We bar male flirts not only from this discussion, 
 but from the face of the earth, for no man has a right 
 to begin a flirtation. His attentions must always be 
 of such an ephemeral nature that no woman with 
 any common sense could mistake them for the be- 
 ginnings of a love afifair. Or, if he has decided in 
 his own mind, the chivalry he himself and all his 
 fellowmen have taught women to expect from him 
 as a typical American man, demands that his inten- 
 tions must be serious ; neither carelessly entered into 
 nor lightly set aside. 
 
 No country in the world boasts as many breach of 
 promise suits as the United States, which speaks ex- 
 cellently for our morals and our justice and our chiv- 
 alry. Our women are taught by precept and example 
 that they can depend upon the word of an American 
 
no THE ETHICS OF FLIRTATION 
 
 man when he talks of marriage. And public senti- 
 ment and the law back them up. In some countries 
 they make both parties sign contracts to bind them. 
 How much sympathy or consideration would such a 
 woman receive if she had not her written contract to 
 prove that her love was sought under promise of 
 marriage ? 
 
 American men are discouraged from flirting by 
 the law which holds them responsible; by public 
 sentiment which forbids them and by their own chiv- 
 alry which demands that they shall protect and de- 
 fend all women. Continental chivalry compels a 
 man to defend a woman against all other men. 
 American chivalry compels him to defend a woman 
 against even himself. 
 
 Now flirtation having been declared a feminine 
 prerogative and legitimate under certain circum- 
 stances and conditions, let us look at those circum- 
 stances and glance at those conditions. 
 
 Man is a privileged character. He may roam the 
 world over and if so be his fancy lights on a Hotten- 
 tot maid, he is free to woo her under her own vine 
 and fig tree and choose her from all white ladies to 
 be his and his alone. But some women cannot roam 
 far, and many cannot roam at all, so that even those 
 who have Hottentot preferences must put up with 
 that which comes along and chooses her. 
 
 This limits, not only her choice, but her amuse- 
 
THE ETHICS OF FLIRTATION iii 
 
 ment. She must have a little attention to be like 
 other girls, and if she can't have a blue-eyed man, 
 when she has always declared that no brown-eyed 
 need apply, and if the brown-eyed man comes along 
 in an automobile, and no blue-eyed man makes his 
 appearance — or worse still, if the blue-eyed man pre- 
 fers the girl across the street, what is there left for 
 the first girl but to flirt with the brown-eyed auto- 
 mobile, and let the girl across the street take the dust 
 and odour of gasoline? 
 
 Then too, a man has the privilege of making up 
 his mind. He can decide when he wants to talk 
 business with the girl, and if she has not particu- 
 larly cared for him, or if he has been abnormally 
 cautious about making his attentions too marked, or 
 if he is the sort who makes up his mind the moment 
 he sees the right girl for him and so proposes to her 
 before she has fairly got her breath after the shock 
 of the introduction, what is she to do? She can't 
 close off her thoroughfares by snapping out a " no " 
 before she knows what his salary is or what his firm 
 thinks of his services, or whether he eats with his 
 knife or pours his coffee into his saucer. She must 
 lead him on a little, if for nothing else than to dis- 
 cover his taste in neckties. There are certain very 
 estimable men who wear a red tie with a pink shirt. 
 There are others with whose neckties a sensitive 
 woman could not live in the house one hour. 
 
112 THE ETHICS OF FLIRTATION 
 
 Women must be protected in married life from 
 other things besides burglars and fire. That is why 
 a moderate amount of flirtation is not only permis- 
 sible to a woman but in some cases, an actual neces- 
 sity. 
 
 And yet, here comes the sad question, does pro- 
 tection, protect? Let the politicians answer that 
 from a tariff standpoint, but a woman will always 
 take a domestic view of it and answer it from the 
 personal angle which affects her own particular pri- 
 vate purse and household. 
 
 Let women coquet, flirt, lead a man on, blow hot 
 and blow cold, raise him to the pinnacle of bliss by a 
 smile, or dash him on the sharp rocks of despair by 
 being " not at home " when he calls to propose, yet 
 though she knew him in kindergarten days and has 
 not been permitted to lose sight of him for more 
 than a week at a time since, — if she marries him, she 
 will discover, before the new is off the soles of her 
 travelling shoes, that she has married a perfect 
 stranger and that what she is most in need of is an 
 introduction to her own husband. 
 
 You think you know a man simply because you 
 have been flirting with him for fifteen or twenty 
 years? My dear girl, you won't know him after 
 you have been married to him a year ! 
 
 And why ? 
 
 The Lord help me, I don't know ! 
 
THE ETHICS OF FLIRTATION 113 
 
 I suppose it is because he had on his company 
 manners, just as you did. Or perhaps you married 
 him with your eyes shut. Or perhaps you were too 
 much in love to have any sense left at all. Or per- 
 haps the mere possessing what he has had to work 
 so hard to get makes him want to settle down and 
 rest forevermore. Or perhaps he deliberately hid 
 his faults from you, knowing that you would never 
 marry him if you knew them. Or perhaps you two 
 only talked of yourselves as most lovers do, and you 
 forgot that his opinions on other questions of life 
 would make a violent difference to you when you 
 were tied to him for life and discovered that you dis- 
 agreed with him on every possible subject under the 
 sun, from the way to handle the bridge crush to 
 whether to boil the drinking water. Or perhaps his 
 modesty made him hide his virtues so that you found 
 him so much grander and finer and more sympa- 
 thetic that you felt as if you had bought a velveteen 
 dress at a sale and on trying it on found it to be silk 
 velvet. At any rate, all that I maintain is that you 
 don't really know a man even if you do flirt with 
 him. You run no more risks marrying a man at the 
 end of three months than at the end of three years, 
 for you would find that you had married a perfect 
 stranger in either case. 
 
 Therefore flirtation is merely a joyous pastime 
 which should be granted women with a bow and a 
 8 
 
114 THE ETHICS OF FLIRTATION 
 
 smile. It does no harm because the men are always 
 on the lookout to discover it before it fairly has time 
 to show its face. Sometimes it does a little good, 
 and in a most unexpected way, for it has been 
 known to take the conceit out of even a beautiful 
 woman — which sounds like an old Testament mir- 
 acle. But this is how it has happened. 
 
 If you think you are as clever as you are beautiful 
 and that you will have a quiet little flirtation with 
 Summersby during July and thus wile away a month 
 which promises to be tedious because Jack cannot get 
 away until August, it is rather discouraging to dis- 
 cover that Summersby has known all along of your 
 engagement, isn't it? That is one reason why it is 
 wrong for engaged people to flirt with others — you 
 are so apt to get found out. Besides giving you such 
 a poor opinion of the man who has been so dishonest 
 as to let you think you were fooling him. Such 
 things are real blows. Some people never get over 
 them. 
 
 To old age, the flirtations of youth often represent 
 the only playtime of life. It is too sad for the sweet- 
 faced old lady in the chimney corner to look back to 
 the courting days of the husband she has lost and to 
 remember that once she and John had their engage- 
 ment broken and patched up and had what every- 
 body except themselves called a flirtation, for too 
 many sad realities have robbed that time of all idea 
 
THE ETHICS OF FLIRTATION 115 
 
 of playfulness. There are little faces which look 
 down from the walls, from pictures taken in old- 
 fashioned sleeveless frocks and quaint bodices and 
 bootees, which are not among the other faces at 
 Thanksgiving and Christmas time. There are mem- 
 ories of dangers passed through, prayed through, 
 fought through, lived through, somehow; dangers 
 which threatened the health or life or honour of 
 John or the children, which take all pleasure from 
 living over the days of frivolity with John the hus- 
 band. But mention, if you will, the little harmless 
 flirtations which grandmother had with Joel 
 Thomas, who lived to be a senator, or with Doctor 
 Schott, who went as a missionary to Madagascar 
 afterwards or with Uncle Jim before Aunt Letty 
 grew old enough for him to switch his be-fooled 
 affections to her, if you want to see grandmother's 
 eyes grow bright and her cheeks flush and her lips 
 wreathe in smiles as she bridles and blushes and 
 tosses her dear old head and revels in her only play- 
 time — the never-to-be-forgotten flirtations of her 
 long lost youth. 
 
THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT 
 
THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT 
 
 EVERY broken engagement means just one 
 less divorce in this world. Therefore I 
 am a champion of the broken engagement. 
 I approve of them. I would advise every 
 girl who can break her engagement and live without 
 renewing it, to break it. If you can live without a 
 man, he is not the husband for you. If you can't, 
 why marry him. Nothing is simpler. 
 
 Marrying is something like writing. I am often 
 consulted by would-be authors. 
 
 " I believe I could write," they say to me, when 
 they see me endorsing a cheque. " It looks so easy." 
 (It is easy to endorse a cheque.) But I always have 
 a fierce reply ready. 
 
 " Can you live without writing? '* 
 " Why, certainly." 
 
 " Then do it I It's just like marrying. Don't do 
 it if you can possibly help it. Even then it will prol>> 
 ably make trouble — but you'll like it ! " 
 
 Most women can resist writing with the utmost 
 ease, if properly discouraged beforehand, nor have I 
 at my door the apparition of a single author who 
 persisted and wrote in spite of me and of herself. 
 
 119 
 
I20 THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT 
 
 Therefore I have done no harm — in that line at 
 least, while a number of editors are personally in- 
 debted to me, although they do not know it. 
 
 But few women can resist getting engaged. It 
 would be a waste of words to give the same advice 
 to a girl who contemplated accepting a man, but 
 after she has done it and the newness has worn ofif 
 the ring and the surprise of the whole thing has 
 somewhat dulled in her mind, then I would advise 
 her to break the engagement if she can. 
 
 Does that sound brutal, frivolous, unprincipled? 
 
 It is none of the three. Let me explain. 
 
 I do not mean for her to pick flaws in him or to be 
 on the lookout for somebody who might suit her 
 better. I would never advise any girl to look for 
 trouble. 
 
 If he has irritating personal habits which get on 
 your nerves, why did you not discover them before 
 you put him to the expense of getting a ring? 
 Nevertheless if you simply cannot stand his pipe, 
 think of it now. He will not give it up even for you, 
 although he may pretend to now. He smokes it on 
 the street and wherever you are not. Privately too, 
 he expects to smoke it when you are married. You 
 may be very pretty and attractive, but you do not 
 compare to the beauty and fragrance of a man's pipe. 
 So think. 
 
 Think too of the way he eats. 
 
THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT 121 
 
 I do not mean his table manners, though those of 
 many an otherwise nice, refined man would bear im- 
 provement, and if you are dainty, it may be that you 
 cannot bear to see even the man you love chew with 
 his mouth open or splash in his soup as if he took it 
 for a bath, or make of his mouth a hopper in which 
 he grinds portions of all his food at once. If he 
 can't reform, and few grown men can, — think. 
 Think before you are married to him and have to 
 stand it three awful times a day for all the awful 
 years. Break the engagement if you can bear the 
 thought of giving him up. 
 
 However, what I meant by the way he eats, was 
 what he eats. Find out if you Hke the same style of 
 cooking; the same sort of food. If he cares only for 
 plain roasts and vegetables au naturel, while you like 
 rich sauces, hot breads and French cooking, how 
 are you going to adjust yourselves ? Can you give 
 up your taste ? Don't deceive yourself that he will. 
 Men are not only more set in their tastes in food but 
 they care more for eating — as a race — than women. 
 Therefore, while it may seem funny to you now, and 
 you can make good stories out of your dissimilarity 
 in taste, with which to amuse your intimates, don't 
 forget that after you are married, this same obsti- 
 nacy in liking dishes which you hate, will get on your 
 nerves and make you want to throw his plain, hy- 
 gienic diet at his head instead of serving it to him 
 
122 THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT 
 
 garnished with parsley, on your table. Think, now, 
 and break your engagement if you don't love him 
 well enough to yield your taste more than half the 
 time. Prepare yourself also, for the irritation you 
 will feel when he ignores an artichoke with sauce 
 Hollandaise and asks you if you haven't a can of 
 baked beans in the house. It's infuriating to have a 
 husband like that. It isn't that you care whether he 
 has the beans or not. You would just as soon give 
 him beans at the proper time — Saturday night one 
 looks for beans. But it is the maddening thought 
 that he gives up an artichoke that costs a dollar, 
 dressed and served, for a dish of beans ! 
 
 Think too, of the cook's leaving and your taking 
 your meals for a few days at a restaurant. You will 
 either spend thirty minutes trying to find some 
 dishes that you both can eat, or you will be obliged 
 to go to the expense of ordering two sorts of every- 
 thing. Can you afford such a luxury for a husband ? 
 
 Few women can, and the fun of it generally wears 
 off soon after marriage. Think it over and break 
 the engagement if you can. 
 
 You will notice that the advice I am giving is 
 generic. I never advise anyone personally, and I 
 have been glad I do not, for once upon a time I 
 was sorely tempted, as you shall hear. 
 
 There was a young girl with whose family mine 
 had been intimate during the years when she was in 
 
THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT 123 
 
 boarding school. When she returned, she very soon 
 became one of us and we found her to be one of the 
 most high-minded, studious, refined girls we had 
 ever met. I, myself, was particularly charmed with 
 her manner. She was as unlike the modern debu- 
 tante, as we are taught to see her, as was possible 
 to conceive. Courteous, modest and charming, she 
 seemed to have but one flaw. She was utterly with- 
 out tact — ^that gracious, soothing mental excelsior 
 which packs breakable conversation and prevents 
 brittle people from smashing themselves on one an- 
 other's sharp corners. Sara — let us call her Sara, al- 
 though that was not her name — was supremely tact- 
 less, and often affronted her best friends by repeating 
 to them, under the mistaken name of honesty, un- 
 favourable comments or opinions of others. But 
 such was her nature that we knew she was guiltless 
 of the intention to offend and we excused and con- 
 tinued to love her. Her sheer worth of character 
 compelled us to forgive this one fault. 
 
 She was so worthy, so completely a little lady, that 
 we often wondered what sort of a man she would 
 marry. Alas, she soon settled the question for her- 
 self. Such a man as she proudly presented to us as 
 her fiance ! We looked at each other in dismay and 
 bitterly regretted that her father was rich and influ- 
 ential, for that misfortune had attracted a shallow, 
 coarse-minded, cheap, make-believe of a man. The 
 
124 THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT 
 
 first time I saw him I knew that he was as spurious 
 in morals as he was in manners. He was the sort of 
 a person who always surprised you if he used good 
 English — he so completely looked the part of the un- 
 grammatical. One felt sure that he was unclean of 
 mind. His eyes were set too closely together and he 
 had a furtive way with him when in the presence of 
 persons of real refinement, and of healthful, open, 
 honest natures, which gave the observer the convic- 
 tion that he was a cheap imitation of a gentleman. 
 I was sure, from the first moment that I saw him, 
 that he could and would break Sara's heart. 
 
 In vain, however, did she press me to express an 
 opinion of him. I put her off by declaring that I did 
 not know him well enough and then I took precious 
 good care not to know him any better than I did. 
 Intuition, in some cases, is better than knowledge 
 and oftener pleasanter. 
 
 Poor Sara, trying to do her duty by her in-laws- 
 to-be, made up a little party and took several of us, 
 including her prospective sister-in-law, Fannie, for a 
 few days' journey in her father's private car. Dur- 
 ing the whole time I hardly dared meet Sara's eyes. 
 Knowing her hatred of cheap slang and all that went 
 with it, I sincerely pitied her for having to bear the 
 flaunting tawdriness of her sister-in-law's mentality. 
 
 Far be it from me to decry slang or to object to 
 breeziness of conversation. But I do draw the line 
 
THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT 125 
 
 between the lady who descends into slang for the 
 fun of the thing with her own intimates and the 
 girl who cannot express herself in anything else — 
 who was born into the argot of cheap, tawdry 
 and demoralizing sports, and who could not express 
 herself in pure English to save herself from being 
 hanged. 
 
 When we got home we separated at the station 
 and each drove to her own house. Hardly, how- 
 ever, had I got my hat off before Sara came to see 
 me and to my utter astonishment, for she was un- 
 demonstrative to a degree, flung herself into my 
 arms in a flood of tears. 
 
 Too well I knew what she had come for. I only 
 wondered how thin the ice was which must bear my 
 weight. I had no wish to fall through and drown. 
 It was a delicate business which lay before me. 
 
 " What shall I do ? " she cried. " You must tell 
 me ! I will do whatever you say ! I can't even think 
 for myself any more ! " 
 
 " What is the matter ? What do you want me to 
 decide for you ? " 
 
 " Oh, tell me if you think I ever can be happy with 
 Oscar, when he comes of such an awful family! 
 How can he be so refined when his father and 
 mother are so unbearable? They make me fairly 
 sick! What if Oscar should develop any of those 
 traits as he grows older ? Men sometimes do, they 
 tell me I How could I stand it ? " 
 
126 THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT 
 
 "Are you obliged to live with his family?" I 
 asked to gain time. 
 
 " No, not always. But Oscar says he must have a 
 room always at their disposal and they talk all the 
 time about visiting us after we are married, and 
 Fannie expects to spend the whole winter with us, so 
 it will be just as bad. Oh, what shall I do ? " 
 
 " Don't cry so, my poor dear I Let's talk it over." 
 
 " Oh, talking won't do any good ! I came to ask 
 you to advise me about breaking my engagement." 
 
 " That I never will do ! " I said firmly. 
 
 " Oh, but you must ! I have no mother, no sister, 
 no friend but you." 
 
 " Are you very much in love with Oscar ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 " We are very congenial," she answered. " Our 
 tastes are exactly alike." 
 
 "They are? "I cried. 
 
 " Oh, I know you don't like him," she said. 
 " You can't hide it from me and Oscar is very jeal- 
 ous of your influence over me. He often begs me 
 not to go by anything you say. And while I want 
 to obey him, yet I felt that you were the only one 
 who knew Fannie and me and who could possibly 
 advise me. These last few days have upset me so I 
 scarcely know where I am." 
 
 " Sara, listen to me. Control yourself and think 
 it out for yourself. If I should tell you to break it 
 
THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT 127 
 
 — if I should voice half my fears for you — and 
 afterwards you found that you never could love any 
 other mctfi and you should live an unloved and lonely 
 life, in your secret heart you would hold me re- 
 sponsible. That responsibility I refuse to take. You 
 are fully capable of knowing your own heart and 
 your own capacity for suffering." 
 
 She looked at me thoughtfully. 
 
 " If I should ever have any children," she said 
 slowly, " could I bear to let them see their own 
 grandparents ! " 
 
 I felt her shudder, but I said nothing. 
 
 " I must work it out for myself," she said finally. 
 " You are right, no one can help me." 
 
 "If I could, dear child," I said eagerly, "you 
 know how gladly I would." 
 
 " I believe you," she said, and went away. 
 
 Two years passed before I saw her again. When 
 I met her she had been married a year. 
 
 " Are you happy, Sara ? " I said. 
 
 " As happy as most people," she said carelessly. 
 
 Alas, it was not the answer of a happy wife. 
 Then I heard of the advent of a baby and I rejoiced 
 that a solace had come into her life if her marriage 
 had not filled it to her liking. 
 
 Then came what to me is the most pathetic thing 
 I have ever heard of, I met Sara one day coming out 
 of a theatrical place and I said : 
 
128 THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT 
 
 " What in the world are you doing here? " 
 
 " I am learning skirt dancing," she said. " And 
 the cake walk. You feel so out of it if you don't do 
 something these days." 
 
 The cake walk! That girl, with her pure brow 
 and noble cast of thought. If history had recorded 
 that Aspasia had learned handsprings to enslave 
 Pericles, or if Madame de Stael had practiced on 
 the trapeze to attract Napoleon, when he spurned her 
 wit, I could not have been more dumbfounded. 
 
 In a flash I saw the whole trend of Sara's mar- 
 riage. What bravery in the little thing to try and 
 keep her husband in countenance in his cheap amuse- 
 ments ! 
 
 Then Rumour gained ground. Oscar was de- 
 scending deeper and deeper into his native mire and 
 further Sara refused to be dragged. 
 
 Now there is a divorce on the most personal 
 grounds. There is a little orphaned girl at boarding 
 school when most babies are in sheltered kinder- 
 gartens. There is a broken-hearted woman, still 
 young, a wanderer on the face of the earth, striving 
 to forget. 
 
 And all for what ? Because she did not break her 
 engagement when she could ! 
 
ON THE LONELINESS OF BEING 
 UNLOVED 
 
ON THE LONELINESS OF BEING 
 UNLOVED 
 
 THERE is no loneliness in the world for a 
 woman like the loneliness of being un- 
 loved. To go a step further — to tell the 
 truth, the whole truth and nothing but the 
 truth — ^there is no loneliness in the world for a 
 woman like the loneliness of being unloved by a man. 
 Such loneliness is one of the deepest and most far- 
 reaching of all human truths, yet from a false mod- 
 esty or over-sensitive civilization, it is a truth seldom 
 mentioned, never openly discussed and thrust out of 
 sight by women as if it were something shameful. 
 
 Do mothers — the mothers of young girls — even 
 know it ? Do they realize that, viewed honestly and 
 purely, it is purity itself? Do they even clarify the 
 muggy depths of their own thoughts about attrac- 
 tions of the sexes by the clear, clean, healthful idea 
 that it is the origin of all love, all humanity and 
 all life? If they did and provided for it, would 
 women, young and old, schoolgirl, spinster and 
 widow, be obliged to commit so many indiscre- 
 tions ? 
 
 Loneliness of any sort is almost unbearable, and 
 
 131 
 
132 LONELINESS OF BEING UNLOVED 
 
 loneliness for a woman is so difficult to cure. For 
 a man, it is different. He can get whatever he 
 wants. If he is lonely for women's society, and it 
 attacks him suddenly, while he is eating his dinner, 
 he can go out and get it. If he is bored he can 
 lounge in his club, or sit in a hotel window, with his 
 feet up, and watch the endless procession of humanity 
 stream past. He can speak to an interesting looking 
 stranger and strike up a fascinating acquaintanceship 
 for an evening by offering a good cigar. Or he can 
 light his own and wile away the lagging hours, con- 
 tent with his own thoughts, and no one will accuse 
 him of lounging or being idle or unmaidenly or 
 fast or dangerous. His freedom to seek interest 
 wherever he chooses precludes the possibility of his 
 ever being lonely except deliberately and with malice 
 aforethought, so that any sympathy with man on 
 this head is well nigh superfluous. Suppose that he 
 is even lonely because no woman loves him? Let 
 him go out and ask one! Most women are like 
 Barkis. A man will not have to hunt long because — 
 
 Well, reverse the above and you will see why so 
 many women marry the wrong man. Our re- 
 strictions bore us to death, and the most ordinary 
 of men, even men whom we know will vex and irri- 
 tate us, are preferable to being bored and lonely. 
 
 Suppose a woman suddenly grows intolerably 
 lonely during dinner. What can she do? Books? 
 
LONELINESS OF BEING UNLOVED 133 
 
 A book would have to be supremely fascinating 
 which could bring a woman out of a fit of the blues 
 when she was lonely for the society of a good-look- 
 ing, interesting man. It might if she could, with 
 perfect propriety draw her chair near a table with a 
 shaded lamp, put her feet on the piano stool and light 
 a cigar. Oh, the solid comfort to the woman who 
 could do this and not shock even the most conserva- 
 tive ! But no, she can't do that. Ask a man to go 
 to the theatre ? Not permitted. Telephone to some 
 man to call? She might, but being a woman, she 
 hesitates for a dozen reasons. The right one is gen- 
 erally out of town on her particular night of the 
 blues. Besides, how many men does one know to 
 whom one could say " I'm low in my mind. Won't 
 you come and cheer me up ? " 
 
 No, she can't do that. She can't do anything ! A 
 lonely woman is more to be pitied than anyone else 
 in the world. A lonely widow generally receives 
 plenty. Besides she has at hand the consolation of 
 retrospect and conquest of has-been and to-be. But 
 a lonely old maid — a woman whose youth is on the 
 wane — who has little to look back upon and less to 
 look forward to — do you ever think of her on a rainy 
 evening ? 
 
 But suppose you say fretfully " That is not the 
 point. Here I am, not in love with any particular 
 man — therefore why should I be lonely for someone 
 
134 LONELINESS OF BEING UNLOVED 
 
 I do not know ? I have a comfortable home, plenty 
 of good clothes, plenty of money — well, perhaps not 
 plenty (nobody ever has that!) but enough to get 
 along on, my family are fond of me — nevertheless 
 they bore me — everybody bores me ! Nobody under- 
 stands me! Yet I am loved by many, so the subject 
 of the loneliness of the unloved does not touch my 
 case at all." 
 
 Wait a moment. Suppose we change one word, 
 for it is true that, from the highest in the land to the 
 lowest Italian road maker or Irish washerwoman, 
 there are few indeed who come under the head of 
 the unloved. Love is the most plentiful thing in 
 the world. Even the loneliest spinster in New Eng- 
 land is loved by somebody. But what if you call 
 it misloved? Loved misunderstandingly? Loved 
 simply because you are somebody's sister or are born 
 into a certain family? Does your mother under- 
 stand you and love you, if the new life which this 
 generation has developed is beyond her day? Does 
 your father know what you are talking about when 
 you attempt to open your heart to him ? Are you not 
 sometimes lonely in the midst of your family and 
 friendly love? Each soul is pitiably alone at best. 
 No woman has so dear a friend but that at certain 
 mental crises when the paths diverge, she feels that 
 after all, she is alone. No man but knows that his 
 wife can follow the workings of his mind and heart 
 
LONELINESS OF BEING UNLOVED 135 
 
 only to a certain point. From there on he is alone. 
 There is no human being, however loved and emu- 
 lated, but knows the bitterness of soul loneliness. 
 That is the penalty of being misloved. 
 
 To a large extent, the mis-love of the world is 
 caused by lack of imagination. Your mother cannot 
 recall her own youth and so fails to project her per- 
 sonality into your later-generation thoughts and 
 ambitions. Sometimes it is narrowness and conceit 
 on the part of parents who fail to sympathize with 
 their sons and daughters. They cannot easily under- 
 stand modern views and advanced ideas and so they 
 pooh-pooh aside as not worth investigating, the aims 
 and pleasures of the children upon whom they have 
 lavished money to educate in the modern way they 
 now refuse to try to understand. " What's good 
 enough for me is good enough for them " is the 
 mental attitude of thousands of affectionate parents 
 with spinster daughters on their hands, who may, 
 by this very axiom, be driven to make an unwise 
 marriage with some man who at least is modern and 
 progressive, if not a safe husband from the parents' 
 point of view. The craving for an understanding 
 companionship may drive her to it. The loneliness 
 of being mis-loved. Many a woman, who has tasted 
 to the dregs the bitter cup of family mis-love, would 
 rather run the risk of going hungry with a husband 
 
136 LONELINESS OF BEING UNLOVED 
 
 who comprehended her than to remain in luxury 
 with the mis-love of the most devoted family. 
 
 The loneliness of being misunderstood has driven 
 many another woman, the loved daughter, the inde- 
 pendent bachelor girl, perhaps even the adored wife, 
 into seeking a career, perhaps to the mortification 
 and chagrin of the father or husband. 
 
 I wonder if men know that so few women that we 
 might almost say that no women who are perfectly 
 happy ever seek a career. No happily married or 
 rightly loved woman ever seeks career. The desire 
 for a career for a woman is an acknowledgment of 
 heart failure. 
 
 This is practically because we have so few homes 
 in America. We have private hotels where each 
 family eats and sleeps, but where family life and 
 tranquil housekeeping are unknown. 
 
 If I were a woman seeking a career, I would go 
 to some of my rich and prosperous friends and offer 
 to turn the house into a home. I have only recently 
 learned of the term " working housekeeper." I like 
 it. There should be more of them. It is distinctly 
 the career for an unmarried woman who loves love 
 and home and children and above all housekeeping. 
 Housekeeping is the most fascinating occupation in 
 the world. Something new is always appearing in 
 somebody's house which would go so well in yours ! 
 What a delight to adopt it and in the course of adop- 
 
LONELINESS OF BEING UNLOVED 137 
 
 tion, to improve on it a little ! Some new appliance 
 for shading the light for tired eyes; some new 
 luxury of head or book rest. The possibilities of 
 housekeeping, the old fashioned, comfortable sort, 
 with the luxuries of modern invention are never 
 ending and every ounce of effort and thought pro- 
 duce happiness and content. 
 
 The loneliness of the unloved does not mean that 
 a woman is lonely because she is not loved by any- 
 body. Most women are loved by the wrong some- 
 bodies. Nor does it mean that women are lonely 
 because they are unloved by their own families, or — 
 Heaven forgive me for betraying so many women's 
 secrets! — unloved by their own husbands who love 
 devotedly. But the most of woman's loneliness con- 
 sists in being loved uncomprehendingly, uncompre- 
 hensively. Alas, it is nearly always the husband's 
 fault that by his own unwitting lack, he leaves room 
 in his wife's heart for tertium quid ! 
 
 The uncomprehendingness of most family love! 
 It is at the bottom of most domestic unhappiness — 
 of most domestic disasters. 
 
 Does a spirited girl make a runaway or an incom- 
 prehensible marriage? Look at her father and 
 mother, complacent, sleek, self-satisfied, encased 
 in mental red flannel and mental cotton batting. 
 Now do you wonder why ? Loved by them ? Cer- 
 tainly. But — 
 
138 LONELINESS OF BEING UNLOVED 
 
 For my part I would rather be hated understand- 
 ingly by people clever enough to see my weak and 
 wicked points, than to be loved blunderingly by the 
 best man who ever wore overshoes. 
 
 I often breathe a sigh when I look around at the 
 number of brains in this world, whose domestic cells 
 are marked " To let." 
 
 A woman may be at the head of her church so- 
 ciety and patroness of a score of charities, yet her 
 daughter, from sheer loneliness, the fatal loneliness 
 of the misloved, may be treading a road of danger 
 seen and understood only by the neighbours. 
 
 I have often wondered why parents who send 
 their daughters to boarding schools and their sons to 
 college never have the wit to provide anything more 
 exhilarating that a mental weak-tea diet for them 
 when they come home. Are parents so dense as not 
 to know that a weak-tea diet does not obtain away 
 from home ? Oh, the loneliness of the misloved ! 
 
 Here is work made to order for the wise and 
 cheerful spinsters of this world who have deep- 
 seeing eyes and the tact to mediate acceptably. 
 
 Matrimony — a happy marriage, the making of a 
 home — a home, mind you, not keeping a house — is 
 the only legitimate happiness in the world for a 
 woman. The Almighty has plainly said so, but we 
 twentieth-century wiseacres, who know so much 
 more than our Creator — we cry out for careers, for 
 
LONELINESS OF BEING UNLOVED 139 
 
 the bachelor girl, for woman's clubs, woman's rights 
 and everything which is calculated to take the place 
 of the natural yearning in a true woman's soul for 
 a husband's sustaining and protecting love, and the 
 feel of a downy head pressed against her breast. 
 Well, go on. Fool yourselves if you like. Deceive 
 the world if you can. / know your secret. / know 
 how when Christmas comes, you have hours of 
 wishing that all your fame, all your beauty, all your 
 riches were swallowed up for just the touch of one 
 hand — for the sound of one voice! Lonely? The 
 proudest of you, the best educated, the most self- 
 supporting, the most (so-called) independent would 
 at times, the lonely times, the candle-lighting 
 times, the Christmas times, give everything you 
 possess for a home of your own and a husband and 
 a child. No matter if they made you unhappy. Even 
 a wife's and a mother's unhappiness are preferable to 
 the unhappiness of business or friends, — so cold- 
 blooded — so uncaring. Oh, even you most success- 
 ful of misunderstood daughters or spinsters or 
 bachelor girls or emancipated divorcees or consoled 
 widows — how much persuasion would be necessary 
 to cause you to forsake the loneliness of being un- 
 loved for The One, should he chance along? 
 
 Look at the woman with well established Careers 
 (I respectfully spell it with a capital) who have 
 renounced fame for a husband's love ? The success- 
 
I40 LONELINESS OF BEING UNLOVED 
 
 ful actresses above all, for the footlights are popu- 
 larly supposed to supply a glamour which real life 
 fails to supply. Why has not our beautiful Mary 
 Anderson returned to the stage? Because she was 
 wise enough to know the difference between the 
 husks of fame and the golden grain of a husband's 
 love. 
 
 Women are seldom born with genius. They gen- 
 erally achieve genius through an unhappy love. 
 Therefore a happy woman does not deliberately be- 
 come a great author, a great artist or a great actress. 
 Happy women are never famous. And famous 
 women are seldom happy. Fame is what women 
 pay for an unachieved happiness. 
 
 But loneliness of whatever sort is not confined to 
 the unloved of this world. I have often known very 
 happy people to moan about being lonely, but their 
 loneliness came from the selfishness of not knowing 
 what to do with happiness when it lay within their 
 grasp. A happily married woman who complains 
 about being lonely, about her husband's business ab- 
 sorbing too much time or for any reason might just 
 as well voice her selfishness in so many plain words 
 and have done with her self deception and her un- 
 conscious attempt to deceive her friends. For a 
 woman who sits down at home hugging a small 
 happiness to her soul will never attain to a greater. 
 The only cure for loneliness that I can recommend as 
 efficacious is to get outside of yourself and do some- 
 
LONELINESS OF BEING UNLOVED 141 
 
 thing for somebody. There is where many women 
 lose half the delight of a happy marriage. They re- 
 ceive and receive and never give. In human nature 
 it is the same as in garden nature. If you leave 
 flowers on the plants they will soon cease to bloom. 
 If you don't pick sweet peas every day they will not 
 last the month out. So if you don't give out of 
 your small happiness to others, it will soon wither 
 and cease to sweeten your own life. Here is where 
 the wife has such an advantage over the spinster, for 
 it is so much easier to have some one always at hand 
 to strive to please and bring happiness to, than to be 
 obliged to cast about in your mind for a suitable and 
 convenient person to benefit with affectionate and 
 thoughtful service. 
 
 However the very unselfishness which the latter 
 effort entails is what makes the lives of some spin- 
 sters, some genial old maids such a well-spring of de- 
 light. They have learned the secret of true happi- 
 ness, and at the loneliest time of the year, Christmas 
 time, when father and daughter and mother and son 
 and wives and husbands have nearer and dearer 
 than these lonely ones have to work for, these, the 
 unloved and the lonely often point out the shining 
 Jacob's Ladder to the happier of the land and by 
 their sweet unselfishness, lead the way to a heaven 
 on earth. 
 
 All hail to the lonely and unloved, the ^weet old 
 maids at Christmas time! 
 
ON THE TENDENCY TO CRABBED- 
 
 NESS 
 
ON THE TENDENCY TO CRAB- 
 BEDNESS 
 
 A FEW generations ago it was the fashion to 
 ridicule old maids. They were always 
 pictured as thin, with scrawny shoulder- 
 blades, sharp elbows, a hollow in the back 
 of their necks and their hair drawn into a tight door- 
 knob on the top of their heads. They were always 
 supposed to wear a shiny alpaca on week days and 
 a shiny black silk on Sundays. They were, in the 
 public imagination, inclined to white stockings and 
 cloth gaiters. Their eyes, nose and chin were in- 
 evitably sharp and their tongue the sharpest of all. 
 A general thinness seemed to be their distinguishing 
 characteristic, and they were supposed to be inordi- 
 nately fond of tea and cats. 
 
 Have things changed, I wonder ? Surely I never 
 knew an old maid of that description. Indeed the 
 stoutest woman I know, — (she weighs three hun- 
 dred if an ounce) — is an old maid. She is not thin. 
 In fact, I won't go down-stairs ahead of her, for if I 
 should and she should trip on a step, my will would 
 be admitted to probate soon afterward. She loves 
 
 lo 145 
 
146 TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 
 
 candy and soda water, can't bear cats but is partial 
 to bull dogs and would like to wear patent leather 
 shoes the year round, only in summer, she says, she 
 can't, because they draw her feet so. I never saw her 
 drink a cup of tea, and she is so happy that she is 
 always surrounded by a group, from whose midst 
 come peals and shouts of laughter. Yet she comes 
 from New England, the parent land of thinness and 
 old maids. 
 
 I wonder if flesh has anything to do with it? I 
 can recall a few detestable old maids who weighed 
 two hundred, for for the most part, fat people are 
 good-natured, if not actually happy. I believe so 
 thoroughly that happiness and a moderate amount of 
 avoirdupois go hand in hand that if I were an old 
 maid and thin, I should drink cream. 
 
 In the second place it is all nonsense that old maids 
 are behind the times in dress. And, by the way, how 
 old must a woman be to be called an old maid ? In 
 the parlance of to-day, we have bachelor girls of 
 thirty-five and a single woman of fifty, whose clothes 
 are fashionable and who may actually lead in a set 
 of married women. People would never think of 
 calling her an old maid, unless they were ignored by 
 her. Then of course 
 
 A bachelor woman of fifty, with a handsome in- 
 come is respectfuly described in some such manner 
 as this. 
 
TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 147 
 
 " Oh, she is the daughter of So-and-So, the rich 
 asbestos manufacturer. He died leaving her that 
 elegant home and " 
 
 " Yes, I know, but what about her? Is she mar- 
 ried?" 
 
 " No, she is unmarried. Of course it is her own 
 fault. She could have had " 
 
 " Well, who is the woman you are always talking 
 about?" 
 
 " Of course. But how old is she? She looks fifty." 
 
 " Fifty ! The idea ! Why she can't be over 
 thirty-nine! And I just wish you could see her 
 clothes. She gets everything in Paris." 
 
 Whereas if this same woman had gone away by 
 herself to count up her birthdays and look sourly on 
 every bride who sent her wedding invitations, she 
 would be called " that thin old maid who lives in 
 that old-fashioned house on the hill." 
 
 Of course an unmarried woman is always a secret 
 disappointment to herself in a way, but the manner 
 in which she takes it is the difference between old 
 maids and bachelor girls. 
 
 The unenlightened frequently make the mistake 
 of thinking that lack of opportunity is responsible for 
 the existence of single women, but I lay most of it to 
 climate. The New England climate is not conducive 
 to matrimony or even love making.' And even after 
 the crucial moment has passed and the single woman 
 has drifted from girl to spinsterhood, a cold climate, 
 
148 TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 
 
 raw winds, chill rains and snow tend to increase the 
 loneliness of it. The climate accentuates the fact, 
 rubs it in, so to speak, and never permits the victim 
 to forget her single state. The nights are long in 
 the north and the wind has a way of howling 
 through the trees and slamming shutters and rous- 
 ing weird echoes which are not enlivening compan- 
 ions for a lonely woman with a memory. Such en- 
 vironments get on her nerves and soon she has a 
 reputation for selfishness and her disposition is said 
 to be warped, when the whole thing is nothing but a 
 matter of climate. 
 
 There may be old maids in the south, but I never 
 heard of any. I have known some single women, 
 school teachers, anywhere from nineteen to fifty, and 
 some of their grown boy pupils were eternally and 
 perennially in love with them. A single woman who 
 has made up her mind not to marry, has a hard time 
 to keep her resolution in the south, for she is always 
 assailed to break it. The very climate breathes love. 
 Ah, there it is! As I said, old maids are surely a 
 matter of climate. 
 
 And why not ? Can you be cross on a sunny day ? 
 Does the world go so wrong in a land where roses 
 bloom the year round, where nightingales and hum- 
 ming birds take the place of English sparrows, and 
 where the balmy nights are only a continuation of 
 the heavenly days ? 
 
TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 149 
 
 Suppose you are unmarried ? You can't be cross 
 about if if the weather continues good. 
 
 A salubrious climate, with plenty of sun and 
 flowers, seems to foster very admirable qualities, es- 
 pecially for women. The climate of high, clear alti- 
 tudes agrees best with men. There is a saying that 
 the climate of Denver is hard on women and fine 
 horses, but good for men and mules. They insist, 
 furthermore that this is not wit, but truth — more 
 truth, that is to say, than wit generally contains, for 
 the air is so rare that nervous women go to pieces 
 and have to be sent back east. Thoroughbred 
 horses are so exhilarated that they run themselves to 
 death. Men require no artificial stimulant there 
 (but this fact is not generally known!) while mules, 
 good old deliberate mules feel that their obstinacy 
 is an attribute of the effete east and trot along with- 
 out any cursing. 
 
 For this very reason the south is a good place for 
 women, particularly single women, or women dis- 
 appointed in life for any reason. Dakota is a 
 dangerous place for an easy divorce. The climate 
 intensifies a woman's sense of wrong, increases, en- 
 larges it, and she would want a divorce from Mark 
 the Perfect Man, if she spent six months in such a 
 nervous climate. 
 
 The southern climate fosters endearing qualities. 
 It encourages beauty loving. To love beauty in 
 
150 TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 
 
 nature is a cult in the south. To love beauty in 
 woman a religion. A beautiful woman becomes 
 a goddess, a toast; and her beauty is a shrine at 
 which high and low alike kneel. No man is too 
 high; no black servant too low to extol the beauty 
 of certain famous southern belles. And if a woman 
 otherwise plain, has but one beautiful feature, that 
 feature is dwelt upon, noticed, brought forward, so 
 that whole counties know that old Mrs. So-and-So 
 used to have the prettiest little figure or the smallest 
 foot ever seen on a woman. Poor old Mrs. So-and- 
 So may now be worn to a shadow or weigh three 
 hundred. No matter! Her figure as it was in its 
 day of beauty is what is lovingly dwelt upon. Her 
 poor old feet may be twisted or swollen from rheu- 
 matism, but men who took her slim foot in their 
 hand to place her in the saddle remember its slim- 
 ness, the aristocratic arch of her instep and her 
 feathery dancing and they keep life sweet to her by 
 reminding her of its beauty each time they see her. 
 
 That is what a warm climate and a chivalrous 
 heart will do. It keeps alive memories of beauty long 
 faded, but never forgotten. We of the north may 
 have just such a foot and instep, but our men do not 
 talk about it as much. And talking about one's good 
 points makes good hearing. 
 
 Take for instance the case of Sallie Ward. There 
 have been other girls just as ravingly beautiful, yet 
 
TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 151 
 
 she was a toast in every State south of Mason and 
 Dixon's line. And to this day in Kentucky if a man 
 has a perfect thing from a horse to a business propo- 
 sition, he will say " I've got a regular Sallie Ward ! " 
 
 It is told too, that when a little child asked who 
 made all the beautiful things in the world, and her 
 mother enumerated the trees, the flowers, the sun, 
 the birds, etc., the child said " Mamma, you forgot 
 to say that He made Sallie Ward ! " 
 
 Does anyone deny that Tacoma and Minneapolis 
 and Bangor have produced girls as beautiful as 
 Sallie Ward? Yet they never become such belles. 
 A warm climate will do wonders. It makes temper- 
 ament. And temperament makes belles. 
 
 To make one's self physically comfortable goes a 
 long way toward mental comfort, which is next 
 door to true happiness. A woman who can spend 
 whole days tending flowers and bees and birds has 
 very little time to fret herself to a shadow over the 
 married happiness of her neighbours (always sup- 
 posing of course, that the neighbours possess mar- 
 ried happiness!) or to permit her to fret over her 
 own lot of single blessedness. 
 
 I cannot understand deliberate unhappiness. I 
 never was a believer in the theory that "pain is 
 good for you, therefore bear it patiently." I believe 
 in raising a howl about it that will bring the doctor 
 and the neighbours, and in getting rid of it by some- 
 
152 TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 
 
 thing vehement in the mustard plaster line. And as 
 to staying where you are uncomfortable? I would 
 a thousand times rather fly to perils that I know not 
 of than to bear the ills I have. If there isn't actual 
 happiness in the world for all women, there is at 
 least less discomfort somewhere else than where you 
 are, so get up and hunt for it. If she can walk, 
 crawl or steal a ride from a set of environments 
 which get on her nerves, I am in favour of a 
 woman's going. Temper? Not half the crabbed- 
 ness in this world is temper. It is mostly nerves and 
 nerves may be soothed if not cured. 
 
 To tell the truth I have the greatest sympathy for 
 most so-called crabbedness, and so far from taking a 
 high and mighty stand and preaching against it, or 
 being so conceited as to advise prayer and fasting to 
 overcome it, I feel vastly more like taking the crab- 
 bed one to my heart and saying : " Don't try to 
 crucify yourself with self-control before me. Talk 
 about whatever worries you to your heart's content. 
 I'm with you." For most crabbedness in old maids 
 is generally a case of the neighbours' children or 
 roosters. Personally I prefer roosters. 
 
 Old maids, old bachelors, brides and grooms and 
 even people with children generally hate the neigh- 
 bours' children, and are called crabbed because they 
 complain. But it is not a disappointment in love 
 which makes a nervous woman hate noise. And 
 most children are so versatile. 
 
TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 153 
 
 One of the most curious things about a family of 
 disagreeable children is the sublime ignorance of the 
 parents that their offspring are held in general de- 
 testation. Even when reading these lines they will 
 swell with complacency to think that their dear, 
 precious little darlings, brought by angels and the 
 gift of God, are not disliked by anybody, for who 
 could help adoring such treasures ? My dear sir and 
 madam, lay down this book and believe earnestly 
 that everybody who lives within hearing distance of 
 those barbarians of yours, hates them! It will do 
 you good to believe it, for it isn't your children's 
 fault that they are hated, it is yours ! And it is your 
 blind conceit which is responsible. 
 
 I once visited a kindergarten taught by a bachelor 
 girl friend of mine and I watched her " wrestle " for 
 two hours with the worst little girl I ever saw. 
 Finally, worn out and having exhausted every 
 expedient to reduce her to good behaviour, she came 
 and said to me " Can you think of anything else to 
 do that I haven't tried ? " " Yes, one," I said, " kill 
 her ! " But I had to whisper that. " Wouldn't I 
 just love to ! " she whispered back. Then I got re- 
 morseful. "Poor little thing!" I sighed. "Evi- 
 dently her mother doesn't know much about con- 
 trolling children." " My dear ! " cried my friend in 
 a shrieking whisper. " Her mother is Mrs. So-and- 
 So, who writes books on children ! " 
 
 At the close of the session my friend spent her 
 
154 TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 
 
 vacation in a sanitorium, which cost all the salary 
 she had saved up to go to Europe on, and the follow- 
 ing winter somebody said to me : 
 
 " How terribly Ethel has gone off in her looks. 
 And she is so touchy in her temper she is getting to 
 be a veritable old maid." 
 
 " Not at all," I said, wishing I could say as chil- 
 dren do, " It's no such thing ! " Those extra words 
 make it so much more emphatic. " Ethel is only 
 suffering from a clear case of other people's chil- 
 dren." 
 
 " You don't say so ! " said this somebody. " I 
 never thought of that. Well, that kindergarten 
 fitted up as it was, from the ranks of the well-to-do, 
 was enough to kill anybody. Prosperous people's 
 children are so trying ! " 
 
 Nevertheless Ethel had been called an old maid 
 for the first time and her temper referred to as tangi- 
 ble evidence. The rest was easy. In a year or two 
 Ethel was an old maid, and so crabbed that she hates 
 children to this day and says things about them 
 which would make their parents' hair curl if they 
 could hear it. 
 
 Why will people who are most firm in protecting 
 their own rights from the onslaught of others, sup- 
 port domestic nuisances? Is there a crabbed old 
 maid or a crochety old bachelor in your neighbour- 
 hood ? How do you know but that you made them 
 so? It must be a dispensation of Providence which 
 
TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 155 
 
 causes the same ray of light to blind us to the beam 
 in our own eye and yet which so glaringly illumi- 
 nates the mote in our brother's eye, for I have heard 
 a woman complain of the vile language used by a 
 neighbour's child when her own little boy was out 
 writing bad words on my back fence as she talked. 
 And another woman who has headaches tells me, 
 with pale cheeks and reddened lids, that the whistle 
 that Mrs. Blank gave her little girl to play with, 
 drives her mad, while her own boy was performing 
 on a tin horn under my windows at that very 
 moment. 
 
 Blissfully blind and deaf to their own brand of 
 noise, most people complain bitterly of their neigh- 
 bours' tempers. Crabbed, is it? The only person 
 who has a right to be crabbed or to complain about 
 noise, is the old maid who, not having any children 
 to drive her neighbours to frenzy, takes to her 
 heart some quiet animal to love. So an old maid 
 with a quiet and peaceful cat and a subdued tea 
 kettle is the only being in the world privileged to be 
 crabbed. And only those are privileged to call her 
 crabbed who are supporting no domestic nuisances 
 to cause her to be more so. 
 
 But suppose you are impatient of all this and you 
 say to me, " It's all very well to talk, but I am poor 
 and lonely and unloved and growing old too fast. 
 I am crabbed, for I have plenty to be crabbed about. 
 What have you to say to such as I am ? " 
 
156 TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 
 
 First of all I would say " That's too bad. Then 
 I'd say : " What are you going to do about it ? " 
 
 Now I cannot imagine anyone so shiftless as one 
 who just lies down in her tracks determined to be 
 miserable and bent on making other people so. If 
 you must be crabbed, don't vent it on other people. 
 Go out behind the barn or into your own room and 
 lock the door when you feel a fit coming on, and 
 generations of your friends will rise up and call you 
 blessed. 
 
 But there is one thing which perhaps you never 
 have thought of and that is that you are crabbed be- 
 cause you are selfish and conceited. 
 
 You think of yourself too much. You are forever 
 thinking how miserable you are and how people 
 abuse and cheat you. It is only disgusting conceit 
 on your part. If you were always thinking about 
 somebody else and trying to do something nice for 
 somebody, you would never have time to bewail 
 your own lot in life and contrast it with those who 
 are happier. You are mentally cross-eyed, because 
 your eyes are always turned inward. 
 
 Rouse yourself out of the rut you are in. If you 
 cannot travel in order to give yourself a fresh start, 
 go and visit somebody. You will not be welcome, 
 you think, at the homes of your well-to-do relatives? 
 That is your own fault, you see. The fault of your 
 crabbedness. Pleasant people are so much in de- 
 
TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 157 
 
 mand in this world, that if you were as nice as you 
 know how to be or as you could make yourself if you 
 tried, people would send for you for the summer 
 and pay your fare to get you. But the reason your 
 rich relatives will not have you is because you prob- 
 ably have neuralgia and wear a white crochetted 
 shawl in summer, and because you have no sense of 
 humour and because you sit around with idle hands, 
 selfishly seeking your pleasure from the conversa- 
 tion of others but not contributing to it yourself — 
 in other words because you are a social leech. 
 
 When they asked you to visit them the last time 
 why didn't you help the children with their lessons 
 and darn their stockings and make your own bed and 
 dust the drawingroom and help the servants clean 
 the silver when there was extra work? Why didn't 
 you offer to make out the laundry lists and mark the 
 linen and sew on lost buttons and make yourself 
 such a joy in a household as only an old maid can be 
 if she is sweet enough to know how to be a nice one ? 
 It is your own fault if you were never asked again. 
 You had your chance. You would be a welcome 
 guest at the home of a woman with six small chil- 
 dren and only one servant if you took along a bolt of 
 flannel and made the children's winter underclothes. 
 Do you suppose the stingiest father or most over- 
 worked mother would grudge you three meals a day 
 if you helped her with the sewing that she couldn't 
 afford to put out ? 
 
158 TENDENCY TO CRABBEDNESS 
 
 I know a thrifty housewife who has a pretty little 
 country home, and she gets all her preserves put up 
 and all her winter sewing done by filling her house 
 with old maids who can work. They know they are 
 only asked for their services, but they are willing 
 to embroider and can for her in exchange for coun- 
 try air and mosquitoes. Not a very flattering 
 thought perhaps, yet I would prefer to be in the 
 spiritual plane of the old maids than the thrifty 
 housewife, whose charity is extended only to those 
 spinsters who are handy about the house. 
 
 But suppose the thought is not flattering. Truth 
 seldom is, and the truth is that you are valued in 
 this world only by what you contribute. If you are 
 a beautiful young girl you can take your ease and be 
 selfish and indolent for you contribute your beauty 
 to the scene and you are valued for that. If you are 
 the rich but prosy head of the house, you can bore 
 people to death and they will not complain — to your 
 face. You contribute your wealth to their mind's 
 eye. If you are the overworked mother, you are 
 tolerated by your stout and complacent husband, be- 
 cause you contribute an heir to his name and heri- 
 tage. 
 
 And if you are an old maid you must bestir your- 
 self and contribute something to the general cause or 
 you will be put upon the shelf to grow crabbed and 
 old in a solitude which no one covets. 
 
 It all lies in your own hands. 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT 
 
 TO speak frankly the point of view is what 
 makes old maids more than lack of hus- 
 bands. I have seen many a married wo- 
 man who was nothing but an old maid. 
 And many a spinster who never would be anything 
 but a bachelor girl. And the point of view made 
 the difference. 
 
 While as to consolation ! Look at the poor sticks 
 of men your best friends have married and see if 
 that is not enough to console the most forlorn old 
 maid who ever loved a cat instead of a husband. 
 
 I always liked that story of the old maid, who 
 J when urged to marry said she had no need of a 
 ')|lAisband because she had a parrot who swore, a lamp 
 1 which smoked and a cat that stayed out nights. 
 
 There are several things to keep in mind, and the 
 first is that you can still marry. That is one of the 
 advantages of being an American woman. Some 
 man is always sure to want to marry you sooner or 
 later. But, in case he might not be the right one, 
 or ineligible for any cause, cultivate your point of 
 view, in order to have a consolation at hand if you 
 should refuse him. 
 
 II i6i 
 
i62 MAKING THE BEST OF IT 
 
 But suppose you say, " Oh, that's all very well 
 for spinsters who are situated differently. But as 
 for me, poked off alone in a hall bedroom and never 
 going anywhere, where am I to meet any men or 
 get a point of view ? " 
 
 I was just coming to that. Not to the hall bed- 
 room, but to your case. 
 
 The first thing a woman should do, who sits 
 down to plan out a deliberate scheme of happiness, 
 is to close her eyes and think what, out of all the 
 world what she would rather do if she were mistress 
 of her own fate. Think it out luxuriously, luxuri- 
 antly, regardless of the possibility of achieving it. 
 Then gradually come down from your dream of a 
 palace and a yacht and a private car to the next best. 
 Take your time about it. Think each dream out in 
 all its fascinating detail. Then come on down by 
 degrees until you have reached something reason- 
 able. Women are very much alike and many a 
 sleepless night has been spent in just such airy cas- 
 tles, which for the time being were all satisfying. 
 
 Now think of the way you could best earn money, 
 if you had a start. Can you trim hats? Can you 
 darn and embroider and mend lace ? Are you fond 
 of animals ? Do sick birds get well under your care ? 
 Can you make sickly plants healthy and strong and 
 does everything which grows in the ground thrive 
 under your touch ? 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT 163 
 
 Or are you a business woman by instinct ? Can 
 you count and multiply and subtract without chew- 
 ing a lead pencil and using a ream of paper ? Or do 
 figures throw you into a panic as they do me? 
 
 Were you born in the city and into the heritage 
 of the hall bedroom and would you give any thing 
 on earth for a little cottage in the country, not too 
 far from the city to bar you from going in when the 
 frogs at night make you too lonely, nor too near to 
 other people to hinder you from wearing a short 
 skirt and a sunbonnet all day if you want to? 
 
 In the spring do you find yourself reading garden- 
 ing books, and hanging around florists' windows 
 and wanting, wanting, wanting some sights and 
 sounds and smells which do not go with hall bed- 
 rooms but are the rightful heritage of the country? 
 
 Oh you office women on small salaries! You 
 poor, pinched, starved souls, struggling to make both 
 ends meet, deafened by city noises, harassed by city 
 prices, blinded by city sights! Get out into the 
 suburbs or even the country and find what life 
 holds for you. 
 
 You can't afiford it? 
 
 Let us take specific examples. 
 
 There must be thousands of self supporting wo- 
 men from eighteen to fifty in the large cities — 
 thousands who either have no home ties or have cut 
 loose from them — women who never save enough 
 
i64 MAKING THE BEST OF IT 
 
 to live in idleness, yet who always have a little 
 ahead. There is as much money to be made in the 
 country, where you can have flowers and trees and 
 singing birds around you instead of four white 
 walls and the eternal sound of the typewriter, as 
 there is in the office where you slave. If you doubt 
 me it is because you don't know. 
 
 Of course we must begin by supposing that you 
 are not a fool. Let us pretend that you even know 
 a thing or two. It will help in demonstrating the 
 proposition. 
 
 Ask your friends, if you have any who own sum- 
 mer places along the Hudson or on the Sound or 
 on the Jersey Coast, what they pay for eggs, chick- 
 ens and fresh vegetables, then compare those fairy 
 tale prices with the cheapness of the New York 
 market. And Heaven knows that New York prices 
 are high enough to drive one crazy. 
 
 Oh, if I didn't have to write, wouldn't I run a 
 chicken farm and sell eggs at a dollar a dozen. 
 (Don't shriek! They bring that price in winter. 
 They call them eggs for invalids. What kind of 
 eggs are we who are well supposed to eat if your egg 
 man has the effrontery to tell you that to your face?) 
 
 Now chickens do not require rich ground. A 
 poultry run might be a great success on barren and 
 pebbly soil. Their food costs almost nothing. Wire 
 netting, hay for their nests, little houses for each 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT 165 
 
 separately if you are going in for fancy breeds 
 (which bring fancy prices, from two dollars up to 
 five a dozen for setting eggs) and there you are. 
 Care, patience and love for your work do the rest. 
 
 Don't go too near to neighbours so that they will 
 complain of your roosters, nor too far from the 
 express company, and with the smallest possible 
 beginning, the most meagre outlay, you have begun 
 a business which you can easily satisfy yourself 
 will pay. 
 
 Then if you have a little more to spend try a 
 market garden. This is harder work and requires 
 more outlay, but it may be that green growing things 
 are such a joy to you that you would be willing to 
 attempt it. You could at least make expenses, for 
 if you had a flower garden as well you could keep 
 bees. And, better than all, you could exchange your 
 hall bedroom for the country. 
 
 However, suppose that none of these things ap- 
 peals to you. Have you ever thought of growing 
 flowers for the New York market? Do you know 
 that violets almost clamour for permission to grow in 
 the country round about and that if you looked 
 about you, particularly in Jersey where land is 
 cheap, that you could sell your stock down to the 
 last stalk every day? Lilies of the valley, tulips, 
 crocuses, Easter lilies, azaleas and all the spring 
 flowers, which come just before people begin to 
 leave town, are like owning a gold mine. 
 
i66 MAKING THE BEST OF IT 
 
 While as to land, civil engineers raise a wail in 
 the newspapers every now and then concerning the 
 valuable arable land in Jersey within a few miles of 
 New York, which only needs the small cost of 
 draining to make it not only as healthful as any 
 part of the state, but which would reclaim those 
 rich alluvial bottom lands for the uses of the mar- 
 ket gardeners. The greatest of opportunities lies 
 right at hand to any woman of energy and business 
 ability. 
 
 This too, holds out a side attraction which would 
 appeal to a woman of imagination, or to one in 
 whose bosom lies a dormant spirit of adventure. 
 To all such as these has come, at some time, the 
 desire to go out west and pioneer. The primeval 
 forests beckoned her. The vast stretches of prairie 
 invited her. She longed to be a living part of a 
 Fennimore Cooper novel. But — and here, she has 
 sighed and reluctantly admitted the cankering in- 
 fluence of a life of ease — it would be too much 
 trouble. She might tire of it and such an experi- 
 ment would be too expensive to desert as a worn- 
 out fad when its monotony or hardship fatigued 
 her. She wouldn't mind camping out for a few 
 weeks, but pioneering was, well, a dream of her 
 occasional strenuous days. 
 
 That, my dear sister, is the eternal feminine check- 
 ing your ambition, and very wisely too, I may add, 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT 167 
 
 for pioneering is not all the accent on the first 
 
 syllable. 
 
 But to pioneer over in Jersey, where land is cheap, 
 where the telegraph wire hums cheerily near your 
 hearth, where you may always own a commuter's 
 ticket and be only two hours' distant from home 
 and mother, that is an experiment which even fickle 
 woman might indulge in with impunity. There is 
 a combination of strenuousness and the domestic 
 hearth devoutly to be wished. 
 
 Vocations are as difficult to secure as careers, 
 but are much more domestic. But after all doesn't 
 contentment consist of simply keeping busy about 
 something pleasant? Work, if you must, at some- 
 thing you love. The reason so many men and 
 women are failures is because they are earning 
 their living with their weakest talent. The boy 
 is a grocer because his father was, and he could in- 
 herit the business. But he would much rather have 
 been a mechanic. So he builds engines in his lei- 
 sure hours and whistles over his work because it is 
 his pleasure, while he goes dully to work in the 
 morning among the coffees and sugars his soul 
 loathes. 
 
 While happiness for many a dress-maker would 
 consist in making hats. She who hates to fit a 
 lining could sing over shirring chiffon, or tying 
 knots of ribbon. 
 
i68 MAKING THE BEST OF IT 
 
 But my strqng fortress for the unreconciled spin- 
 ster is not built by the work of her hands, whether 
 it be egg-gathering, planting seeds, or picking 
 flowers. It lies in the cultivation of her imagina- 
 tion and her sense of humour. If you have these 
 two you may laugh at fate, for you are clad in an 
 armour which never rusts nor disintegrates. If you 
 are inclined to be bitter, to view yourself as the 
 football of Destiny, kicked from one discomfort to 
 another; if you think people snub you; if you sus- 
 pect your best friends of growing cold toward you, 
 or even of deliberate slights ; if you are in the habit 
 of sitting in the dark and brooding over these things, 
 the fault of the whole matter lies within. It is your 
 fault because you take a morbid point of view. 
 Think how unwholesome and malarial your mind 
 must be. Consider the stagnant state of your heart. 
 Think of the microbes which are eating your soul 
 away. Such a disagreeable person as you are de- 
 termined to be deserves to be slighted and snubbed 
 and left out of parties and picnics and it's good 
 enough for you. Who wants such a walking funeral 
 as you are around anyway? 
 
 Don't lay it to the influence of the hall bedroom. 
 That would not be fair. But you may lay it to 
 the influence of the boarding house which generally 
 consists of hall bedrooms. 
 
 The habit of sitting on the steps of your boarding 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT 169 
 
 house to waylay the men as they go out and come in, 
 or to gossip either from curiosity or malice is almost 
 incurable. The boarding house habit of gossip, of 
 senseless, useless curiosity about the private affairs 
 of the people across the hall, once acquired, is never 
 got rid of. It is like a good case of malaria. It re- 
 curs every time it has the ghost of an opportunity. 
 I believe I can tell, ten years after a woman has risen 
 from boarding house steps to the porch of a summer 
 hotel. She carries the habit of mental inventory 
 of each new comer in one sweeping glance, which 
 plainly says " boarding house " to one who knows 
 the symptoms. 
 
 No, a study of human nature means interest, not 
 curiosity. And these, although often confounded 
 by the unenlightened, are as widely different as pity 
 and sympathy. 
 
 Curiosity, no matter how politely veiled, is never 
 pleasant, and oh, for heaven's sake, be pleasant. 
 Try to be agreeable yourself. You are vastly mis- 
 taken if you think beautiful women and rich men 
 are going to sacrifice themselves to try to bring 
 you out of the dumps. You will soon find yourself 
 left so far behind that you won't even be in the dust 
 of the procession. 
 
 I once knew an old maid who invited a handsome 
 married woman to spend a few days with her and 
 make her house her headquarters. Now the young 
 
lyo MAKING THE BEST OF IT 
 
 married woman was immensely and deservedly pop- 
 ular, having hosts of friends to whom she owed some 
 of her society as a social duty. She could have 
 gone to much more comfortable, more elegantly 
 appointed homes, where she could have been better 
 housed, better fed and where her hostess would 
 have been more agreeable company, but her kind- 
 ness of heart induced her to accept the pressing 
 and oft repeated invitation of the old maid. She 
 invited her hostess to all of the functions where it 
 was permitted to bring a friend, but naturally there 
 were many times when she was obliged to go alone. 
 
 This the old maid resented. She was selfiS'h and 
 crabbed. She wanted all of the society of her bril- 
 liant guest and she felt slighted when deprived of 
 it, although, in accepting the invitation the mar- 
 ried woman had expressly stated that she had already 
 accepted engagements which must be kept. 
 
 After she had gone home and had written a hand- 
 some letter of thanks to her hostess, the old maid 
 replied with the following note: 
 
 " Dear Ella :— 
 
 I am very glad to know that you enjoyed sleep- 
 ing at my house. 
 
 Yours as ever, 
 
 Sarah." 
 
 It didn't pay to write that biting sentence. Per- 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT 171 
 
 haps she thought she was " getting even," but she 
 got a httle too even, for she lost forever the pleas- 
 ure of a brilliant woman's society and one great joy 
 in her dull life was thereby taken away. 
 
 Now a little imagination would have saved her, — 
 a little of the power of projecting some of her per- 
 sonality into the life of her friend. A little less of 
 self and more of the genius for friendship. She 
 could have shared in all the fun and gossip and 
 descriptions of new plays and fashionable clothes 
 and clever sayings of witty men and women if she 
 had only possessed an imagination and a generous 
 enthusiasm. Children have both. It is what makes 
 them bob up in their beds, sleepy and disheveled, 
 when big sister comes home, to cry " Tell about 
 the party ! Tell about the party ! " 
 
 If you will consider the list of your friends, it 
 will not take you long to discover that the woman 
 you like best is the woman with a sense of humour. 
 She is the one you think of first if you are getting 
 up a picnic or a card party. You do not perhaps, 
 formulate it even to yourself, but in your mind she 
 stands for the utmost good humour. If it rains or 
 if it shines ; if everybody else is cross and grumpy, 
 the woman with a sense of humour can extract fun 
 out of the dreariest proposition, and the first thing 
 you know she has set everybody to laughing at her 
 droll sayings and turned defeat into a triumph, for 
 
172 MAKING THE BEST OF IT 
 
 who cares whether your original plan was carried 
 out or not, just so everybody has a good time? 
 
 A sense of humour is said to be lacking in most 
 women. Alas, I have found this to be only too 
 true, but I have noticed that when a woman does 
 have it, the men are the first to find it out and all 
 she has to do for a husband is to pick and choose. 
 The day of the girl with the doll face is going out 
 and the day of the girl with a sense of humour is 
 coming in. 
 
 To the girl with a sense of humour the whole 
 world is on a pivot for her own amusement. And 
 to the woman with an imagination in addition, she 
 herself is on the pivot as well, so that she can enjoy 
 a joke on herself or relating an anecdote in which 
 she is put in a ridiculous light quite as well as to 
 poke sly fun at her brother or friend. Humanity 
 is not only very pitiable but very funny as well. 
 You are funny. Your ailments, which exist only 
 in your imagination and because you love to pity 
 yourself, are sources of amusement to people who 
 understand that you are not at death's door half as 
 often as you think you are. Your false front is 
 funny, because it's always crooked. Why don't you 
 ever look in the glass? Your free use of camphor 
 is funny, and oh, why will you wear rings on your 
 forefinger? Why don't you keep step with the pro- 
 cession? Why will you persist in being a walking 
 advertisement of the year 1850? 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT 173 
 
 Clothes do make such a difference. No woman 
 can afford to ignore fashions, old maids least of all, 
 for it simply calls attention to their affliction. 
 
 It is no excuse to say that you can't afford to 
 keep in fashion. Sewing machines are cheap com- 
 pared to the wear and tear on your friends' nerves 
 which your antique costumes cause. Don't talk 
 to me. That is why I advise old maids to leave 
 New England and go south. It is pink muslin 
 versus red flannel. 
 
 Mental sanitation would do all of us good. To 
 stop hovering over fires and to get out into the air 
 and sunlight which make the world beautiful. All 
 indoor mental qualities are of the hot house variety 
 and are pernicious. You can't be mean and small 
 and selfish if you live out-of-doors. I didn't say if 
 you stay out of doors a good part of your day. I 
 didn't say " if you sit on your veranda evenings." 
 I said " If you live out of doors." To live, to get 
 right down to business is something. Most people 
 merely exist. But to live out of doors is more. The 
 ozone of heaven itself permeates your entire system 
 and disseminates healing. 
 
 Fresh air, the wind whispering in the trees, the 
 humming birds in the honeysuckle, the faint breath 
 of the roses, the murmuring of the drowsy little 
 brook, all tend to make you so happy that you feel 
 as if you must do something for somebody — you 
 
174 MAKING THE BEST OF IT 
 
 must share your happiness with those who have it 
 not. There are certain qualities which go with a 
 hfe spent among chenille portieres and plush albums, 
 envying, jealousy and the spirit of revenge for petty 
 slights. But in the open air you forget these things. 
 You cease to be a human endogen, always growing 
 within, with no thought of spreading out for your 
 friends' benefit. You become an exogen, and your 
 spiritual growth is apparent to all who possess the 
 seeing eye. 
 
 They will know from your manner of life that 
 you have adopted for your daily motto those lines 
 which never can be quoted too often : 
 
 " We shall pass through this world but once. 
 Any good thing therefore that I can do, or any 
 kindness I can show to any human being, let me do 
 it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall 
 not pass this way again." 
 
THE CRISIS IN MARRIAGE 
 
THE CRISIS IN MARRIAGE 
 
 LOVE is the mother of unselfishness, there- 
 fore most marriages are happy in the be- 
 ginning. Each tries to give his all, and 
 neither stops to consider the quality of the 
 self-sacrifice, nor the balance of the scales. 
 
 The length of time which elapses before a hus- 
 band and wife begin to be self conscious depends 
 largely upon the characters of each and both. Van- 
 ity is the chemical which, when dropped into the 
 golden bowl of married love, resolves it into its 
 separate and elementary components. Perhaps the 
 wife wounds the husband's vanity, and suddenly 
 from being a blindly adoring lover, he finds himself 
 drawing away and looking at his wife, not as the 
 angel he had believed her, but as a woman and a 
 woman he is tied to for years and years to come. 
 
 Perhaps some tertium quid admired at a little 
 dinner the frock which her husband had failed to 
 mention. Her quick vanity was touched by the 
 flattery and straightway she remembered that her 
 husband had begun to forget those little attentions 
 he used to lavish on her when they were first mar- 
 ried. 
 
 12 177 
 
178 THE CRISIS IN MARRIAGE 
 
 After self consciousness, — that is to say, after 
 the period has passed when both so hved in each 
 other that each found it difficuh to realise his own 
 existence, and each has become conscious that 
 after all, she is herself and he is himself and 
 not the half of a whole, — then is the time when both 
 husband and wife begin mentally to take account 
 of stock. 
 
 Perhaps the husband begins by thinking, " By 
 Jove! I don't believe most men make as good 
 husbands as I do! Here I have given up all my 
 clubs except the golf, and I come home every night 
 of my life and I never spend any more money on 
 myself than is absolutely necessary, and just look 
 at the other fellows I know ! I wonder if they don't 
 think I am a fool to be so devoted to Mary. I even 
 stand her relations! And what does Mary have 
 to stand from me that is as bad as that ?" 
 
 The thought is father to the action, and it is not 
 long after these ideas have crystallized into form 
 that Mary thinks she sees a sign of the falling off 
 of the bridegroom attitude. Then the suspicion 
 grows that the ordinary, everyday husband is on 
 the way to take his place. She feels that soon her 
 marriage will be as commonplace as those she sees 
 around her, and she thinks it is all John's fault. 
 He has ceased to notice ! 
 
 From that moment she begins to pity herself, to 
 
THE CRISIS IN MARRIAGE 179 
 
 sum up her own perfections and to articulate John's 
 faults. It is the beginning of the end. Chemical- 
 ization has begun and each existence is separating 
 from the other. It will not be long before these 
 unspoken thoughts will crystallize into words — 
 words which cut into the tender consciousness of 
 bridegroom and bride until the pain dulls itself of its 
 own poignancy. Thus vanishes from the memory 
 the last tender view of her face under the filmy wed- 
 ding veil and the scent of orange blossoms grows 
 so faint that it is soon forgotten. 
 
 The crisis has come, the one are now two, and 
 self pity was the chemist. 
 
 Now comes the test of character. 
 
 If either husband or wife has an imagination, it 
 will be seen that this is the fork in the road. They 
 cannot separate now, and even walk parallel yet 
 alone, without losing all the glamour, all the ex- 
 quisite, inarticulate tenderness, which makes mar- 
 riage a sacrament and the holiest relation which 
 exists on earth to-day. Hands which are clasped 
 across any barrier, be it only a strip of flower-sown 
 grass, or a black and bottomless chasm, cannot know 
 the closeness and thrill which came when the path- 
 way was one and so narrow, that it was trod within 
 a sheltering arm. Yet so few there be who have 
 eyes to see! 
 
 I sometimes doubt if a return can ever be made 
 
i8o THE CRISIS IN MARRIAGE 
 
 after the fork in the road has been clearly discerned. 
 Does not the mere effort to return brush aside the 
 sparkles of dew from the grass and tread down the 
 most delicate of the wild flowers? After bitter 
 sneers have passed and after hateful truths have 
 been put into words, can one ever forget? Will 
 not the unknown terror which causes your sudden 
 waking in the night, resolve itself into an agonized 
 memory of the cruel words which ate into your soul, 
 words which caused the dearest lips in the world 
 to emit flames of fire which seared themselves upon 
 your heart? 
 
 Yet this is the time of all others to beware of 
 self pity. Self Pity! That insidious destroyer of 
 happy homes; that uninvited guest who comes and 
 camps upon your hearth stone and simply bides 
 his time. You don't know, but he does, that it will 
 not be long before one of those chairs will be empty 
 and he sees, but you don't, that the hour approaches 
 when he and you will sit opposite each other — alone. 
 How do you like the idea of Self Pity for yoiu^ 
 mate through life instead of the Beloved One? 
 
 Then beware how you let him in, for he is as 
 insidious and persistent as a house cat. Shut the 
 door and he comes in at the window. Drive him 
 out every day in the week yet he returns, quiet, 
 unobtrusive, apparently meek yet with the mad- 
 dening arrogance of one who knows that your pa- 
 
THE CRISIS IN MARRIAGE i8i 
 
 tience will not last and that your will power will 
 weaken. Your mistake was in letting the cat know 
 the warmth of a welcome the first time. 
 
 Self pity has many disguises. He is too clever 
 not to know that in his natural garb he is hateful 
 to the healthy minded, so he chooses for the clever- 
 est of his victims the erotic self analysis so dear to 
 the trained mind. It matters not that this sense of 
 discrimination has been learned in a hardy school 
 and never before has been put to so base a use. 
 Self pity is clever enough to know a keen blade when 
 he sees it and he rather prefers a sharp point. The 
 time comes when even a philosopher and meta- 
 physician will put their critical faculties to an un- 
 worthy use if self interest prompts. Thus Self 
 Pity hides himself under the aspect of criticism of 
 your neighbour. You select a man who has won 
 some sort of praise from some ill-judged source, 
 which has been expressed in your presence. Per- 
 haps he is an easy going fool, amiable and good 
 tempered, whose wife appreciates those qualities 
 and has sense enough to know that an overtrained 
 intellect sometimes means overtrained nerves, which 
 is only another name for the family brand of irrita- 
 bility. Perhaps the wife of this fool has the wit 
 to thank God that her husband is not intellectual. 
 
 At any rate, she is satisfied with him and some- 
 one mentions her constant state of happiness and 
 
i82 THE CRISIS IN MARRIAGE 
 
 exploits your friend X., the fool, as a model husband. 
 
 At once you are off! You think you are simply 
 exercising your critical faculties at the expense of 
 your friend. You don't seem to recognize your old 
 friend Self Pity complaining because you were not 
 praised for the happiness of your wife, when you 
 are so much finer a fellow in every way than X. 
 
 " Well, of all things ! To praise old X. because 
 his wife is on a broad grin all the time ! Why, the 
 woman is just one of those round-eyed creatures 
 who purrs like a cat when she is warm and dry. 
 She hasn't brains enough to be miserable or she 
 would see that X. isn't the model husband people 
 think he is. Why the world jogs along so easily 
 with him, he doesn't have to worry. Anybody can 
 smile who is out of debt. If people only knew what 
 / bear up under and how cheerful / am when my 
 heart is as heavy as lead, then they might talk. 
 X. and his wife laugh because they haven't anything 
 better to do, whereas I come home and force my- 
 self to be pleasant and bright with Mary, so that 
 she won't remember that my note comes due to- 
 morrow and that I haven't a cent to pay it with. 
 Now that is what I call being a good husband. That 
 is what I call shielding a wife. To keep unpleasant 
 subjects out of her mind and so to behave that she 
 will not suspect that I am worried. That takes 
 courage and self sacrifice and unselfishness and ten- 
 
THE CRISIS IN MARRIAGE 183 
 
 derness and chivalry and courtesy and calls into 
 play the truest, noblest qualities of which man is 
 capable. That takes moral courage. That sort is 
 far nobler than to stand up and be shot at. A 
 soldier is only required to be a fine brute. Why to 
 fight is easy, dead easy compared to what I do 
 every day of my life. I'd like to see old X. under 
 the same circumstances! If he had a worry in 
 business or were ill, the first thing he would do 
 would be to tell his wife and dump the burden on 
 her! That's X. every time. Yet here he gets all 
 sorts of hot air thrown at him for being a good 
 husband, while I might go to my grave before any- 
 body would congratulate Mary on having married 
 me. What sort of husbands do women like any- 
 way ? Oh, I know ! The fat, comfortable sort who 
 give 'em plenty of money to spend and don't bother 
 them. When it comes to a man's really knowing 
 how to be a good husband, they none of 'em know 
 enough to appreciate him." 
 
 From this sort of general self pity, it is not long 
 before he thinks he sees signs of Mary's unappre- 
 ciation. Surely she used to mention his good quali- 
 ties oftener than she does now. Surely her little 
 bride-like attentions to him are wearing off. It 
 doesn't seem to make any difference to her now 
 if he only kisses her good-bye once, whereas she 
 used to run after him into the vestibule and say 
 
1 84 THE CRISIS IN MARRIAGE 
 
 good-bye to him so often that he was sometimes 
 late at the office. 
 
 Thoughts are things! And I defy any man or 
 woman to think constantly along these lines for a 
 few months and not have them reflected in his or 
 her daily life. 
 
 Oh, for little sign posts along the road of mar- 
 riage, such as we erect for cyclists. " Do not coast 
 down this hill ! Dangerous turn at the bottom ! " 
 
 The critical attitude of either husband or wife 
 is sure to, react upon the sensitive consciousness of 
 the other. One cannot do all the unfavourable criti- 
 cizing and the other all the loving. Therefore, as 
 it is generally conceded that it is the wife's business 
 to pardon the most, there is but one thing for her to 
 do, when she comes to the fork in the road, and that 
 is to get back to first principles. 
 
 This is not easy unless one understands how, for 
 a pumped-up emotion is an insult to its object and 
 is instantly detected by one who knows the real 
 thing when he sees it. If your husband really loves 
 you, you cannot make a pretense at loving him and 
 not have him discern it. You must coax yourself 
 back, step by step, along the road you have trod, 
 until old emotions re-obtain their sway over you. 
 What were the verses you used to read together? 
 Where the walks you used to take before the stren- 
 uous life sapped all the time you used to take for 
 so foolish a thing as loving your own husband? 
 
THE CRISIS IN MARRIAGE 185 
 
 What were his little idiosyncrasies of which you 
 used to be so observant when you were first married, 
 and which you have coaxed him to drop because 
 they were foolish. Foolish ? Perhaps. But as long 
 as they were harmless and he liked them, why did 
 you permit your own selfishness to supersede them ? 
 It is by observing the little things in married life that 
 love is kept alive. Many a woman is tired of a hus- 
 band and almost out of love with him, when in her 
 own soul she knows that he would gladly give up 
 his life to save hers, and that, because he has ceased 
 to consult all her little likes and dislikes to which he 
 was such a willing slave in the early days of their 
 marriage. Many a man is bored to death because 
 his wife has grown slovenly, when he knows she 
 adores him. 
 
 Why grow brutal just because you have the luck 
 to be married? 
 
 Mere selfishness should teach a wife to be un- 
 selfish with her husband because so much more real 
 pleasure is obtained from unselfishness to a beloved 
 object than selfishness. But good husbands spoil 
 their wives to such an extent that men are sometimes 
 to blame for their wives' selfishness, so that sheer 
 goodness is at the root of some blighted love story 
 of the once happily married. 
 
 It is an old saying that marriage is a partnership, 
 and I once heard an experienced and wealthy busi- 
 ness man say : " In floating this company I propose 
 
i86 THE CRISIS IN MARRIAGE 
 
 to give the general manager some stock, for I would 
 not trust one dollar of my money in the hands of 
 a man, whose interest was not to see that the stock 
 earned its dividends." In other words he made the 
 general manager a partner. 
 
 Interpreted spiritually that would apply equally 
 well to the crisis in marriage. 
 
 Let husband and wife own the stock of love 
 equally, believe in its integrity alone to carry on 
 the business, and neither will dare to try to water 
 it with tears of self pity. When they understand 
 that love is absolutely necessary to carry on the 
 business of life, they will become as unselfish in 
 their efforts to keep it green and fresh as they were 
 when they were first engaged and daily asked each 
 other the question in an anguish of anxiety, " Will 
 you always love me as you do now ? " 
 
 Engaged love has the enthusiasm of novelty and 
 the excitement of anticipation. Married love is 
 stronger and more intelligent. One is founded on 
 the unknown; the other on the known. Nor is it, 
 as many have averred, the first year of marriage 
 which is the most difficult to live down. It is the 
 year, be it the first, fifth or tenth year of marriage 
 when there appears 
 
 " The little rift within the lute 
 
 Which by and by will make the music mute 
 
 And ever widening, slowly silence all." 
 
MODERN MOTHERS 
 
MODERN MOTHERS 
 
 EVERY once in so often the cry will be raised, 
 " What is to become of our daughters ? " 
 and an agitated wave sweeps over the coun- 
 try intended to reform the pertness, bold- 
 ness, waywardness and general bad manners of the 
 modern young girl, who is so forward that she will 
 not permit the public to forget her. 
 
 But while I dislike the pretty young creature with 
 bold eyes and peek-a-boo waist as much as anyone, 
 I pity her from the bottom of my heart, because she 
 does not realize what a fool she is making of her- 
 self and because she has no mother. 
 
 Not that she is an orphan — far from it. Her 
 father's wife bore her, clothed and sent her to school, 
 but — the question / would agitate is, " What has 
 become of the mothers? " 
 
 Where is the old-fashioned mother who used 
 to prevent violent intimacies with other young, in- 
 experienced, if not perverted girls, by becoming in- 
 timate with her own daughter? Where has the 
 mother disappeared to, who used to set apart a cer- 
 tain time in the day to find out, not what her daugh- 
 
 189 
 
I90 MODERN MOTHERS 
 
 ter said, but what her daughter really thought? 
 Where is the foolish, behind-the-times mother who 
 used to think that what her daughter learned at 
 school was not half as important as what she learned 
 at home ? 
 
 Time was when a girl learned to be a lady from 
 watching her own mother. Where now, can she 
 learn courtesy, gentle speech, consideration for mar- 
 ried people and the aged, and the general hall marks 
 of good breeding? Not from her own mother, be- 
 cause her mother either spends her afternoons at 
 women's teas, card parties or clubs for the Advance- 
 ment of Women! Good heavens, ladies! Aren't 
 you advanced far enough by this time, to stop and 
 catch your breath and take mental inventories of 
 your own families ? 
 
 Most of you — ay, most of you, — have no ad- 
 equate idea of the standards your children admire, of 
 the sort of religion they believe, of the kind of 
 morality they adhere to, or, to sum up in brief, of 
 the trend of their thought in any direction which 
 counts. 
 
 You know what colours suit your daughter's com- 
 plexion best. You know whether large or small hats 
 become her, but what books does she read in the pri- 
 vacy of her own room ? What is the influence of her 
 intimate friends over her? What? Do I expect 
 you to take your valuable time away from pink teas 
 
MODERN MOTHERS 191 
 
 to ascertain what sort of minds and morals mix with 
 your pure-eyed girl's every day of her life ? Well, 
 admit that I am a monster, but let us go on to the 
 next. 
 
 Many a so-called good, faithful mother will delib- 
 erately send her daughter away to boarding school 
 for from one to four years, without having seen one 
 of the teachers or one of the girls, the young un- 
 formed nature is to be intimately associated with, 
 day and night, during the most impressionable period 
 of her life. These mothers think letters, written rec- 
 ommendations and high prices are ample security 
 against evil associates and possible wreckage of a 
 precious life. 
 
 What can mothers be thinking of to permit their 
 daughters to sleep in the same room for eight 
 months in the year, with a total stranger, whose 
 family comes from a city perhaps a thousand miles 
 away? What do you know of the morals of that 
 quiet, demure little miss, whose photograph your 
 daughter sends home with glowing descriptions of 
 her charms ? You may find out too late. But you 
 will have nobody to thank but yourself, and you are 
 her mother. 
 
 It is a pernicious habit to send girls away to 
 school under any circumstances, unless they can 
 board with an intimate friend or relation for whose 
 wise surveillance and good judgment you can vouch, 
 
192 MODERN MOTHERS 
 
 but the practice which obtains in most boarding 
 schools of letting two, or more, girls sleep in the 
 same room, cannot be too openly denounced. Raise 
 your prices, dear proprietors of expensive schools, 
 but room every girl separately, if for no other reason 
 than to discourage a girl from telling indiscreet 
 secrets after the gas is out, that she will bitterly re- 
 gret when the sun shines. 
 
 Oh, the ignorant conceit of those mothers who 
 boast to me that they flatter themselves they know 
 what their daughters think and believe and do ! 
 
 " I can trust my daughter ! " A toss of the head 
 generally goes with that remark and a look which 
 means, " You attend to your business and I'll attend 
 to mine! I've raised children before you were 
 born!" 
 
 Have you ? 
 
 How? 
 
 I have heard mothers say, " Well, thank heaven, 
 I know from the evidence of my own eyes and ears 
 that I can trust my daughter," when I knew from 
 her own lips thait that same pretty little rascal of a 
 daughter smoked cigarettes, drank champagne and 
 cocktails in restaurants, played bridge and poker for 
 money, let the boys kiss her and corresponded clan- 
 destinely with married men. 
 
 What could I do under such circumstances ? Tell 
 the mother? I couldn't prove a single fact against 
 
MODERN MOTHERS 193 
 
 the girl unless I engaged a detective. She told me if 
 I told, she would simply lie out of it. But she 
 showed me the letters and I saw her several times 
 with my own eyes. 
 
 Her mother never would have believed me. I 
 can only go on encouraging her to tell me things 
 she wouldn't tell her own mother, and letting her 
 see what a precious fool she is making of herself. 
 I remember she did blush and look troubled when I 
 told her that doubtless the very boys who kissed her 
 in the conservatory, bragged about it afterward. 
 " How do you know," I said, " that he had not made 
 a bet with some other fellow that he could kiss 
 you?" 
 
 But that won't stop her ! She thinks she knows 
 more of the world than her mother and half a dozen 
 like me could tell her. Right now what she needs 
 is a mother six years ago. 
 
 She is a pretty thing, but her mother lets her wear 
 peek-a-boo waists and stay away from the summer 
 hotel all the afternoon with men she only knows to 
 speak to. 
 
 Why will mothers let innocent young girls wear 
 dress which pointedly call attention to their under- 
 clothes ? These mothers are modest, refined women, 
 who would be desperately shocked if, when they see 
 their pretty daughters running yards of satin ribbon 
 in their underclothes, dreamed that the girls pro- 
 
 13 
 
194 MODERN MOTHERS 
 
 posed going down to dinner in their chemises. Yet 
 the immodesty of certain styles of dress at summer 
 resorts or on street cars where vile men can make 
 their obscene jokes about your girl, madam, and 
 yours and yours, could be in no worse taste than to 
 go shopping in a kimono and bed-room slippers. 
 
 Do you ask me if it is any worse than some of the 
 evening dresses nice young girls wear? I answer 
 no, but an evening gown is generally worn in re- 
 sponse to a private invitation, where a hostess is 
 supposed to vouch for her guests — Heaven forgive 
 me for even writing such a silly thing down in these 
 days of loose hospitality! — but on a street car any 
 man may look at your daughter's pearly flesh who 
 can pay five cents. 
 
 You don't like such plain talk, do you? It isn't 
 nice of me to put such blunt truths before you, is it? 
 
 I'm sure I don't enjoy it any more than you do. 
 I only write it in the hope that some mother who 
 has never given it a thought before, will stop to 
 think now, and save one more clear-eyed girl from 
 a humiliation which her dress has innocently in- 
 vited. 
 
 Don't accuse me of making things up. I only 
 tell what I know, and I dare not tell half of that. If 
 only mothers knew their own daughters ! 
 
 I know one of the sweetest women in the world, 
 who has spoiled her whole family by a mistaken in- 
 
MODERN MOTHERS 195 
 
 dulgence. She sent her daughter to a boarding 
 school and was horrified into a fit of sickness by a 
 note from the principal saying that the mother of 
 her daughter's roommate had refused to let the girls 
 room together another year, because the daughter 
 of my friend swore so. 
 
 I wouldn't believe it of her, so I asked the girl my- 
 self. 
 
 "Ella," I said, "tell me the real truth of it. 
 Do you swear ? " 
 
 " Why of course I do ! All the girls swear. If 
 you see a girl stub her toe on a loose stone, do you 
 think that nowadays she says, ' Oh, dear me ! ' 
 You just bet she doesn't." 
 
 And her little teeth showed in a mischievous smile. 
 
 I didn't swoon. But I felt sick when I thought 
 of little babies' mouths — no more innocent looking 
 than this young girl's. 
 
 How many mothers know anything about the 
 persons who keep up a close correspondence with 
 their daughters ? 
 
 I once met quite a number of girls from one of the 
 smart boarding schools near New York and just to 
 make sure on this point, I asked them if their 
 mothers insisted on reading their letters. 
 
 A silence of such astonishment greeted my ques- 
 tion that I had to bite my lips to keep from laughing. 
 
 "What! 'Insist?' Well, I'd like to hear her 
 
196 MODERN MOTHERS 
 
 even ask me who a letter was from ! I'll bet you a 
 thousand dollars to a doughnut she'd never ask 
 again ! " 
 
 " What would you do to her? " I inquired with a 
 pardonable show of eagerness. " Punish her ? " 
 
 I have never seen a mother punished by one of 
 these competent, modern daughters, but I live in 
 hope. 
 
 " Well, you'd call it punishment if you could hear 
 the way I'd talk to her ! " 
 
 " My mother doesn't even care to know ! " said 
 another superbly. 
 
 " Nor mine!" 
 
 "Nor mine!" 
 
 " I couldn't get her to listen, if I asked her to. 
 My mother is a society woman." 
 
 " It would bore my mother stiff if I'd cuddle down 
 and do the goo-goo act with her." 
 
 " You aren't a bit up to snuff, are you ? " asked 
 one, eyeing me pityingly. 
 
 " Perhaps I don't know all you do," I said po- 
 litely. " But I am not so hopelessly old-fashioned 
 that I wear a shawl." 
 
 " No, but I mean, you think girls ought to con- 
 fide everything they do to their mothers, don't you ? " 
 
 " Not unless your mothers' morals are strong 
 enough to stand it. I'd hate to have them con- 
 taminated. Has your mother ever been tempted ? " 
 
MODERN MOTHERS 197 
 
 " Now there you are ! No, she hasn't ! My 
 mother was married when she was seventeen and she 
 had six children and did nothing but take care of 
 them until the three oldest were old enough to send 
 away to boarding school, and just as soon as she got 
 rid of us, she blossomed out and she's having the 
 time of her life with her clubs and receptions and 
 charities. Poor mother ! " 
 
 " And yet," I ventured timidly, " she is probably 
 as innocent as a new born babe compared to you 
 girls ! " 
 
 " Innocent ? Well, I should say so ! Why, do 
 you know, if I should tell her the things we do every 
 day, she'd blush and accuse me of reading French 
 novels." 
 
 " It must make you feel very old," I hazarded to 
 a girl not quite sixteen. 
 
 " There's not much left for a girl to learn after 
 she's left Miss Blank's school, I can tell you ! " she 
 said, with a wink at the others, which set them off 
 into fits of laughter. 
 
 Ladies and mothers of girls like these, whom do 
 you blame for such a showing as that? Is it the 
 fault of the boarding school? I say no. It is the 
 lack of mother-education — the sort you had from 
 your mother and what has kept you better and 
 sweeter and more innocent of the world's wickedness 
 than your own daughter. No girl who has been 
 
198 MODERN MOTHERS 
 
 properly trained at home can ever go far wrong. If 
 I am met by a chorus of instances to prove the con- 
 trary, I only repeat that statement with a little added 
 emphasis on the word " properly." 
 
 By properly I do not of necessity mean rigour- 
 ously or religiously. I know many a girl brought 
 up on advice, precept and example who kicked over 
 the traces at her first opportunity, and no thinking 
 person could be surprised at it. That was not the 
 way to bring her up. She needed some rope. She 
 got none. Therefore she untied the knot and walked 
 off to discover what freedom was like. 
 
 If you were a bird fancier would you put a night- 
 ingale, a canary, an eagle, a turkey buzzard and a 
 humming bird in the same cage and feed them all on 
 dog biscuit ? 
 
 Why, then, does a mother treat all her children 
 alike; send them all to the same kind of a school; 
 stuff them with the same mental and moral precepts 
 and allow them all the same amount of freedom? 
 Will the eagle be content to hop from perch to perch 
 like the canary ? 
 
 The main trouble with modern education is that 
 we herd children too much. We do not consider that 
 they have individualities until they are grown. Then 
 we ask the boys what trade or profession they would 
 like to follow, and the girls what coloured husbands 
 they prefer, light or dark? Anybody would think, 
 from the way girls are put into an educational hopper 
 
MODERN MOTHERS 199 
 
 and ground out, that the Latin root of educate was 
 " to stuff in." 
 
 I could imagine no greater pleasure on earth than 
 to be the intimate friend of my own daughter. How 
 much more interesting her views would be than 
 those of a stranger ! How much funnier her jokes 
 would sound to me than those of the man invited to 
 dinner because he was so brilliant ! 
 
 I don't care how badly a girl is spoiled by a 
 mother love, just so the mother spoils herself at the 
 same time. Many a foolish, vain, shallow woman 
 has proved a better mother than a religious dis- 
 ciplinarian, because she first kept her daughter's re- 
 spect and never lost her girl's intimacy, while the 
 righteous mother and daughter were mental strang- 
 ers to each other. 
 
 If I were the mother of a dozen daughters, I 
 should hope that they would all be good, but if they 
 were not — well, I should know what they thought 
 and admired and believed and loved. If they joined 
 the church and worked in social settlements and 
 married czars, I should be proud and happy. But 
 if I found that their tastes ran to forgery and 
 safe-cracking, they should not get away from me. I 
 should simply prepare to go to jail with them and 
 somebody would have a chance to write touching 
 articles about the unusual sight of a mother and 
 twelve daughters all in jail at the same time for the 
 same offense. 
 
THE UNDERSTANDING MOTHER 
 
THE UNDERSTANDING MOTHER 
 
 WOMEN who belong will know exactly 
 what I mean by this title. Women 
 who do not are invited to go on to the 
 next, for mothers are born not made, 
 and a try-to-be-mother can never acquire the under- 
 standing I mean. 
 
 I am sorry for these try-to-be mothers, but I often 
 wonder why children are distributed so carelessly 
 through this world. I have seen little forlorn babies 
 whose mothers were born never to have been mar- 
 ried. I have seen pathetic orphans with fathers and 
 mothers, and old maids who were born to have a 
 dozen children and mother them every one. I have 
 seen whole families who understood each other far 
 less than they understood the family next door, and 
 mothers who knew so little of what was going on in 
 the lives of their own daughters that they might as 
 well have lived across the street. 
 
 But set over against these tragedies, there are 
 those deep-seeing, understanding women, who are 
 born to mother something, even though, being denied 
 children of their own, they are forced to expend their 
 
 203 
 
204 THE UNDERSTANDING MOTHER 
 
 motherliness on niece, nephew or neighbour's chil- 
 dren. 
 
 I repeat, there are women born to be mothers. 
 But when I see the annual crop of blasee debutantes, 
 the poor, pert, jaded little women which the finishing 
 schools turn out every year, I wonder where these 
 mothers have vanished. For verily these finishing 
 schools are well named ! 
 
 Oh be thankful, you women of the country and the 
 small town, who lack the money to send your daugh- 
 ters away to some city school, — be grateful for the 
 poverty which keeps your girl under her mother's 
 wing 1 Better a thousand times ignorance of French 
 and music and deportment, than a knowledge of the 
 smart world and its ways, which but too often goes 
 hand in hand with the acquirement of the social 
 graces you desire. Will mothers ever go back to the 
 old fashioned idea of teaching their daughters to 
 keep house, so that when young men marry, they 
 may entertain a reasonable hope of having a home, 
 instead of a commuter's breakfast, a pie luncheon 
 and a restaurant dinner? Has any mother so whole- 
 some an ambition for her little girl baby, or do you 
 want them all to take Del Sarte? 
 
 I do feel sorry for the young men nowadays, who 
 know that when they marry girls of the social set 
 into which they have passed, while father made his 
 money, that they must give up all idea of such a 
 
THE UNDERSTANDING MOTHER 205 
 
 home as mother used to make, and live socially on 
 the instalment plan. 
 
 Clever Dorothy Dix, who understands the phi- 
 losophy of things, has put forth the entirely reason- 
 able idea that when a man and woman have brought 
 up their daughter as a wholly useless ornament, in 
 ignorance of housekeeping, dressmaking and hat 
 trimming, with extravagant tastes and with no idea 
 of the value of money, that her husband has a perfect 
 right to send all milliner's, dressmaker's and house- 
 keeper's bills to the parents who made her what she 
 is, while the husband pays the rent, servants and 
 whatever bills the girl wife's incompetence has no 
 power to increase unnecessarily through her igno- 
 rance of essentials, which she should have been 
 familiar with. 
 
 I like the justice of this suggestion. It is only fair 
 to make a man pay for his mistakes. And the 
 mother, who possibly has looked forward to her 
 daughter's marriage as getting the girl off her hands, 
 should be compelled to find her still on her hands. 
 
 So many mothers are like this, I sometimes feel as 
 if I would like to take the lantern of Diogenes and 
 hunt for the understanding mother — the one who 
 knows by instinct what is to be done with a girl child 
 to fit her for the inevitable struggle before her. 
 
 When I see girls going to a pay telephone, instead 
 of using their mother's ; when they thrust letters out 
 
2o6 THE UNDERSTANDING MOTHER 
 
 of sight or blush if you look inquiringly at them; 
 when they whisper and giggle over photographs 
 which are never shown openly; when mysterious 
 messages are repeated by the servants; when ru- 
 mours come to mothers at receptions or to fathers at 
 their clubs, of their daughters having been seen here 
 or there at untoward hours and in questionable com- 
 pany — I often wonder if these parents will be sur- 
 prised some day to unearth a secret marriage or to 
 read in the papers their first intimation of an elope- 
 ment? 
 
 Would girls do these things if they were under- 
 stood aright at home ? I believe not. I believe that 
 at heart, most girls are inherently good. I think 
 that the foolishness of most of the young girls of 
 whom we disapprove, arises either from their 
 mother's neglect or misunderstanding. Of course it 
 takes time and patience to understand your daughter, 
 but after all, it is easy. The only thing to do is to 
 begin early enough. It will be well-nigh impossible 
 to learn to know your daughter if you wait until she 
 comes home from boarding school. It would be 
 well, if you wish to become acquainted with her, to 
 begin earlier than that. If you wish to become inti- 
 mate, I can easily fix the exact time to begin. About 
 nine months before she is born. That is about the 
 right age to begin. And a mental bond thoroughly 
 and firmly established at this age will be indissoluble 
 at ninety. 
 
THE UNDERSTANDING MOTHER 207 
 
 If mothers want to understand their daughters, I 
 believe they can. I never could understand how 
 mothers — real mothers, I mean — could be surprised 
 by the inroads that disease had made on one of their 
 children. Is not a languid manner, flushed cheek, 
 an incipient cough or loss of appetite enough of a 
 warning? Why, even a mother cat will carry her 
 kitten in her mouth to the catnip patch if the little 
 thing is ailing. Yet, God forgive them ! I do know 
 some women with children, who haven't the sense of 
 a mother cat. 
 
 But your real mother has an ear for even a hoarse 
 breath in the dead of night, and the mother-remedy 
 of whatever school she is, is applied instantaneously. 
 That is because of the understanding mother-heart. 
 
 If this can be so, and we all know many instances 
 where it is true, how then can a mother be surprised 
 by her daughter's runaway marriage ? Has she not 
 an equal instinct for signs of mental disquiet ? Are 
 not an absent manner, hastily hidden letters, unex- 
 plained absences from home and indirect answers to 
 questions, symptoms of a disease too well known in 
 households where the mother-instinct is lacking? 
 
 I make allowances for the heart-break of the un- 
 derstanding mother with the wayward daughter, 
 who cannot be controlled. There are such daugh- 
 ters, but I know that I am right when I say that most 
 girls are good at heart and few indeed have such per- 
 
2o8 THE UNDERSTANDING MOTHER 
 
 verted tastes that they will deliberately invent an 
 intrigue, when their mother's heart is open to their 
 confidences with sympathy and understanding and 
 the love that only a mother can know. I have known 
 instances where even a fresh-cheeked, clear-eyed 
 young girl either inherited perverted tastes from 
 bygone ancestors, or else associates had turned her 
 into a degenerate fit only for the discussion of a 
 Lombroso; girls who wanted to do wrong; girls 
 who were literally looking for trouble; whose minds 
 were nothing but fetid pools of mental sewage ; dis- 
 missed from reputable schools; shunned by decent 
 girls; girls who seemed foredoomed to disgrace, dis- 
 aster and moral death. Such girls as these are what 
 bring ignominy on respectable boarding schools, for 
 any principal will tell you that one such mischief- 
 maker will taint every other girl in school except 
 those mentally and morally armoured by a mother's 
 early and ineradicable training. 
 
 The deliberately vicious girl is, however, fortu- 
 nately an anomaly and therefore need not be con- 
 sidered by the average mother, for when she makes 
 her appearance in a relationship, her case must be 
 coped with just as that of a drunken son or a de- 
 praved, misshapen soul of any sort or kind. It is a 
 family affair to be kept from outsiders, if possible. 
 
 But she is not to be confounded with the young 
 girl, whose feet stray from lack of surveillance, lack 
 
THE UNDERSTANDING MOTHER 209 
 
 of understanding, lack of sympathy by those whose 
 business and privilege it is to know even the trend 
 of her secret ideals. This sort of girl can generally 
 be accounted for by observation of her parents or 
 guardians. If the mother is too intellectual, full of 
 noble ideas as to the training of children, but without 
 an atom of tact, human sympathy or the mother in- 
 stinct which can tell the meaning of even a baby's 
 cry — whether it be hunger, fright or pain — you need 
 not be surprised if this child of untried theories 
 elopes with her dancing master or manages through 
 some feminine ingenuity to involve her family in 
 disgrace. I know one woman who gives public lec- 
 tures on " How to Bring up Your Daughters," 
 whose children are so ill-trained that the neighbours 
 can scarcely forbear slapping them every time they 
 show their heads. Yet the mother commands the 
 very highest price as a lecturer ! Intellect versus the 
 mother-instinct. 
 
 I know another family where the father writes 
 stories of child life, dealing largely with such touch- 
 ing subjects as Twilight With the Children, Little 
 Prayers by Little People, Baby's First Bath, and so 
 forth, whose own youngest child, whenever she 
 meets me in the street, gets in my path, thrusts her 
 pert face up, sticks out her lower lip and presents 
 a picture which for sheer and unmitigated im- 
 pudence I never saw equalled. It is simply the 
 14 
 
aio THE UNDERSTANDING MOTHER 
 
 grace of God and not what she deserves that has kept 
 my itching palms from putting her face back into its 
 proper expression by force of arms. 
 
 I wondered at this gratuitious exhibition. Had / 
 by any chance affronted her childish sensibilities? 
 I really examined my actions carefully, until I hap- 
 pened to hear that this was her habit with other 
 ladies. 
 
 If you look into a child's ancestry and environ- 
 ments, you can always find the clew, especially for 
 innate ill-breeding. 
 
 I have seen a pathetic spectacle, and that is, the 
 human mother hen, wildly endeavouring to compre- 
 hend the actions of a human child-duck. 
 
 There are some mothers who have the instinct of 
 comprehension and who would understand if they 
 could, yet if a child with the genius of creation is 
 born to them, they fail utterly in the requirements 
 of sympathy. Flights of the imagination become a 
 waste of time. The longing to know, idle curiosity. 
 The spreading of the wings, an inherent and inex- 
 plicable degeneracy. Perhaps the artist-son endeav- 
 ours to explain. Possibly the father struggles to 
 understand. Between the two is a great gulf fixed. 
 Perhaps the actress daughter attempts to confide in 
 her mother. How can a creator pour out her soul 
 into the spectacle of shocked ears, raised eyebrows 
 and withdrawn hands? Yet the hen mother strug- 
 
THE UNDERSTANDING MOTHER 211 
 
 gles to comprehend why her duck child will go into 
 the water instead of placidly scratching in the peace- 
 ful gravel of the barnyard. " Whence has she these 
 wild, aquatic instincts ? " moans the poor hen. " / 
 never had them ! Her father does not swim ! Yet 
 my child prefers a bathing suit to any other form of 
 dress! Woe is me! There is something radically 
 wrong in her make-up ! " 
 
 To be sure ! There is something radically wrong 
 in a child who is not exactly like father and mother ! 
 That is the verdict of the conservative — the hide- 
 bound mother-hen. Nor, even when she sees the 
 congeniality with which her daughter glides along 
 the bosom of the pond in company with swans 
 and other ducks, does the mother-hen view her grace 
 and skill as anything to be proud of. She still stands 
 on the shore, replete with earnest, mother-instinct, to 
 be sure, yet hopelessly uncomprehending. And so 
 she runs back and forth and flaps and cackles, calling 
 distractedly to the free spirit of the poor little swim- 
 ming duck, who must seek her mates. And though 
 they both strive to re-enter the bonds of family love, 
 the distance ever widens and widens between them. 
 
 Mothers who are hopelessly lacking in imagina- 
 tion can never understand the necessities of those of 
 their own children who diiifer from themselves. 
 
 Poor mothers! Even those who understand do 
 not always achieve happiness ! 
 
ON WAKING UP IN THE MORNING 
 
ON WAKING UP IN THE MORNING 
 
 YOU may talk as you will of highway rob- 
 beries, sneak thieves, burglaries and hold- 
 ups, but to me the most revolting crime in 
 the calendar of thievery is the obligation 
 to wake up in the morning which robs you of sleep. 
 It is bad enough to know that you have got to get 
 up some time and, whether you make the hour 
 early or late, you may be sure that it will be before 
 you want to. It is bad enough to realize that all 
 civilized people do get up, and that you will get your- 
 self talked about if you don't. Your natural waking 
 is marred by the hideousness of this thought, but 
 when, in addition to this horror, comes the agony 
 of having your unprotected eardrums assaulted by 
 uproarious noises which go smashing and re-echo- 
 ing along the corridors of your somnolent brain, be- 
 fore it is time for anybody to get up, is my idea of 
 the opposite of heaven. 
 
 All nature as well as all human nature seem to be 
 against allowing people to sleep in the morning. 
 Why do all the noises in the world come just as you 
 have dropped into your first good sleep? 
 
 215 
 
2i6 WAKING UP IN THE MORNING 
 
 If you live in a city, it is the roar of the elevated, 
 the crashing of flat wheeled surface cars, the clang- 
 ing of trolley gongs, the slamming of milk wagons, 
 the banging of garbage cans and the myriad of un- 
 necessary noises which we have to stand because no- 
 body in power has sense enough to believe that most 
 of these could be suppressed. Then if, maddened by 
 the insistence of these nerve-destroying rackets, you 
 fly to the country for relief, at three in the morning 
 a perfect pandemonium of birds breaks loose. Some 
 people call it singing and declare it is the little birdies' 
 morning song of gratitude and thanksgiving. I call 
 it a malicious intention on their part to prevent city 
 people from getting any sleep anywhere on earth. 
 And your neighbour's roosters see to it that the 
 good work is carried on. 
 
 Then if you get so used to this bird noise that it 
 only causes you tO' turn over and thump your pillow, 
 and you learn the trick of dropping off to sleep again, 
 some miserable cow in your vicinity is bereft of her 
 calf, and she takes the silent watches of the night to 
 chat with her neighbours about it. Talk about the 
 joys of country life and the silence of nature! I 
 wish somebody would show me ! 
 
 Sometimes I meet school teachers off on their 
 summer vacation who talk to me about the beauties 
 of the sunrise. Being naturally polite, I do not say 
 anything, but the story comes into my unregenerate 
 
WAKING UP IN THE MORNING 217 
 
 mind, whose spirit I condone, if not the language, 
 of the man, who at a mountain resort was led by the 
 enthusiasm of others to tell the hallboy to call him in 
 time to see the sunrise. Then he sat up that night 
 even later than usual. So when the boy pounded on 
 the door in the morning and said it was time to get 
 up if he wanted to see the sunrise, the man blinked 
 at the grayness of the dawn in his room, turned over 
 with an indignant bounce and said : 
 
 " Sunrise be damned ! Let me know when it 
 sets!" 
 
 When the sun sets seems to me an ideal time to 
 get up and to have your morning bath so as to feel 
 cheerful for the work of the day. And to get up at 
 that hour is normal and natural and therefore you 
 will have waked up in a good humour, while to wake 
 up in the morning, to say nothing of feeling obliged 
 to get up and eat breakfast is to presuppose the cer- 
 tainty of being in a beastly temper. 
 
 Breakfast! Especially breakfast table! Loath- 
 some words ! Dinner table is all right. But break- 
 fast table ! Awful ! I have heard people tell raptur- 
 ously of gleaming silver coffee pots, bowls of fra- 
 grant roses in the centre of the table, snowy napery 
 and appetizing odours ! I simply laugh at the pic- 
 ture ! And when I read such stuff in novels, I just 
 say to myself, " This fellow was paid by the word." 
 
 A breakfast tray with one roll and one cup of 
 
2i8 WAKING UP IN THE MORNING 
 
 coffee and your letters is not so bad — though I could 
 do without even that, did not duty call — but don't 
 anybody talk to me about cheerful, happy faces 
 around a breakfast table. If I should ever see any I 
 should take it as a personal affront. 
 
 I don't wfant to see people cheerful in the morning. 
 I don't want to hear anybody talk, and those idiots 
 who feel obliged to grin at me and say a cheery 
 " good morning," if they got what I feel like giving, 
 they would cease their foolish smiling. I always 
 warn the servants never to look pleasantly at me in 
 the morning, not to speak until I have limbered up 
 and spoken first and on no account to begin the day 
 with a maddening " Good morning." Begin where 
 you left off the night before. Don't start anything 
 fresh, is my motto. Oh, these people in strange 
 houses, who, just because they are civilized and wear 
 clothes, feel compelled to wear an expression of 
 " Good morning, merry sunshine ! " Indians in 
 their greeting of each other express just the right 
 degree of cordiality and joyous emotion to suit my 
 early-in-the-morning frame of mind. 
 
 It is much too hard to get to sleep in the first place 
 not to stay asleep as long as possible when once you 
 have got there. And there is nothing so foolish, to 
 my mind, as to wake up, if you can by any possi- 
 bility manage not to. Oh, the bliss of feeling sleepy ! 
 I have heard people talk about feeling drowsy, of 
 
WAKING UP IN THE MORNING 219 
 
 being so dead sleepy they felt as if they couldn't 
 keep their eyes open another moment and I have 
 wondered and wondered what it felt like. Person- 
 ally I always feel so wide awake after I go to bed 
 that even the darkness hurts my eyeballs and then 
 after planning just how I would do if I were the 
 Czar and settling all strikes, intrigues and public 
 questions entirely to my satisfaction, from being so 
 wide awake that I can almost hear the dining room 
 clock tick, I go to sleep, as suddenly as if I fell over 
 a precipice. None of your lovely, drowsy, rock-a-by- 
 baby-in-the-tree-top sensations ever fell to my lot. 
 
 And even trying to fool myself into being sleepy 
 by pretending that I am a political prisoner in a 
 Siberian mine, being tortured by Russian officials by 
 not being allowed to sleep by day or by night, had 
 not the slightest effect after the first time I tried it. 
 Out of sheer contrariness I went to sleep the first 
 night, just to show those Russian officers that prod- 
 ding me with their swords could not keep a free 
 born American woman awake if she wanted to go 
 to sleep! I showed 'em! But after that it never 
 worked. 
 
 Then the noises that you hear in the night ! Will 
 anybody please tell me what makes a stationary 
 washstand select the hour of three A. M. to do its 
 gargling? Nobody is near it. The water is not run- 
 ning anywhere in the house. Yet a stationary wash- 
 
220 WAKING UP IN THE MORNING 
 
 stand can make more different sounds of protest than 
 anything else I ever heard in my Hfe. 
 
 And the door downstairs — it is never nearer than 
 downstairs — which does not slam shut. No, the 
 breeze is too gentle for that. It just slams the latch 
 enough for you to hear and be fretted by it. Hesi- 
 tatingly the first two or three times, so as to make 
 you think gaspingly of burglars. Then a loud one, 
 which ends the burglar idea, and you hope this time 
 it has latched. Five minutes ! Ten ! Two or three 
 hours perhaps ! Then bang ! One loud one and two 
 or three easy ones. Then the hinge begins to squeak. 
 Don't lie there and hope to ignore it. Get up. Bark 
 your shins on everything in the room. Fall against 
 the table and don't mind when the rocking chair 
 fhes back and scrapes your instep. It serves you 
 right for never having counted the stairs by daylight 
 that you fall down the last two and your forehead 
 prevents your having knocked the hall door post 
 down. 
 
 Then when you have found the slamming door 
 and viciously locked it, come on back to bed and 
 listen to the steampipes. I once saw a man get so 
 mad at a telephone that he smashed it. If I knew 
 where that man was, I would ask him to my house, 
 hand him an ax, show him our steampipes and fold 
 my arms. I could have slept some last winter if it 
 hadn't been for the steampipes. 
 
Waking up in the morning 221 
 
 If you live in the country in a frame house in the 
 winter and are wakeful, you know just how it feels 
 to be a picket in war time. People will tell you that 
 the shots you hear are not meant for you and that 
 people are never killed by jumping out of their skins 
 with fright. I believe that they tell you that those 
 rifle shots are only the nails being started by the 
 frost. But / know better. / know what it feels like 
 to lie still and be shot at. 
 
 If you live in a new house and the roof creaks and 
 the walls give way in the night, they tell you it is 
 because the house is new and the walls are settling. 
 If you live in an old house, and you hear the same 
 noises, they tell you it is because the house is old and 
 the walls are disintegrating. There is no such thing 
 as a silent house, though I have read of them in 
 novels. 
 
 If people were serenely indifferent to Mrs. 
 Grundy ; if we were not like a flock of sheep, every- 
 one jumping over a fence at a given point because 
 our leader jumped, there would not be this nerv- 
 ous tension in our minds. But knowing that every- 
 one is going to get up at a certain time, and that the 
 work of the world begins with the disappearance of 
 the darkness is what makes it so hard to go to sleep. 
 Why go to sleep at a certain time? Only because 
 everybody else does. Then if you have any origi- 
 nality at all, why not exhibit it by selecting your own 
 
222 WAKING UP IN THE MORNING 
 
 hours for sleep? It will at least give people a chance 
 to talk about you ! 
 
 But none of us has the courage. Miserable cow- 
 ards that we are, family reasons, if no other, compel 
 us to go through the motions of going to sleep. Re- 
 lations have such limber tongues, and relations and 
 intimate friends do chat so familiarly of one's per- 
 sonal peculiarities. 
 
 I heard of a man once, who experienced such diffi- 
 culty in going to sleep that he has left an oft-told 
 but lovely story behind him. 
 
 He was very rich and he lived in an hotel. He 
 claimed to have nervous prostration, but in my opin- 
 ion he only said ithat because he was ashamed to ad- 
 mit that he hated to go to bed early. He was a man 
 of respectable family evidently. 
 
 At any rate, the landlord, urged by pecuniary rea- 
 sons, gave strict orders to every man who occupied 
 the room over this old man's bedroom, to be very 
 careful about making a noise late at night, and es- 
 pecially not to drop his boots on the floor, as this 
 particular noise was the invalid's bete noir. 
 
 So one night the transient in the room above came 
 home late and dropped one boot on the floor before 
 he recollected this invalid below. Much chagrined 
 by his thoughtlessness, he set the other boot down 
 with exquisite care and never made another sound in 
 his undressing. 
 
WAKING UP IN THE MORNING 223 
 
 Some two hours later he was awakened by a vio- 
 lent pounding at his door, and rushing to unlock it, 
 he found there in the corridor, his nervously pros- 
 trated neighbour in a bath robe, who shouted at him : 
 
 " In Heaven's name, how long will it be before 
 you drop the other boot ? 
 
 I once knew some people who said they liked to 
 go to bed early and specially to get up early. They 
 said something about dew. 
 
 I often wonder what became of them. I was 
 afraid something awful would happen to them when 
 I heard them say that. 
 
THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 
 
THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 
 
 WHEN a man exhibits that particular 
 brand of impudence which causes an- 
 other man to say, " Well you've got 
 your nerve with you," it is an even 
 chance that you will show him the door. Further- 
 more, after he has gone, you describe his assurance, 
 by the words, "gall," "effrontery," "nerve," 
 " cheek," and any other adjective descriptive of his 
 effort to obtain more than his deserts. 
 
 But when a woman, particularly an attractive 
 women, sets out to get something for nothing, 
 whether it be repairs from her landlord, or to return 
 on her charge account an evening wrap that she has 
 worn twice, instead of refusing her, most men are so 
 overpowered by the enormity of her courage that she 
 hypnotizes them into acquiescence ere they are 
 aware. 
 
 If you don't believe this, ask any architect if he 
 likes to build a summer cottage for a widow. 
 
 Plans and, specifications have nothing to do with 
 the case. If a woman wants a stone foundation 
 when her builder has figured on brick pillars and a 
 green lattice, it makes no sort of difference to her 
 
 227 
 
228 THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 
 
 that she is cutting out a goodly portion of his profits 
 by demanding stone. Either she feels that he is 
 making so much out of her that he can afford to 
 yield a little here and there, or she imagines that he 
 will gladly share the profits with her. But no man 
 ever fathomed a woman's reason for being unreason- 
 able. The fact that the most sensible, plain and 
 honest women are unreasonable at times, always has 
 and always will remain unexplained. The only thing 
 we do know is that the most unattractive of them 
 get more than they have been promised most of the 
 time, while pretty women, with only a kindergarten 
 knowledge of graft, get all they want all the time. 
 
 And say what you will, men like them the better 
 for it. A chivalrous man yields out of homage to the 
 sex. A conceited man slaps his leg and meditates 
 on the cleverness she was obliged to display. So his 
 respect for the fair grafter increases in proportion to 
 the spoils she secured from him. 
 
 No man can ever make a builder go two dollars 
 over his signed contract. But if he is wise he will 
 hide in his office by day and sleep in his rolling desk 
 by night while his house is building. Let your wives 
 tend to the contractor, gentlemen ! A contractor al- 
 ways shies when he sees a woman descending upon 
 him. I have known an unhappy contractor to spend 
 days trying to find the husband to deal with, but 
 nothing short of employing a detective could do it. 
 
THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 229 
 
 And in the end — well, trust a woman to make two 
 bathrooms grow where one grew before. 
 
 I know a woman who got a servants' bathroom, 
 a main floor lavatory and a slate roof on her summer 
 home just by telling the contractor that she thought 
 those things were included or she never would have 
 signed such a contract. The contractor, with tears 
 in his eyes, declares that he lost six months' time and 
 five hundred dollars on that cottage. I take it that 
 he made only one thousand instead of five, and let it 
 go at that. 
 
 And the funny thing about it is that the women 
 often do not know that they are doing anything out 
 of the way. 
 
 I know a woman who lives in a house which has 
 only had ten dollars worth of plumbing done in 
 three years. Yet every year she threatens to move 
 unless a month's rent is allowed for repairs. She 
 told me that by enduring the old paper she got an 
 extra gown each year. And she is a dear, sweet 
 woman too, without a thought of harm, or she 
 wouldn't tell it. I do believe she would tell it to the 
 agent himself as a good joke if she weren't afraid 
 that such an impolitic move might jeopardize next 
 year's dress. But she wouldn't hesitate because she 
 thought he might think it wrong of her. 
 
 Women seldom try this semi-innocent form of 
 graft on each other. If they do, it brings trouble. 
 
230 THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 
 
 Even a woman who can lead her landlord around by 
 the nose will not brave a " saleslady " at a bargain 
 counter unless she is armour-clad. And a woman 
 whose hypnotic eye can make even a New York 
 man give up the end seat in a street car, will quail 
 before her own cook. 
 
 No. Men are the victims every time. 
 Sometimes I gloat over their discomfiture. Some- 
 times I weep over their victimization. 
 
 It just depends. 
 
 Every man dressmaker who caters to rich women 
 has my tears. I know the story of their woes from 
 hearing their clients at five o'clock tea gloat over the 
 tricks they have played on their dressmakers. 
 
 I know one woman, rich enough to have ordered 
 a dozen gowns simply to have made her choice of 
 one, had she been so minded, who ardently desired a 
 certain sort of costume for a certain reception. She 
 deliberately planned and executed this coup. 
 
 She selected her materials, had an elaborate gown 
 " built " as they call it now and when it was sent 
 home, she wore it to the reception, where it was 
 much admired. The next day, it was carefully 
 packed in its box and sent back, with a note saying 
 that it did not suit. It was not paid for, nor ever will 
 be, and that woman tells this story to a flock of 
 friends, who not only think it no harm, but applaud 
 her cleverness. 
 
THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 231 
 
 I overheard one of them say : 
 
 " Adele is so brave ! Now I am too big a coward 
 to do that. The most I have ever done is to order a 
 hat sent up and wear it a couple of days before I re- 
 turn it. I wouldn't have the nerve to order a gown 
 made. But dear Adele always did possess the cour- 
 age of her convictions." 
 
 I have observed that women generally take such 
 advantage of only men dressmakers and men milli- 
 ners. And if you ask them why, you would be likely 
 to hear the innocent rejoinder: 
 
 " Oh, women are such cats they would always 
 know exactly what one was up to ! " 
 
 There are a number of large department stores 
 who have on their lists the names of ladies suspected 
 of ordering home garments intended to be worn and 
 returned. And so wide spread is the practice that 
 certain firms even have " spotters " who attend 
 public functions, such as gala theatrical perform- 
 ances or the Horse Show, just to discover if costly 
 furs or jewels are not ordered for such purposes. 
 
 There is one firm in London — and there may be 
 some in this country but I know of none — which re- 
 fuses to exchange silk waists on any terms. If you 
 buy a dozen and wish to return only one, or even to 
 exchange it for another and a more expensive one, 
 you cannot do it, on acount of the prevalence of the 
 custom of ordering home these pretty trifles in order 
 
232 THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 
 
 to let lady's maids take the patterns and copy them. 
 
 I suppose the only reason I know of no such rules 
 in this country is because comparatively so few 
 women keep lady's maids here. 
 
 It certainly is not that we are too honest to do such 
 things ! 
 
 Once in a while a firm is brave enough to bring 
 even a rich client up with a round turn for her 
 tricks and occasionally a vagrant instance will ap- 
 pear in the columns of the daily press. And the odd 
 part of it is that even if the woman admits that she 
 is guilty as charged, she feels no shame. She is only 
 furiously indignant that the owners of the garments 
 should object to her wearing them. " The imperti- 
 nence of making a fuss about such a trifle ! The in- 
 solence of these shop-keepers ! What is to become 
 of us if they are upheld in their impudent daring to 
 make public a private transaction ! " 
 
 And if you will believe it, these ladies are quite, 
 quite sincere in their indignation and in their belief 
 in their own innocence. 
 
 Women have a sublime faith that they won't be 
 found out when they do forbidden things. 
 
 A woman who is so sea sick the first day out that 
 she rather hopes the ship will sink, if she feels better 
 on the second, will risk setting the steamer on fire 
 curling her hair over an alcohol lamp. The ship's 
 officers know this and the stewardess is required to 
 
THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 233 
 
 be extra zealous when ladies of the first cabin are re- 
 covering their health. 
 
 Do men vitiate their insurance by buying a gallon 
 of gasoline and bringing it into a twelve story apart- 
 ment house to save a five dollar bill at the cleaner's? 
 No. But women do it every day. All you have to 
 do is to gain the confidence of your druggist. Your 
 maid will do the rest. 
 
 Some lawyers claim that the testimony of women 
 is not as reliable as a rule, as that of men. Lawyers 
 and jurymen declare that women will often perjure 
 themselves for two reasons always — in order to pro- 
 tect anyone they love or to evade claims involving 
 money, which they consider unjust — and for other 
 reasons often. 
 
 If these charges are true, it is because there must 
 be some peculiar kink in a woman's brain by which 
 means they persuade themselves that these things are 
 right even if they are not lawful. 
 
 A friend of mine of very moderate circumstances, 
 who is extremely prominent in church work, is 
 obliged almost to support her married daughter in 
 Texas. So about twice a year she issues a call 
 through her Ladies' Auxiliary Society in her church 
 for " clothes for the poor " and out of these contri- 
 butions she clothes her daughter's entire family. 
 Her church society does not know this, but she sees 
 so little harm in it that she tells her intimate friends. 
 
234 THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 
 
 Wholesale grocers are also appealed to when she is 
 making up her " bi-annual missionary box " so it 
 really makes life quite comfortable for daughter. 
 
 Yet these women, who do all these things by sheer 
 force of nerve, at whose enormity many men shrink 
 back appalled, are also the women, who, by reason of 
 this or some other quality which corresponds to it, 
 can bear pain and anxiety like stoics and are able to 
 endure agony which would drive the most just, hon- 
 ourable and upright men insane. 
 
 Yet men sometimes stand aghast at the assurance 
 of even nice women. Men would know so well that 
 all the queer practices I have mentioned were wrong 
 that their guilt would be stamped upon their brows 
 in large letters. But the real secret of a woman's 
 assurance is that first of all, she persuades herself 
 that she is right even if she is breaking a law. It is 
 the inner knowledge of her own righteousness which 
 upholds her nerve where a strong man would quail 
 before the upbraidings of his own cowardly con- 
 science. 
 
 Customs ofiScers will tell you that even the best 
 and most highminded of truly feminine women be- 
 lieve that smuggling is perfectly honest. Occasion- 
 ally you will find a woman with sufficient of the 
 masculine in her mental makeup to believe in justice 
 and who tries to obey the laws of her land. But gen- 
 erally such women are too honest even to use face 
 powder. 
 
THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 235 
 
 The general run of women — the kind of women 
 who get husbands without half trying, — believe that 
 laws are made chiefly to be evaded and who regard 
 their being able to keep out of jail as ample evidence 
 of honesty. 
 
 Of course when a country has such imbecile cus- 
 toms laws as ours, taxing antique works of art and 
 only permitting a woman to bring in a hundred dol- 
 lars worth of Paris clothes, no one, not even the 
 Secretary of the Treasury himself, ought to blame 
 women for smuggling. Laws which are utterly 
 without wisdom ought not to complain if they are 
 broken every day, and I always confess to an irre- 
 pressible grin of profoundest sympathy when I hear 
 a woman bragging to having brought an ermine set 
 in as a bustle or having worn six suits of silk under- 
 wear up the harbor on an August day. Serves 'em 
 right ! 
 
 Though it is foolish to brag. Because you never 
 know what woman in your audience hates you suffi- 
 ciently to tell on you and make you pay for your 
 back sins. 
 
 I believe many women, who have glimmerings of 
 conscience on the other side and who intend to de- 
 clare their contraband goods, are driven to smug- 
 gling by the irritations of the pier. First you go and 
 swear you have nothing dutiable. Then, just to 
 show you how much of a liar the United States Gov- 
 
236 THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 
 
 ernment believes the best of us are, you have to stand 
 seeing your trunks searched, in spite of your sworn 
 statement — your carefully packed boxes torn apart 
 instead of opened — your things, mussed, disturbed, 
 often injured — oh, it is enough to drive the meekest 
 Christian into depths of lies and bribery which no 
 one with an atom of sense ought to deny the reason 
 for and the justice of! 
 
 Smuggle? Well, of course it isn't right to do it 
 but if any woman just for the home voyage has 
 trimmed her underclothes with Duchesse lace meant 
 for a ball costume and wants to brag of it at my 
 lunch party, she needn't be afraid that / shall tell on 
 her. 
 
 And it is just that feeling — that they had no busi- 
 ness to pass such senile laws — that destroys what 
 little conscience women possess on the clothes ques- 
 tion anyhow. 
 
 A man who wants his portrait painted by an 
 artist who charges a thousand dollars a portrait, goes 
 and pays his money down without a word. But his 
 wife will get that same artist to include the two chil- 
 dren and the baby with herself for the price of one, 
 and then beat him down on the frame ! 
 
 While as to contracts — I do not believe that many 
 women 
 
 Wait. I want to tell the exact truth about this. 
 It isn't often that I feel so honest. 
 
THE ASSURANCE OF WOMEN 237 
 
 No woman, since the world began, ever signed a 
 contract with a man, to produce a piece of work in a 
 given time for a certain price, that she didn't begin 
 to regret it with poignant intensity before the ink 
 was dry. 
 
 Ask editors. 
 
 Why, the very poUteness of publishers in stand- 
 ing until you seat yourself or the smile with which 
 they agree to your highest price, is evidence that 
 they are getting the best of it ! They wouldn't grin 
 at you if they thought they would lose money on the 
 deal just completed, would they? Certainly not. 
 
 Then the only thing to do is to wait until they go 
 and then before the elevator reaches the main floor, 
 begin a letter to them asking for a little more. 
 
 If they have been editors long, they expect it. 
 
 Men often say they hate to do business with 
 women. 
 
 But I don't see why. 
 
 Our dishonesty is so perfectly transparent that it 
 amounts to nothing more than mere nerve after all. 
 
ON THE ART OF GIVING GIFTS 
 
ON THE ART OF GIVING GIFTS 
 
 WHO, that has ever suflfered from receiving 
 gifts, can even see the innocuous title 
 written above without wishing to 
 snatch the pen from my hand and write 
 on it himself? Are not your own private woes 
 enough to wring a heart of stone? Could you not 
 write a book on what you have undergone at Christ- 
 mas and on your birthdays from loving but mis- 
 guided friends? 
 
 " Presents ! " That word in our childhood awak- 
 ens an ecstacy which no other term in the Eng- 
 lish language can equal. But later in life, having 
 pricked the bubble of its anticipated delights, we 
 shiver at its name, as at the mention of our pet fear. 
 Yet after all, there is something to be said on the 
 side of the giver of gifts. Everybody has the right 
 to spend the money that he has earned or stolen, as 
 he pleases. He may be, — nay in our opinion, he 
 generally is misguided in his selection of what to 
 give. But we are powerless to interfere, and if a 
 man offers a library to a city which is suffering for 
 want of sewers, all we can do is to sit back and criti- 
 i6 241 
 
242 ON THE ART OF GIVING GIFTS 
 
 cize — a privilege I, for one, would not give up for a 
 good deal. 
 
 The giving of presents is a habit, which ought to 
 be done away with. It does nobody any good ; it is 
 a source of unmixed evil to poor relations and is an 
 expense too great to be borne by impecunious brides. 
 Who, for example, except the very rich, can afford 
 to pay back the set of coffee spoons sent by the 
 mother of five marriageable girls ? It is sheer usury, 
 and ought to come under the protection of Federal 
 laws. 
 
 Now when the givers hate the custom as much as 
 the recipients hate the givers, why continue to give? 
 Men shunt the loathsome duty off on patient wives 
 at Christmas, and never know what dark deeds have 
 gone off packed in cotton wool, with their cards en- 
 closed, until a bitter, sarcastic letter of thanks comes, 
 when your husband rushes around the house to find 
 you, asking the familiar question, " What did I give 
 Jennie for Christmas? " 
 
 I believe that the custom of giving presents is the 
 source of many of the mysterious crimes which are 
 docketed with the tag " The police were unable to 
 discover the slightest clew." And the public is so 
 hardened a sufferer from the same cause that it 
 never suspects the sudden frenzy which must have 
 attacked the unhappy perpetrator of an otherwise 
 inexplicable murder. 
 
ON THE ART OF GIVING GIFTS 243 
 
 A woman will bear up under handkerchief cases 
 and glove boxes for years and even smile when she 
 thanks the givers chiefly because they are inexpen- 
 sive trifles. But let a bedridden old aunt receive a 
 set of golf sticks from a thoughtless nephew, and 
 even if she is an earnest Christian and the president 
 of the Shut-Ins, the purple hue of rage will mantle 
 her pale cheeks as the thought of the cost penetrates 
 her brain. She would have smiled at a fringed 
 Christmas card and thanked you prettily, but you 
 will never be forgiven for sending her anything as 
 expensive as a shot gun or a bicycle. 
 
 The cost is always more to blame than the inappro- 
 priateness. The love of money and the desire to 
 waste it on our own particular brand of foolishness 
 is ingrained in human nature and nothing can eradi- 
 cate it. I have seen a man whose salary was inade- 
 quate to support his family without the utmost 
 frugality, go almost insane upon reading the be- 
 quests to charity in a rich man's will. He will actu- 
 ally shake the paper which announced it, in his fury 
 at its not having been bestowed as he would have di- 
 vided it, had the wherewithal and the generosity and 
 the death bed and all the accessories been his. 
 
 How we do love to dictate what presents shall be 
 given and to whom ! 
 
 It is not viciousness which induces people to make 
 presents to their friends. It is more thoughtlessness. 
 
244 ON THE ART OF GIVING GIFTS 
 
 You are naturally good hearted and when left tO' 
 spend money on yourself you are harmless and 
 charitable. You would not willingly wound your 
 friend nor alienate his afifections. Yet you will, at 
 least once a year, and sometimes oftener, deliber- 
 ately send him a present calculated to affront him 
 and possibly to cool the ardour of his love for you. 
 This is sheer carelessness on your part. It would be 
 so easy, if you only stopped to think, to refrain from 
 giving him anything and so retain his respect. No 
 man can love a woman who has once given him a 
 present. And when men make each other gifts, it 
 sometimes leads to blows. Men are primitive crea- 
 tures, in spite of their boasted civilization. When it 
 comes to an insult which gets under the skin like 
 some presents, the veneer of refinement is off in a 
 moment and barbaric, untamed man resents the 
 affront with his bare fists. 
 
 It is often in more than just. 
 
 There is also a gender involved in the receipt of 
 presents. When a man unwraps a present, his first 
 thought, after that of personal violence, is " Great 
 Scott! What can I ever give him to get even for 
 this?" 
 
 A woman's is " What can I give her which will be 
 just as maddening and cheaper?" With a man's 
 vengeance, cost cuts no figure. But women can and 
 do repay affronts and make money on the deal. Yet 
 some people accuse women of extravagence ! 
 
ON THE ART OF GIVING GIFTS 245 
 
 But all this is airy persiflage beside the real issue 
 and that is that most people cannot afiford to receive 
 presents. 
 
 Can the bride whose husband gets only two hun- 
 dred dollars a month afiford to furnish her parlour in 
 accordance with a gilt clock which probably cost that 
 sum ? And how will her cut glass punch bowl, sent 
 by the firm, look on a side board that cost only 
 twenty dollars ? How is she ever to fill that gilt cab- 
 inet with the bibelots which belong to it? Did any 
 thought of the real malice of a mahogany dressing 
 table occur to rich old auntie when she knew that 
 niece was going into a tiny flat? Think of there 
 being room for anything but a bed and a bureau and 
 one chair in the bedrooms city people have to live in 
 to-day ! 
 
 Nobody thinks how instalment plan furniture will 
 look with a Venetian mirror from Uncle John. Or 
 a set of Doulton fruit plates when the bride's whole 
 dinner set cost only fifteen dollars in all. 
 
 Brides who are sensitive to such glaring incon- 
 gruities often endeavour to have things match in a 
 way, and in so doing obtain harmony in the furnish- 
 ings at the expense of inharmony in the mind. 
 
 I know a woman who was endeavouring to launch 
 her pretty daughter in society by means of a simple, 
 dainty afternoon tea, which would have cost, with 
 the necessary gowns, perhaps a hundred dollars. 
 
246 ON THE ART OF GIVING GIFTS 
 
 She was gravely considering the expense, figuring 
 what she could do without and what the must-haves 
 would amount to, when without a word of warning, 
 a rich friend sent her a solid silver fish set which, 
 considering the silversmith who designed it, never 
 cost a cent under seven hundred dollars. 
 
 She came to tell me about it with blanched face 
 and clenched hands. Before she got through we 
 were both crying over the hideous irony of the 
 thing. 
 
 " A fish set ! " she exclaimed, " Why, when we 
 have fish, it is all the dinner we get ! And this set 
 ought to be one course in six ! " 
 
 I suggested to her to take it back and get the 
 money for it, but she regarded my hint as unrefined. 
 
 Most people would be shocked if they thought 
 they ever gave presents with a string tied to them. 
 Yet think. Did you ever give money to poor but 
 devout families who needed clothes and learn that 
 they gave half of it to the church, without wishing 
 you had your money back? 
 
 I know a rich old lady who always considered her- 
 self in the light of benefactress and requested others 
 to do the same. She often gave money instead of 
 presents, because, as she said, " I may not know just 
 what you want and it will be a pleasure to you to 
 spend it to suit yourself. Just feel that you can buy 
 anything you like. Waste it, if you want to ! But I 
 
ON THE ART OF GIVING GIFTS 247 
 
 saw some excellent black satin reduced from three 
 dollars a yard to ninety-eight cents to-day and of 
 course if you want to buy yourself a dress off that, 
 perhaps I could find some thread lace among my 
 things to trim it with ! " 
 
 And the poor young woman under thirty, who 
 was the unhappy recipient of the money actually had 
 to buy such a dress rather than affront that old male- 
 factor who went about loose doing good in this way. 
 
 Employers often tempt honest clerks to steal by 
 giving jewelry at Christmas to men who hate even 
 the gilt on their collar buttons. These clerks are 
 too tactful to tell the man who pays the salary ex- 
 actly what they think of him. Their rage is im- 
 potent, so there is nothing left for them to do but 
 steal. And can you, now, can you, in all fairness, 
 blame them ? It is a quiet, refined, noiseless way of 
 getting even, and inflicts pain on none but the one 
 intended to be hurt. 
 
 A study of giving presents may be instruction in 
 the refinement of cruelty. If you have a grudge 
 against any army officer, and are obliged, when he 
 marries, to give him a wedding present, take counsel 
 with other of his enemies and give him the hand- 
 somest and heaviest piece of bronze you can buy for 
 the money. Army officers are only allowed free 
 transportation on a silly amount of freight. The 
 rest they have to pay for out of their own pockets. 
 
248 ON THE ART OF GIVING GIFTS 
 
 If you can manage to please his wife's fancy with 
 your bronze, she will make him carry it everywhere 
 they go and you will thus levy perhaps a yearly tax 
 upon him, which will keep your revenge fresh in his 
 mind long after you have forgiven him for his origi- 
 nal offence. 
 
 Only, if you do this, when you hear that his regi- 
 ment is ordered to the fort nearest where you live, 
 I would advise you to go armed. 
 
 When it was the fashion to ride bicycles, I know 
 of a man who wanted a new wheel, and his wife 
 gave him one for Christmas. 
 
 It was a tandem. 
 
 It would be a good idea, whenever you feel 
 tempted to give your friend a present, to remember 
 Punch's advice to those about to marry. But as that 
 would be merely a mental effort and would bring no 
 especial sense of reward, let me suggest that, in- 
 stead of making a present to your friend, you take 
 the same amount of money and buy yourself some- 
 thing you have wanted for a long time. This will 
 produce the amount of pleasure in yourself that you 
 anticipated from his gratitude. Then sit down and 
 write your friend what you had intended to buy for 
 him, but remind him that you refrained. That will 
 call forth a letter from him of whose sincerity you 
 may be sure. Incidentally you will have retained 
 his friendship. 
 
ON THE ART OF GIVING GIFTS 249 
 
 This is the only safe method of making presents 
 which I can truthfully recommend. 
 
 The habit of giving presents which are meaning- 
 less or worse, is a product of civilization and is as 
 enervating as most of our effete social excrescences. 
 Christmas, instead of bringing peace on earth, good 
 will toward men, brings a load of debt, angers the 
 placid, enrages even Christians and stores up a year's 
 vindictiveness before another anniversary enables us 
 to vent our spleen. 
 
 And what hypocrisy! In spite of all we feel, we 
 must present a smiling front and go through the 
 motions of gratitude. 
 
 That is being civilized. 
 
 But the Indians are more to the point. When 
 they lay at your door a horn filled with powder and 
 bullets as a present, you may grin with genuine 
 pleasure, for you know how that present was in- 
 tended and you are at liberty to be grateful for it ac- 
 cording to nature. 
 
 But that is being uncivilized. 
 
 Who would not be a pale-face and continue to 
 suffer from presents in our own cultured way ? 
 
YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 
 
YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 
 
 MANY magazines fling wide their portals 
 to every sort of preachment destined to 
 educate women in courtesy, unselfish- 
 ness, domestic accomplishments and at- 
 tractive wiles to ensnare the hearts of men, but if 
 very much advice is given to young men, telling 
 them how to become truly popular, instead of merely 
 being invited everywhere ; how really to be liked in- 
 stead of merely to think they are liked, it has not 
 come under my eyes. 
 
 Most men don't care to know the difference. They 
 are quite content with scores of invitations, with 
 smiles of welcome and with the knowledge that they 
 are sure to be invited when anything big is on. 
 These men are neither sensitive nor very observing. 
 But there is a small class of thinking men who do 
 not belong to this generalization; who notice that 
 they are only invited to the big crushes and that 
 when the small, select affairs are on, their names are 
 off. These men want to know why, and not being 
 able to see why, they fall into the general fault of 
 those men who accuse women of being false, of 
 artificiality and of generally playing a part. 
 
 ^53 
 
254 YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 
 
 That may all be true, but that is not the answer to 
 the question of why certain very good looking, well- 
 educated, well-groomed men are not really liked by 
 women who entertain and who make a point of 
 knowing who make good guests and those who do 
 not. 
 
 You careless girls and thoughtless men may not 
 know it, but these smiling cordial hostesses who wel- 
 come you with such warmth, have you all ticketed 
 and mentally pigeon-holed, and they know just what 
 functions you will be invited to, from the first of 
 October to Ash Wednesday. They also know just 
 which ones you will be left out of and the more at- 
 tractive men invited to. 
 
 What constitutes an attractive man ? What value 
 does a hostess put upon a well-bred guest ? 
 
 First of all, it would do you no harm to stop and 
 think for a few moments of your hostess. If you are 
 fairly good looking, well and good. It makes not 
 the slightest difference with your invitations. The 
 ugliest men I ever knew in all my life were the most 
 attractive. Your hostess cares nothing for your 
 looks. What has she invited you for ? Put yourself 
 in her place for a few moments and think. 
 
 It will do you good if you think first of all of the 
 cost of entertaining. There are very few people in 
 this world who can entertain with no thought of the 
 expense. You should therefore, as an honest man. 
 
YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 255 
 
 give your hostess the worth of her money. Remem- 
 ber, she is not a hotel keeper, as a stranger might 
 think from the way her thoughtless gfuests treat her. 
 She gives you all this pleasure, and it has cost her 
 time and anxiety, as well as money, to bring all you 
 young people together, for, let us say, a house-party. 
 I have known young men to be in a lady's home for 
 a week and never speak to their hostess except to ask 
 for more, until the day of parting came, when they 
 would take her hand, utter a few cut-and-dried re- 
 marks about what a good time she had given them, 
 then dash down the steps to get the seat in the car- 
 riage next to a certain girl, leaving the hostess quite 
 positive that they would never give her another 
 thought until her next invitation was issued. 
 
 Your hostess deserves some of your time and at- 
 tention every day that you are in her house. Yet 
 when you are in a hotel, you spend more time talking 
 with the night clerk than you devote to some of your 
 hostesses. Pay your bill like a man ! Don't sponge 
 on her hospitality and go away in her debt and leave 
 her to the knowledge that you owe her something 
 that you never will pay. 
 
 I know a man who lived at such a distance from a 
 girl he was interested in, that when she came to visit 
 her married sister, she was near enough for him to 
 see her often if the hostess would arrange for him 
 to stay over night. The house being full, the hostess 
 
256 YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 
 
 had to let him sleq) in the library on a couch. Any 
 housekeeper knows what trouble that involves. This 
 went on during a whole summer, yet when they all 
 went back to the city, this man had to pass the door 
 of the married sister's apartment whenever he went 
 to see the girl, yet he never so much as once called on 
 the hostess who had put herself to so much trouble 
 for him. Although he often took the girl to the 
 theatre and asked the mother as chaperon, he never 
 once asked the married sister who had entertained 
 him with such discomfort to the household. He 
 never sent her a flower nor repaid her hospitality in 
 any form whatsoever. 
 
 Her opinion of him is, that he is not well bred — 
 yet to all intents and purposes, he is. He is simply 
 an ordinary young man, and treated his hostess as 
 most men treat them. This instance happened to 
 come under my observation, that is all. 
 
 That sort of neglect makes you unpopular, young 
 men. It not only makes you unpopular with the 
 hostesses you have thus mistreated, but it affects 
 your standing with other hostesses who hear how 
 you have neglected one. Nor can you even tell how 
 far-reaching the influence of one such rudeness is, 
 nor where its effect will crop up to block your path 
 to popularity and success. 
 
 If your hostess gives a dance, you must ask her at 
 least once. Even if she is purpled-faced, fat and 
 
YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 257 
 
 awkward, it is a duty no gentleman can neglect, to 
 ask her for a quadrille, just as her due. While if a 
 married woman invites you to a German to be the 
 partner of a young girl guest of hers, the first in- 
 vitation of the evening belongs, not to the girl, but 
 to the hostess. You must invite her. Let her hand 
 you over to the girl if she knows what is proper. 
 But if you respect her rights, you must give her the 
 privilege of refusing you, before you even ask the 
 girl. 
 
 Last winter a friend of mine invited a young man 
 and a pretty girl to dine and go to a private dance. 
 They both accepted, and just as they entered the 
 ball room, the mother of the girl, who had been 
 asked to dine by a third friend, met the party and 
 exchanged greetings. The smiles were quite ap- 
 parent, when this young man, thinking he was doing 
 the diplomatic thing, immediately asked the mother 
 of the girl to dance, leaving his hostess to stand up 
 or sit down or go upstairs to her knitting just as she 
 chose. His very ears would have tingled if, as he 
 whirled the daughter off for the last half of the 
 dance, he could have heard the mother whisper to 
 his hostess, " The fool doesn't know any better ! " 
 
 The rest of the story is, that he never did ask his 
 hostess to dance during the entire evening, but de- 
 voted himself blithely to the girls. If' he ever stops 
 to think he will notice that my friend has never asked 
 him to a thing since. 
 17 
 
258 YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 
 
 Yet why should she even remark upon it? Isn't 
 that the way most young men treat married women 
 who entertain them? I know men who actually 
 grumble at being obliged in common decency to 
 write notes of thanks afterward, sometimes for a 
 two weeks' entertainment. They call them " bread- 
 and-butter " letters, and frequently hostesses receive 
 none at all from certain guests. What do you sup- 
 pose these courteous, well-bred ladies think of such 
 boorish manners, you careless young men, who have 
 never been trained in common politeness ? 
 
 Oh, do I hear a united protest from all of you — 
 what? Am I expected to show a specific attention 
 during the winter to every married woman who 
 entertained me during the summer? Certainly you 
 are! 
 
 You say you can't aflford it? Then, in ordinary 
 decency, don't lay yourself under obligations to 
 these ladies by accepting their invitations. You 
 wouldn't sit down to a game of poker when you 
 knew you couldn't pay, if you lost, would you ? 
 
 But now, let me tell you secrets from the side 
 of the hostess. They don't care to have you spend 
 your money on them, even by one box of candy 
 or flowers. You can pay your debts, fairly and 
 squarely, in another way. By little courtesies to 
 them while you are their guests, by cordial notes 
 of acknowledgment of their kindness, whenever 
 
YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 259 
 
 and wherever offered. By specific attention to them 
 whenever you meet them at dinners or other people's 
 dances — in short, by being a gentleman. That is 
 all a hostess asks of any man ! 
 
 You say women make-believe? We have to, in 
 order to keep society together. You claim that we 
 smile on one and all alike? It is not true. If you 
 were really popular with us, you would know it. 
 Your complaint of our artificiality is based on noth- 
 ing less than the fact that we are polite to you when 
 your selfishness and bad manners entitle you never 
 to darken our doors again. We are false, inasmuch 
 as we don't have you thrust out of our drawing 
 rooms by the footmen. You have eaten and drank 
 for years at our expense; have flirted with our 
 prettiest, sweetest girls; yet have never paid one 
 debt with so much as a " Thank you. Ma'am." 
 
 What do you deserve at the hands of a hostess? 
 You are social leeches, if you want to know what 
 we call you. 
 
 But what of the men who try to please and do 
 not quite know what will be acceptable to a hostess ? 
 There are some who would really like to be told 
 what will please a woman. 
 
 Unselfishness pleases them ! Unselfishness, be- 
 cause it is the least known, least practiced, least 
 understood virtue of the multitude of men the col- 
 leges are turning out every year. How many young 
 
26o YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 
 
 men do you know, you women who read these lines, 
 who have one grain of unselfishness in their whole 
 makeup ? Isn't every nerve and sinew of the modern 
 young man bent on pleasing himself at the expense 
 of his mother, his father, his sisters — ay, everybody, 
 young or old, who gets in his way, and blocks the 
 path of his own desires? 
 
 Try the opposite, you young men who really wish 
 to please your mother's friends, and see what a rich 
 harvest you will reap. 
 
 We hostesses are so accustomed to be ill-treated 
 by young men guests that if we met with any real 
 gratitude or unselfishness from the young fellows 
 we have invited year after year, we would be as 
 grateful as a stray dog whom you carelessly pat 
 on the head as you pass. The poor brutes are so 
 used to being kicked that a pat nearly throws them i 
 into spasms of gratitude. I 
 
 Think for a moment how seldom a lady is at 
 liberty to invite only the people she really wants. 
 There is always sure to be some shy, bony girl 
 visiting the Jones' or her own husband's aunt, who 
 is a prude, chooses to visit her just before her din- 
 ner dance; or some rich uncle who has no small 
 talk must be attended to, or he is liable to leave all 
 his money to missions, so there you are. Your 
 hostess seldom has an easy mind. Somebody al- 
 ways gets on her nerves. 
 
YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 261 
 
 Why don't you, you young man who can return 
 her hospitality in no other way, — why don't you 
 discover who the incubus is, and devote yourself 
 to it, for half an hour? Many a poor, shy girl, 
 whose neck is so thin she is obliged to cover it with 
 billows of tulle, when every other woman in the 
 room is in evening dress, would find herself in 
 heaven if one of the most attractive men present 
 would seek her out in her corner and toy with her 
 fan and put his name down for a dance, or ask 
 some other good-natured chap to talk to her for ten 
 minutes, thus putting her on a level with those 
 girls she envies with all her eager soul, simply 
 because they have dimples and roundness where 
 she has horrid angles and sallowness. Not only 
 would you be pleasing your hostess and delighting 
 the girl, but you would probably find that you en- 
 joyed the most stimulating half hour of your even- 
 ing with the shy girl, for you might discover that 
 she was clever. 
 
 Clever girls are rare at dances, I have observed. 
 Brains and dimples do not always go together. 
 
 Imagine what your hostess would say to you 
 when you came to say good-night, if she had seen 
 you do such a thing! 
 
 Or if she had observed you talking to the deaf 
 old aunt and actually making her laugh, or if she 
 had seen you change the disapproving frown on 
 
262 YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 
 
 rich old uncle's brow to a genial grin at some col- 
 lege joke, she would say — or no! She would prob- 
 ably not say anything. She would have dropped 
 dead from heart disease. She never could have 
 borne the shock and lived. If any of you young 
 men guests have any intention of showing grati- 
 tude to your hostess for her hospitality in the above 
 or any other manner, I would advise you to notify 
 her beforehand in writing, so that she could be, in 
 a measure, prepared. 
 
 Even the iron constitutions of ladies who en- 
 tertain habitually cannot stand everything. 
 
 It may be unjust, but whenever I see young 
 people displaying flagrant selfishness, ignoring el- 
 derly persons, disregarding the known wishes of 
 their hostess, sometimes even deceiving her, rude 
 to all except their own particular set, I always lay 
 the whole blame upon the mothers, because I be- 
 lieve that home training counts. 
 
 A woman cannot conscientiously do her duty for 
 from sixteen to thirty years on a set of children 
 and have them turn out the barbarians which flood 
 the society of the present day. If a mother has 
 ingrained courtesy, unselfishness, tact and consid- 
 eration for married and elderly people into her boy's 
 mind until he goes away from home, even four 
 years of college cannot totally eradicate her work. 
 Some day a grain of good manners, or an acci- 
 
YOUNG MEN AS GUESTS 263 
 
 dental politeness will slip out and betray her train- 
 ing. Then you will know that even this ill bred 
 cub who goes through life affronting the refined 
 at every turn, has had some home training, some 
 mother-education, without which no man can be 
 a gentleman, no woman, a lady. 
 
 But there are some young men to-day, bearing 
 honoured names, whose behaviour in society you 
 might examine with a microscope for a whole season 
 without discovering one unselfish, courteous action 
 to an unprepossessing or unpopular person ; who ap- 
 pear to be simply well-got-up shells of men, with 
 few brains, little soul and no heart; who might 
 have been born orphans for all the trace they bear 
 to the refined women they claim as mothers. 
 
 They may rank Ai in Bradstreet, but they bear 
 no hallmark of refinement, no sterling sign of gen- 
 tlemen. 
 
 It is not a bad idea for a young man to bear in 
 mind that his behaviour in society advertises his 
 mother. 
 
ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 
 
ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 
 
 DID you ever wake up in the night and think 
 so earnestly of how your friends would 
 grieve if you were to die that you got 
 to crying? 
 I have. And it's great. 
 
 In fact I can think of no more agreeable sen- 
 sation than the gentle melancholy which can be 
 worked up if a man gives himself over to meditation 
 on the subject of how little the world appreciates 
 him; how callous people are; how often real merit 
 (not the common kind of merit, but the uncommon, 
 genuine, rare variety with which you are so plente- 
 ously endowed that it seems common to you, but 
 that is only because your brain is so steady that it 
 won't allow you to become vulgarly conceited) how 
 often, I say, real merit is ignored. 
 
 Then you wonder how everybody will feel when 
 you have emerged from your refined obscurity and 
 blatantly called attention to your talents (you mean 
 genius, but your admirable modesty, which sends 
 a glow even through your pajamas, compels you to 
 call it talent). Will they feel cheap and avert their 
 eyes as they take your hand? Will they punctuate 
 
 267 
 
268 ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 
 
 their congratulations with contemptuous regret at 
 their stupidity in not penetrating your modest dis- 
 guise and discovering your uncommon gifts in spite 
 of yourself ? No ! You are compelled to admit 
 their insensibility. They will not feel ashamed. 
 It would be just like them, coarse-fibered hoi-poUoi 
 as they are ! to slap you on the back and cry, " How 
 are you Jim, old sport ! Say, but you've struck your 
 gait at last. How did you come to pull it off ? To 
 tell you the honest truth, I didn't think it was in 
 you ! " 
 
 At this point, your mouth curves in such a bitter 
 sneer that it is really a pity that half if it is buried 
 in the pillow. 
 
 But you continue. Is not this the fate of all gen- 
 ius, from Shakespeare down to Mother Goose? 
 People wait till these rare beings are dead — dead 
 and buried — lost to sight — gone forever, before they 
 realize the privilege it was, not only to know, to 
 love, to take familiarly by the hand such wonders, 
 but actually to live in the same age and on the same 
 planet with them! Then you wonder if these cal- 
 lous, unseeing, tardy lovers of yours, will tell their 
 children and their children's children that they knew 
 you. Will they see the same awe grow in round 
 eyes which nowadays greets such a statement as, 
 " Yes, my son, I shook Abraham Lincoln by the 
 hand the very day before he was assassinated ! " 
 
ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 269 
 
 Then your thought grows more concrete. You see 
 the sudden taking oif of yourself. You read the 
 brief lines which record your demise in the obit- 
 uary column, and you can see what a shock it brings 
 to thousands of homes; how breakfasts are left 
 untasted ; how the coffee grows cold and the children 
 are late for school while father turns to the edi- 
 torial page, with a thick black line at the top and 
 bottom of the article, and reads what the editor 
 says. Father's voice chokes now and then, not 
 at the general, public tribute to the loss your death 
 has brought to the world at large, but at the tender, 
 intimate recollections of your winning personality; 
 of your excellent ideal of friendship; of your great- 
 hearted sympathy which could even be called out 
 by a stray dog or a half starved cat. 
 
 Here the bridge of your own nose begins to ache. 
 Tears are not far off. 
 
 Father will perhaps pause to tell you how dogs 
 and babies invariably loved you, and his voice will 
 falter as he says, " Animals were wiser than we 
 were. They recognized his great and tender hu- 
 manity long before the world did." 
 
 Then father will forget, as mother wonderingly 
 notices afterward — she is too touched to think of 
 it at the time — that for the first time in twenty 
 years father lost his train and was an hour late at 
 the office because he got to relating tender little 
 
270 ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 
 
 anecdotes about you — of your sweetness — of your 
 modesty — how you never seemed to think you were 
 great at all, but were the same, simple-mannered 
 friend after your fame had circled the globe as you 
 were when you found it hard to make both ends 
 meet. Then his voice breaks as he tells of your 
 shame-faced generosity — of how you did your great 
 and noble deeds with the air of a man robbing a 
 bank, you were so afraid you would be found out 
 and praised, and the big tears run down father's 
 cheeks as he relates that the secret of his own pros- 
 perity was a timely loan from you, that nobody ever 
 knew about, which kept a roof over mother's head 
 and put father on his feet and sent the children to 
 school, well clad and respectable. 
 
 Here the children sob and beg to break open 
 their missionary boxes to buy a wreath to lay on 
 your casket. And father and mother exchange 
 gratified glances and lay their hands in benediction 
 on little heads. The promptings of generous and 
 appreciative little hearts are approved, permission 
 is given, with the result that the heathen are shy 
 on red flannel for next winter. 
 
 But that frivolous thought popped into your self- 
 pitying train of thought simply because you are 
 endowed with such a glorious sense of humour. 
 You instantly dismiss it, because it interferes with 
 your tearful trend, and you get back as quickly as 
 possible to your death bed. 
 
ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 271 
 
 Around it hover weeping your immediate fam- 
 ily. You are slowly passing away with a sweet 
 smile of forgiveness on your lips. Your voice is 
 gone, you can only turn your eyes from one to the 
 other striving to express in this poor, dumb way, 
 your unchanging, unfathomable love. How self- 
 less has been that love! How you have toiled for 
 them ! How — 
 
 Boo ! hoo ! 
 
 Your sobs shake the bed. 
 
 Then — if you are not too sleepy — you see the 
 black robed figfures which go sadly and silently 
 forth to try — to try to get along without you. To 
 fill your place would be impossible. To forget you, 
 a sacrilege. It will be their melancholy privilege to 
 mourn you always. But it is some comfort to know 
 that you have left behind you an ideal example 
 which, no matter how stimulating their efforts, they 
 can never even approach. 
 
 It's great! It is pure ecstacy to drift along in 
 this way for an hour or two. And so cheap. Most 
 pleasures cost money. This doesn't cost a cent. 
 
 There is a gender in self pity. It is feminine. 
 Men indulge in it once in a while, but only those 
 men who are endowed with womanish traits. I am 
 not sneering at such. Far from it. The finest men 
 who exist to-day are men whose natures partake of 
 the nobler traits of women. 
 
272 ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 
 
 The greatest line of demarkation between individ- 
 ualities is the Ego. Not only the degree to which 
 it is possessed, but the skill with which it is con- 
 cealed, or the tactlessness by which it is permitted 
 to predominate. Indulgent mothers who have reared 
 spoiled daughters who make selfish wives to poor 
 young men, have raised up children unto Self Pity. 
 Doting fathers who never lay a command on petted 
 girls have raised up children unto Self Pity, for 
 when the judgment of the world begins to get in 
 its work on these pampered pets, the easiest remedy 
 which lies at hand is Self Pity. 
 
 The foolish little wife, never taught any domestic 
 science or household economy, and who thus makes 
 large holes in husband's salary by her idiotic mis- 
 takes is so ripe for self pity that she scarcely needs 
 our attention. Yet so many young wives, who are 
 quite unable to bear even the gentlest reproach ; who 
 pout at a suggestion that they might change for the 
 better; who weep if husband does not praise even 
 their rankest failures at housekeeping and who 
 threaten " to go home to mother " at a sensible man's 
 honest rebuke — these, ladies and gentlemen, are the 
 likeliest recruits for the company of self pity. 
 
 " George does not appreciate me," one will whis- 
 per. The next day it will be, " George does not love 
 me, or he couldn't use such a tone to me." The third 
 time it will be, " George never loved me. I never 
 
ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 273 
 
 heard such language! And all because I bought 
 another hat with the instalment money on the 
 piano! " 
 
 Then comes the last charge of all. The fatal time 
 when she begins to count up the money George 
 spends on tobacco. And, let me state in passing, 
 that it is an unwise husband who allows his wife to 
 arrive at this station on the railroad of Self Pity, 
 unless nothing short of felling her to earth with 
 a stick of timber could induce her to understand 
 the rudiments of domestic economy. The time when 
 she was in blissful ignorance of the amount of 
 money which daily goes up in smoke, was a hap- 
 pier time for you. 
 
 " Just look at the way I try to economize ! Don't 
 I use condensed milk in your coffee — oh, I know you 
 hate it, and I also realize that I don't drink coffee — 
 but weren't you simply hateful last month about the 
 bills ? Where else could I economize on the house- 
 keeping that I don't? You don't half know how I 
 do try. Now yesterday eggs were two prices — 
 thirty and twenty-two cents a dozen. I suppose you 
 think I bought the thirty cent kind just to be wasting 
 your money! No, sir, I didn't, I bought the cheap 
 eggs — yet you don't seem to think of praising my 
 thoughtfulness. You simply sit there making faces." 
 
 " / am not the one who spends ten or twenty 
 cents a day drinking beer with friends. / am not 
 18 
 
274 ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 
 
 the one who is simply obliged to have a fifteen cent 
 cigar after dinner or else scent up the lace curtains 
 with a nasty pipe that a man of decent feelings or 
 any refinement would not subject his wife to. Oh, 
 no ! / am the one who is told to line her best dress 
 with percoline, when you know as well as I do, that 
 before I married you, I always had at least one dress 
 a season lined with taffeta. I can tell you George 
 Jones, that if you loved me as much as you used to 
 make me think you did, you would give up smoking 
 and put the money you just waste into letting me 
 dress as other ladies in our set do. 
 
 " I never used to think of these things. I used 
 to be so blindly in love with you that I thought all 
 the money you spent on yourself was just lovely, 
 and you used to think I was perfect too. But when 
 you began to pick flaws in me and show me where I 
 could do better in this and improve in that, why — 
 well, I began to see how ill used I was. It's just 
 shameful, George. That's what it is. I declare 
 I think it is the most pathetic sight in the world to 
 see a generous woman married to a thoroughly 
 selfish man ! " 
 
 Boo ! hoo ! 
 
 The self pity which expresses itself in words to 
 the world at large is a childish sort, which scarcely 
 counts. The other variety which verges closely on 
 conceit is the sort which sends sensible men and wo- 
 
ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 275 
 
 men to those sharpers who read palms, depict char- 
 acter and define characteristics, and who are espe- 
 cially skilled in emphasizing how abused and un- 
 appreciated you are. 
 
 A man once told me that it was worth five dol- 
 lars to hear a certain clever palmist talk for twenty 
 minutes of nothing but his client! And in this he 
 told everybody's secret. 
 
 Self pity of even the simplest sort requires imag- 
 ination. It indicates an enlarged Ego. It adver- 
 tises weakness of character. Strong men and wo- 
 men never pity themselves, even when other people 
 realize that they, the strong, are imposed upon and 
 furnish them with the text. 
 
 Generally the self pitying are women — happily 
 married women, often with children. Sometimes 
 it is the type of the Flossy-girl, petted to within an 
 inch of her life before marriage; a pampered wife 
 afterward. The idol of some fine, selfless, heroic 
 sort of man, who cannot see her remorseless vanity 
 and who becomes a victim to her tearful tributes to 
 her own worth. 
 
 I know a little soft, feathery kitten of a woman — 
 one who reminds me of a big, white fur muff, she 
 is so fluffy and satin lined and such a costly luxury. 
 No poor man could afford her. She is an expensive 
 superfluity, but pretty and attractive and I suppose 
 somebody must love her. But her conceit is such 
 
276 ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 
 
 that if it rains, she imagines that the Creator knew 
 that she wanted to go to a garden party on that 
 very day, in order to wear a particularly beautiful 
 costume, and that He deliberately organized a thun- 
 der storm in order to thwart her plans. And she 
 pities herself accordingly. 
 
 She takes no pleasure in her fine clothes, because 
 everybody copies them so! If she coifs her hair 
 in a new manner, all her enjoyment in setting a 
 becoming fashion is lost because her housemaid 
 immediately takes it up and so cheapens it that the 
 mistress is forced to discard it. She makes a round 
 of calls and invites her friends to sympathize with 
 her in her grief. 
 
 Thus she spends a delightful afternoon — not with 
 her friends, but with her life companion — Self Pity. 
 
 She has no idea that she is a bore, nor can she 
 imagine that there is any other point of view except 
 her own, although she sometimes experiences a 
 jolt. 
 
 One evening she appeared after an enforced period 
 of seclusion and to two or three intimate friends, she 
 began to hold forth to her hostess, Mrs. John 
 Brown. At the first sound of her familiar purring, 
 half-whining plaint, John Brown retired to his news- 
 paper with a muttered apology. I have often won- 
 dered if she ever noticed that the John Brown sort 
 
ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 277 
 
 of husband always chose the newspaper in prefer- 
 ence to her chatter. 
 
 However, on this occasion she said : 
 
 " My dears, such a time as I have had ! It seems 
 ages since I've had a chance to put on a decent thing 
 and get a gUmpse of society, but my Hfe just at 
 present is compressed within four walls of that nur- 
 sery! Dear me! To hear Alfred talk you would 
 think I was the most heartless mother that ever lived 
 just because I wanted to emancipate myself with 
 this baby and not be the slave to her that I was to the 
 two boys. But oh no! Alfred is not satisfied to 
 have a wife give up one year out of her life to each 
 child. Not he! Of course / had to go and marry 
 a man who is a fool over children and who thinks a 
 wife's place is hanging over a cradle a whole year 
 more! That is just my luck. I always was the 
 most unlucky little person. The rest of my friends 
 have sensible husbands, who don't care how their 
 children are brought up just so they are clean and 
 don't bother them with their noise. But I, who 
 adore life and amusement and if I do say it myself, 
 I am tolerably well equipped to hold my own in 
 society, and who never cared much for children 
 anyway — here am I, with three — three, mind you at 
 my age — I don't wonder you exchange glances! — 
 and what is worse, with a husband who insists upon 
 my devoting more time to them than any child ought 
 
278 ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 
 
 to have. Children have no business to be the drain 
 on a mother's time that mine are. It isn't fair! I 
 declare I do think I am ill used, and I am not the 
 silly sort either. But don't you think that Alfred 
 is unreasonable not to let the nurse have the baby at 
 night? I pay her thirty dollars a month and her 
 references are the best I ever saw. But Alfred 
 says the highest priced nurses, who know it all, are 
 the ones who need watching the most, and he flew 
 into a perfect fury when the baby suddenly dropped 
 off to sleep after three hours of screaming with 
 colic and he found the trained nurse had given her 
 a teaspoonful of gin. He sent straight for the doc- 
 tor, and of course the doctor, seeing how the land 
 lay from Alfred's frenzied appearance said the 
 baby was drugged. Alfred said she was drunk. 
 Think of using such an unrefined word to describe 
 a little three weeks' old baby and a girl at that ! But 
 Alfred is so unrefined. Isn't it just my luck to have 
 married a man who uses rough, coarse words, when 
 I am so sensitive? What? Oh, about the baby? 
 Why Alfred dismissed the trained nurse, and got 
 a hospital nurse — you know what I mean, one with 
 a certificate of training from a hospital, and even 
 then moved the baby's crib into our bedroom at 
 night ! 
 
 " Now that he has got a fine nurse too ! What do 
 you think of that? And oh, what do you think he 
 
ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 279 
 
 calls her hospital certificate ? Her dope sheet ! Isn't 
 that coarse? 
 
 " So there I am, chained hand and foot to that 
 child's crib and trying to keep peace between the 
 nurse, who wants the entire care of the baby day 
 and night in order to train her, and Alfred, who 
 cross-examines her every evening as to what she has 
 done, until she gives warning to me as regularly 
 as he gets through with her. 
 
 " Now tell me why such a husband as that should 
 be inflicted upon poor little butterfly me ? And why 
 a woman who preferred to remain childless should 
 have been saddled with three, and at my age ? Why 
 I am only twenty-seven now. Isn't it actually 
 pathetic ? And, as you see, I do love society so ! " 
 
 In a certain choice play, there is depicted another 
 type of Self-pitying mother, the weak, wobbly, tear- 
 ful sort, whose children bully her because ever since 
 they were born she has laid the foundation for such 
 bullying by a judicious system of over-indulgence 
 one day and undue severity the next, with neither 
 backed up by any will power or sustained judgment. 
 She never punishes. She only retaliates. When the 
 children torment her she gets even by venting her 
 own spleen on them for the discomfort they have 
 caused her. 
 
 Able to be coaxed into any compliance, flattered 
 out of any intended training, she vacillates between 
 
28o ON THE JOYS OF SELF PITY 
 
 harshness and over indulgence until she possesses the 
 respect of neither husband nor children, when, real- 
 izing this truth, she calls passionately on her friends 
 to pity her because she is reaping what she has sowed 
 with lavish hand. 
 
 I know her exact prototype in real life, but she 
 is so unconscious of the spectacle she presents that 
 if she were to see the play, she would be as amused 
 as the rest of us, and calmly discuss her points as 
 bearing on the rest of the characters. 
 
 But that is a precise test of the genus Self Pity. 
 It never realizes what an exhibition it makes to the 
 world. 
 
 By indulging in the habit of self pity, a woman 
 simply dramatizes herself for her enemies. 
 
 I don't do it — much. 
 
THE JOYS OF SELFISHNESS 
 
THE JOYS OF SELFISHNESS 
 
 I OWN to a feeling of deep envy of the man and 
 woman who can be frankly and consistently 
 selfish and callous to what the world thinks of 
 them for it. 
 I am but half-hearted in most of my virtues and 
 vices and a comfortable burst of selfishness is sure 
 to be followed by a sackcloth-and-ashes fit of remorse 
 in which my ease and comfort entirely disappear 
 from my calculations, so that an hour of selfishness 
 amounts to an emotional extravagance I can ill af- 
 ford. 
 
 The kind of selfishness I mean requires strength 
 of character — far more of it than I possess. The 
 weakness which is played upon by those you love is 
 all wrong if you intend to enjoy being selfish. You 
 must never count the cost to yourself. You must 
 never consider the price either, that others must pay. 
 How glorious to be able to enjoy the little acts 
 of selfishness as others seem to ! I know a man who 
 as instinctively goes for the easiest chair in the room 
 as he breathes. And to see that man carve a chicken 
 and serve his family is to witness a skill in per- 
 suasion I never have seen equalled. 
 
 283 
 
284 THE JOYS OF SELFISHNESS 
 
 " Who wants the — the neck of this chicken ? " he 
 will say, as if dealing out a morsel almost too choice 
 to be mentioned all at once. And the three poor 
 little befooled children all clamour for it until he has 
 to pacify them by promising it to them in rotation. 
 Next Sunday's chicken-neck belongs to Fred or Julia 
 or little Mamie. So father gets his choice, for 
 mother is also trained to choose the parts he doesn't 
 care for. It is truly great to witness the scene. 
 
 I know another man whose wife is made ill by 
 pipesmoke. She can stand cigars but not pipes. But 
 her husband smokes his pipe constantly and con- 
 siders himself a model of consideration when he 
 says: 
 
 " Maud, hadn't you better go upstairs? I see you 
 are looking a little pale from the smoke." 
 
 Then he turns apologetically to any others who 
 may be present and says : " My poor wife is so 
 delicate! She simply cannot stand a pipe! Poor 
 little woman! " 
 
 Now, isn't it truly magnificent to see a man enjoy 
 a smoke under such circumstances? That is what 
 I mean by not allowing one's self to become the prey 
 of unselfishness as a penance. In order to wrest all 
 the joys of selfishness which rightly belong to it, 
 you must never suffer a pang of remorse when you 
 see the discomfort you have shiftily stood from 
 under, land on the neck of your nearest and dearest. 
 
THE JOYS OF SELFISHNESS 285 
 
 There are some of us with weak-kneed consciences, 
 who would back down and take to cigarettes under 
 such circumstances. But not the real thing like this. 
 
 Men as a sex suffer from the general reputation 
 of selfishness more than women, and as a rule, truth 
 compels me to say that they deserve it, as countless 
 wives, whose clothes hang in hall closets and are 
 stored in trunks, while the more available spaces 
 are given up to " father," know to their sorrow. 
 But when a woman is selfish, she is more conscience- 
 less about it, she is more complete in her abandon- 
 ment to the joys of it, than a man, for even the 
 greediest rooster, when his own hunger is appeased, 
 with his lordliest air of condescension, scratches 
 worms for his harem. Some women I know would 
 take the flannels from their babies' backs in order 
 to insure a more stylish funeral for themselves than 
 the woman across the street was able to afford for 
 her husband, who died of pneumonia because she 
 took his overcoat money to buy a pianola on the 
 instalment plan. 
 
 When a woman sins, she generally sins to the 
 limit. In strikes or riots, historians give the palm 
 for violence and industry to the women participants, 
 so that even in the domestic sins, a woman is more 
 conscienceless than a man. This is to their credit 
 as a sex, because virtues are their inheritance, and 
 only by doing violence to their instincts can they 
 
286 THE JOYS OF SELFISHNESS 
 
 acquire all the joys which belong to a conscience- 
 less violation of their native unselfishness which goes 
 with the vocation of wife and mother. 
 
 It is the mad competition which the effort to get 
 on in society entails, which is responsible for these 
 lapses. 
 
 Few vices are as instantaneously remunerative as 
 selfishness. It used to be the fashion to be unselfish. 
 There are in existence annals of mothers who de- 
 voted themselves to their children and preferred 
 their husband's comfort before their own. In files 
 of magazines now out of print you will occasionally 
 run across stories where the heroine sacrificed her- 
 self for the hero, and even where the hero gave up 
 a life of ease to go forth and prepare a home in a 
 howling wilderness for the love whom his family 
 despised. Nowadays you will occasionally read 
 a tragedy wherein the hero killed himself for his 
 love, but they don't give up their comfort and their 
 pleasure any more, because that sort of a story 
 would make even a debutante grin. We live in an 
 age of realism and we will have a truthful trend to 
 our fiction. 
 
 I wish somebody would write a book upon the 
 Selfish Life. 
 
 Selfishness is an alternative sin. It generally skips 
 a generation. For example, a thoroughly unselfish 
 mother brings up a brood of children to be selfish 
 
THE JOYS OF SELFISHNESS 287 
 
 beasts, who prey upon her devotion until she sinks 
 drained and exhausted and unappreciated into her 
 grave. They do not prey upon each other because 
 selfishness is an orchid which does not thrive upon 
 itself. But they go forth into the world, wanderers 
 until they find unselfish characters of the opposite 
 sex, when they mate, instinctively and unintellect- 
 ually — as flower pollen propagates. 
 
 If the selfish one happens to be a woman, from a 
 selfish daughter, she develops into a selfish wife and 
 mother. But here comes the curious part of the nar- 
 rative. She did not appreciate her own mother's 
 unselfish devotion. She did not even know it was 
 there. She accepted it as a matter of course and 
 rewarded her mother by fault-finding and callous- 
 ness. Ingratitude is a salient attribute of the per- 
 fectly selfish. She loved herself too ardently to be 
 able to love her mother. And selfishness caused her 
 to hasten to find a man whose devotion would fill 
 the gap left in her life by her mother's loss. 
 
 But when her children are old enough to under- 
 stand, she preys upon their devotion with the won- 
 derful tact and perseverance of the perfectly selfish, 
 and generally reaps the rich reward of being adored 
 with a blind, unreasoning devotion by her children. 
 When, however, these children grow into maturity, 
 they realize how they have been victimized, and de- 
 termine then and there, to be unselfish mothers and 
 
288 THE JOYS OF SELFISHNESS 
 
 fathers, in order to have their children's lives dif- 
 ferent. If they persist in this determination, they 
 live to turn aghast from the sight of their own chil- 
 dren's selfishness and lack of appreciation. 
 
 Therefore it would seem that nobody but a phi- 
 losopher of a hundred years' experience has any 
 business to be born and experiment with human 
 life, unless he is prepared to be bitterly disappointed. 
 
 Is it the natural contrariness of human nature 
 that makes the child left to nurses and governesses 
 adore the mother he seldom sees, while another 
 woman who takes in sewing in order to give her 
 son his schooling is treated with ingratitude and 
 contempt ? 
 
 Observation of the cases which come under our 
 daily notice would seem to point to selfishness as a 
 remunerative virtue, instead of the vice copybooks 
 used to suggest. 
 
 It certainly is true if the unselfish man is generous 
 hoping for gratitude, for no one knows so well as 
 the free-handed philanthropist the bitterness of real 
 ingratitude. 
 
 In fact, there is an allegory which tells of how 
 all the Virtues once gathered together for a sym- 
 posium on human nature, and all were acquainted 
 except two. The two who had to be introduced to 
 each other were Benevolence and Gratitude. 
 
 Now the mortifications of necessity endured by 
 
THE JOYS OF SELFISHNESS 289 
 
 the generous, may all be avoided if one can manage 
 to be consistently selfish. 
 
 I know of a woman whose understanding of the 
 meaning of words is so confused that, while she 
 is a monument of selfishness as regards her own 
 ease and comfort, she claims the virtue of unselfish- 
 ness to such a degree that her large circle of friends 
 are all hypnotized into sharing her belief, and I have 
 heard her spoken of over and over again as a self- 
 less mother, a woman of unheard-of generosity, a 
 woman who does not pause to consider discomfort 
 when her hospitality is taxed. But the real truth 
 of the matter is that she manages things in this way. 
 
 Her name may go as Mrs. Wayward. She is 
 extremely fond of company and as her spinster 
 daughter, Ellen, keeps house for her, it is no trouble 
 for her to entertain. The rub comes in the fact 
 that every room in the house is occupied. 
 
 One morning a letter came from her niece, Mrs. 
 Scott, saying that she would like to come to town 
 for a few days shopping and bring her nurse and 
 baby, and would it be too much trouble for Mrs. 
 Wayward to have them stay at the house? 
 
 At this, the patient Ellen reared her head, for 
 Fanny Scott was a troublesome guest — in fact any 
 woman is a troublesome guest who comes with a 
 nurse and baby, and upsets the kitchen with extra 
 cooking and laundry work. It is a fixed fact that 
 19 
 
290 THE JOYS OF SELFISHNESS 
 
 women with babies should never visit, and as sel- 
 dom as possible should young mothers wander from 
 their own firesides. 
 
 But Mrs. Wayward wanted to see her niece. So 
 she said : 
 
 " Now Ellen, don't look like that. I know you 
 are getting ready to say they can't come, but I'll 
 tell you just how we can manage. Let Fanny have 
 your room. You can just as well as not step over 
 to the boarding house and engage a room there for 
 the boys and then they can still have their meals 
 with us while you take their room. Then let the 
 nurse and baby have Ethel's room, because that is 
 near the bathroom. It won't be a bit of trouble for 
 Ethel to sleep on a couch in the library for a week 
 and there you are, as snug as possible and everybody 
 provided for. I do love to entertain my friends and 
 relatives in my own house and I never allow the 
 trouble it may be to prevent me from exercising the 
 sacred laws of hospitality. I hope my children will 
 follow in my footsteps and be as unselfish as their 
 mother is! " 
 
 How those children managed to keep a grin from 
 appearing on their dutiful countenances, I cannot 
 say, but in my heart I believe their eyes are not yet 
 open. If that is true, isn't it beautiful to be so 
 blind to the eccentricities of one's parents, but on 
 the other hand isn't it fairly sublime to see how 
 
THE JOYS OF SELFISHNESS 291 
 
 neatly the Mrs. Waywards of this world reap the 
 immediate and remunerative joys of selfishness? 
 She is willing to immolate all her sons and daughters 
 on the altar of a vicarious hospitality, — like the man 
 who in order to gain his own ease, was willing to 
 sacrifice all his wife's relations. 
 
 The complacent contemplation of selfishness in 
 one's friends and neighbours is the privilege of the 
 philosopher. Too many persons who are struggling 
 against the sin of selfishness, or who are richly en- 
 dowed with its correlative virtue, allow themselves 
 to be violently irritated by the sight of consistent 
 selfishness. The very sleekness, the rotundity, the 
 cold eye, or the compelling smik of the persistently 
 selfish, get on the nerves of the observers and destroy 
 all the comfort of social intercourse. The joy and 
 satisfaction the selfish obtain from the pursuit of 
 their vocation enfuriate the onlookers, who care 
 for the victim. 
 
 But this shows that they do not embrace the whole 
 of the picture in their mental vision. The selfish 
 know a certain sleek joy to be sure, but compared 
 to the ecstacy of self immolation for a loved one — 
 compared to the delight of giving up your ease, 
 or cherished plans, or whims or pleasures in order 
 to insure the pleasure of those whose happiness is 
 dearer to you than your own, to be irritated with 
 those who obtain a joy from the practice of selfish- 
 
292 THE JOYS OF SELFISHNESS 
 
 ness is as futile as it would be to allow yourself to be- 
 come indignant at the poor lunatic who was warm- 
 ing himself before a painted fire and babbling hap- 
 pily of the warmth his perverted sense allowed him 
 to believe he was obtaining from the leaping flames 
 on the canvas before which he stretched his cold 
 hands. 
 
ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 
 
ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 
 
 MOST things which are natural to primitive 
 and sensitive man are nowadays counted 
 supremely vulgar. The hall-mark of un- 
 der breeding is stamped on the stout 
 man who tucks his napkin in his collar to protect 
 Nature's bulge in his shirt front, and just as he has 
 learned to spread it in his lap, along comes a self- 
 constituted Beau Brummel and proclaims that it is 
 to be spread across one knee only. Why? Will 
 fashion protect the other knee from spots of melted 
 butter or exuberant drops of rich brown gravy? 
 
 Refinement brings its own punishment. Children 
 are born barbarians, and a boy left to himself, grasps 
 his spoon in his fist, uses knife and fork indiscrim- 
 inately, sucks up his soup with a noise which sends 
 shudders down the back bone of the cultured, chews 
 the responsive celery as he would munch the silent 
 bread, — both with his lips apart — and converses 
 pleasantly with his mouth full. By the way — why 
 do all our choicest witticisms at dinner generally 
 come to us when we have just provisioned our 
 mouths to withstand a siege? Many an immortal 
 
 295 
 
296 ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 
 
 quip has doubtless been lost to an appreciative world 
 because of the unnatural dictum that we should not 
 chat through our food. 
 
 Education in manners generally consists in going 
 squarely against nature. Whatever is instinctive 
 is sure to be wrong. A boy could get through life 
 quite creditably who was told in his cradle, " When- 
 ever you feel like doing a thing in a natural way, do 
 it in an opposite and abnormal manner and you 
 will be sure to be right." 
 
 Why is it vulgar to lean your elbows on the table, 
 when it is so comfortable? And how can you get 
 any pleasure out of an ear of corn else ? Time was, 
 and not so long ago either, when it was permissible 
 to take a whole ear of corn in both hands and go 
 at it. But just because that was the only natural way 
 to eat it, just because it was the only primitive table 
 manner left to an artificial world, we woke up one 
 morning to discover it vulgar. Now the corn 
 is served to you broken in half — and the horrid 
 idea that the cook has grasped it firmly in her two 
 hands in order to break it, will not down — and now 
 you are supposed to coquette with these half ra- 
 tions, so that all pleasure is gone from eating green 
 corn in public. 
 
 Take too, the cream puff — not the wretched crea- 
 tion we now have consisting of a mass of leathery 
 dough in the middle — but the luscious companion 
 
ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 297 
 
 of our childhood. A hollow cake filled with a thick 
 sweet custard, which meandered down your coun- 
 tenance with the closing of the teeth in your first 
 bite — can any civilized substitute, eaten from a po- 
 lite plate with a well-bred fork equal the delight of 
 being alone in a desert with a cream puff? 
 
 There is a story, old but satisfactory, of the Bow- 
 ery girl who asked the Bowery boy what sort of 
 pie he liked best. Out of the unctuous fullness of his 
 heart, " Squash," he said. Then spoke the arbiter 
 of fashion; then came the inevitable, refining, cur- 
 tailing effect of the eternal feminine, curbing all his 
 primitive joy with the words, " Oh, / don't. It 
 musses up your ears so ! " 
 
 The fashions which come with the changing years 
 make eternal vigilance a necessity, and as what was 
 permissible in table manners a decade ago is counted 
 hopelessly vulgar now, the education of unprogress- 
 ive parents devolves upon the modern children, who, 
 I may state in passing, seem to the observer to be 
 competent to train parents along any line. But 
 sometimes the old people are stubborn and refuse 
 to be trained. Then is a time for filial discipline. 
 I know one set of parents in a large western city 
 whose idolized daughter punishes them by not ap- 
 pearing at dinner until after the soup has been re- 
 moved because her father and mother take a noisy 
 joy in absorbing it which offends daughter's trained 
 
298 ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 
 
 ears. That is an unhappy family incident, however, 
 and is replete with unnecessary pain, because aside 
 from the grief the stern young woman inflicts upon 
 her unregenerate parents, doubtless daughter would 
 be much happier if she joined them in their primi- 
 tive habits. 
 
 Soup is a trial at present to all except those who 
 were caught young. 
 
 No one will have the mendacity to deny that 
 a society is false to its core which forbids one to ab- 
 sorb a glorious and life-giving gravy on minute mor- 
 sels of bread and convey the same delicately to the 
 mouth. And I defy any man, no matter how 
 trained, to see the beefsteak platter before him with- 
 out a longing return to boyhood days. Why rele- 
 gate the chief joy of a luscious steak to the cook? 
 
 There are those rough diamonds who claim that 
 they cannot get at the true inwardness of bread and 
 butter unless they spread a whole thick slice of bread 
 with butter and eat it at their leisure through the 
 meal. Buttering each mouthful as it is needed, does 
 not go, with them. But why do I refer to " a good, 
 thick slice of bread and butter ? " That does not 
 exist nowadays. You get a layer of bread as thin 
 as a face veil, which will not bear the weight of the 
 butter, but which crumbles and drops down your 
 cuff in the meanest manner, because that is the way 
 bread should now be cut. 
 
ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 299 
 
 I wonder what the immortal German Charlotte, 
 chiefly known to fame as a lady who, despite the 
 usual vicissitudes of life, continued to cut bread and 
 butter, would say, could she see the lace effects we 
 get in bread in America ? 
 
 I actually believe there are unhappy boys to-day, 
 the children of the fashionable, possibly also of the 
 rich, who have never seen a genuine slice of bread 
 and butter. 
 
 But it remains for the French to present the con- 
 trast of the greatest extremes in table etiquette. 
 Think of it! That nation which sets fashions in 
 both food and clothes for the entire civilized world, 
 which by setting the seal of its approval on a dish 
 can make it the rage on two continents, permits the 
 unspeakable but joyous vulgarity, at the close of a 
 meal, of both the rince-bouche and the toothpick! 
 The rince-bouche is a two part finger bowl, the inner 
 one being filled with water, with which, without 
 regard to your neighbors' sensibilities, you rinse 
 your mouth, permitting the water thus used to fall 
 into the larger bowl. Then — the crowning atrocity 
 of the toothpick, used frankly, not blushingly behind 
 a serviette, but with bold effrontery. Evidently the 
 French think that to get comfortable after a heavy 
 meal is the only right and proper thing. How crude 
 this form of thought! But the French are happy 
 in their vulgarity — a. vulgarity so natural and so 
 
300 ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 
 
 primitive, yet so disgusting to better trained na- 
 tions that we spurn their customs beneath our heel. 
 
 Yet the French consider our national vulgarity 
 of gum-chewing an atrocity of which their skirts, 
 though stained by the memories of the Commune 
 and St. Bartholomew's day, are fortunately guiltless. 
 Nay, I believe a cultured Parisian of to-day would 
 infinitely rather his grandfather had signed the death 
 warrant of an innocent man than to see his daughter 
 chew gum in the Champs Elysees. 
 
 Yet in a theatre of excellent reputation in Amer- 
 ica gum is sold between the acts and a review of the 
 house showed me hundreds of jaws wagging in a 
 unison no ballet-master could ever get from the legs 
 of his ballet. 
 
 People who chew assure me that they obtain a 
 fearful joy from it. 
 
 The habits of dipping or chewing snuff and pipe 
 smoking are largely confined to the south, but there 
 it forms just one half the joy which life holds out to 
 a certain class of women. Church-going is the other. 
 And this leads me, not by easy stages, but by a jump 
 to a story told me not long ago by a certain promi- 
 nent southern author. 
 
 He neither smokes nor chews, but he comes of 
 a family where these various afore mentioned prac- 
 tices had abounded in his childhood. 
 
 After he came into prominence he was invited 
 
ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 301 
 
 to dine with an equally prominent and emancipated 
 woman-author, who, after dinner, offered him cigar- 
 ettes. 
 
 He could see from the arrangement of the tray 
 that she intended to smoke, and how to refuse, yet 
 permit her to indulge without feeling the rebuke of 
 his refusal was a problem, which at first staggered 
 him. But he finally took refuge in the following 
 brilliant expedient. 
 
 " No, thank you, I don't smoke. But don't let that 
 deter you. I am accustomed to seeing ladies smoke. 
 My grandmother always smoked. She smoked a 
 pipe!" 
 
 Refinement likewise brings its own punishment 
 to the elderly or ease-loving in the matter of dress. 
 
 Old gentlemen who remember the stocks of their 
 elders, do not take kindly to the starched atrocities 
 of the modern high collar. Yet it is the high collar 
 to-day, or rank with the freaks. Does any man try 
 to emancipate himself by adopting a very low collar? 
 Listen to what people say of him. Has any man the 
 courage to revert to the soft, open collar which By- 
 ron wore ? What cage would they put him in ? Has 
 a man with a sensitive skin the courage to put a 
 number sixteen collar on a number fifteen neck? 
 He wouldn't like to tell you what his wife said when 
 he put the first one on and presented himself, freshly 
 
302 ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 
 
 shaved and quite comfortable, to go to church with 
 her to worship his Creator. 
 
 As he steps along the hot pavement in patent 
 leather shoes which draw closer at every step; his 
 warm hands girt into gloves ; his ears rubbed into a 
 crimson glow by the height of his collar, his whole 
 spirit in revolt, he looks back with bitter longing to 
 the days of his boyhood on the farm, where shoes 
 and collars were unknown ; where a single " gallus " 
 supported his " pants " ; where a companionable shirt 
 with easy buttons could be donned at a moment's 
 notice; where shoes and stockings vexed not his 
 peaceful soul and where " chores " were his only 
 dread. 
 
 Alas, all the joys of that early vulgar life are 
 gone forever and he has nothing left to look for- 
 ward to but a future spent in harness. He cannot 
 have even the privilege of the horse owned by a 
 good man — of being turned out to pasture in his 
 old age. The last state of that man is worse than 
 the first. 
 
 Have you ever diverted yourself during a journey 
 by picturing what sort of men and women your 
 fellow travellers really were? I mean, what were 
 their primitive habits ; what their ideals of happiness ; 
 what their ambitions — aims — desires? 
 
 I have seen men turned out by the best English 
 tailors, to whom I knew that the chief aim of their 
 
ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 303 
 
 days was to get up to their rooms in the hotel and 
 get their coats off. Some men only feel at ease in 
 their shirt-sleeves. Not that they are too warm 
 either. But in their own boyhood's home, coats 
 were a superfluity, and in spite of their wealth and 
 success, the feel of a coat except in church, is irk- 
 some. 
 
 Not for them the thin alpaca or the jaunty negli- 
 gee. Shirt-sleeves, pure and simple! Air! 
 
 Some modern clothes for women are an equal 
 abomination. Tightness at throat and waist, just 
 where Nature needs the most room — could anything 
 be more joyless ? Oh, for the long breaths of Peg- 
 gotty which would send hooks and buttons and stay- 
 laces flying! 
 
 Babies scream when you put tight things on them 
 and in almost any Sunday newspaper, you will find 
 instructions to young mothers, telling them how to 
 keep their babies warm in loose comfortable cloth- 
 ing. But education soon teaches us that the joy of 
 screaming for what we want, or of making known 
 our bodies' discomfort by piercing yells, is vulgar. 
 
 The gamins and alley children revel in joys which 
 are denied to the polite. 
 
 They also, emancipated little imps of nature, are 
 father to the man who — er — expectorates. That 
 isn't what they call it, especially where a front tooth 
 comes out which enables them to hit a given object 
 
304 ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 
 
 with rare accuracy. The polite word is expectorate, 
 but let us be exuberantly vulgar and call it by its 
 homespun name, — spitting. 
 
 Foreigners tell us that spitting is a national habit 
 of Americans. It may well be considered so, for no 
 age is too young for boys to begin to learn its joys. 
 The first thing a boy learns to do is to walk. The 
 second is to spit over the bannisters. Then the 
 front tooth opens up fresh possibilities which last 
 until corn-silk cigarettes appear. After that the 
 habit may be said to be formed so that by the time 
 he can vote he is the real thing, and the first thing 
 he looks for, upon entering a room, is a place to spit. 
 
 It must be a soul-satisfying pastime, for so many 
 men, who otherwise might be considered gentlemen, 
 do it to excess. 
 
 And what do not refined wives have to bear from 
 this unbearable habit ! 
 
 Anybody who doesn't use it and some who do, 
 will tell you that slang is vulgar. Yet modern Eng- 
 lish is practically crippled without the use of words 
 which only a few years ago were counted as belong- 
 ing to the category of slang. 
 
 I find a difference between the vulgarity of using 
 slang and certain other vulgarities of dress or table 
 manners, which distinction may or may not be 
 allowed me, and that is that the latter generally 
 points to humble origin, while the use of slang may 
 
ON THE JOYS OF VULGARITY 305 
 
 be indulged in with impunity by the best born in the 
 land. 
 
 If, for example, a child is born of gentle parents 
 to whom the conventional is natural, to adopt a 
 vulgar habit would be abnormal. Therefore to that 
 child a slice of bread and molasses would be no treat. 
 To the farm-boy or the farmer-boy-man, to eat it 
 would be to snatch a fearful joy. The other child 
 might eat bread spread with a delicate syrup but the 
 rank taste of molasses would be a nauseous dose. 
 Likewise uncouth habits of taking ease or of dress 
 are no pleasure to those whose ancestors were of the 
 same mind as themselves. 
 
 In the same manner, there are certain persons who 
 may descend into vulgarity with impunity because 
 one feels that they are innately refined. But let the 
 naturally common persons beware how they betray 
 any refinement, for such sporadic exhibitions only 
 serve to call attention to their innate vulgarity. 
 20 
 
THE EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNO- 
 RANCE 
 
THE EXTRAVAGANCE OF 
 IGNORANCE 
 
 IF those newspapers which daily expend their 
 energy inciting the masses to a witless rage 
 against the extravagant expenditures of mil- 
 lionaires, would devote the same space toward 
 exposing the wicked extravagance of the ignorant 
 poor, they would make for lower prices and the full 
 dinner pail which it is the aim of even the well-to-do 
 to achieve. 
 
 The increased cost of living is the vital problem 
 before all thinking men and women to-day. Men 
 toil and women strive to the one end of obtaining 
 three meals a day and a bed at night. Slowly but 
 surely pleasures hitherto within the means of the 
 clerk, artisan and such like, are given up, with noth- 
 ing to take their place. Why ? Because wages have 
 not increased in proportion to prices of food. The 
 one thing impossible to stretch is a limited income. 
 And there is but one remedy. That is to educate the 
 people to stop wasting. 
 
 Foreigners tell us every time they come to our 
 shores, that the American people waste enough to 
 
 Z09 
 
jio EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNORANCE 
 
 support another nation, but we don't believe it, and 
 if we did, we would not act on it. 
 
 I believe the garbage pails of America, taken by 
 and large, would solve the question of twenty-five 
 per cent, more comfort to the average family which 
 supports one. 
 
 Waste ? Look into your pantries, your ice-boxes, 
 your kitchens, you housewives, if you want to know 
 where your husband's salary goes. Your servant? 
 Yes, but those of you who don't keep one, do you 
 never waste food through your own crass ignorance 
 of how to use the left-overs? Do you blame your 
 little family for not wanting to eat the tail of a cold 
 steak, or broken bits of bread or the remnants of a 
 meal which left a Httle of everything in the dish? 
 You are to blame for not knowing how to make the 
 scraps appetizing! Also in not knowing how to 
 calculate your needs. 
 
 Did you ever go into the kitchen of a French 
 family? Did you ever try to emulate the thrift of 
 the poor Itahan who sells fruit in the front of his 
 shop and sleeps under his counter? Do you know 
 why your German neighbour, who gets far less than 
 your husband does, has a bank account, while you 
 are in debt? It is because other nations are habitu- 
 ally thrifty while the American is the most extrava- 
 gant on the face of the earth. 
 
 No nation can be called extravagant whose ex- 
 
EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNORANCE 311 
 
 travagance is confined to its upper classes. Think it 
 out for yourselves, and you will find that the Ameri- 
 can is the only nation which boasts a middle and a 
 low class which has formed wasteful, wickedly ex- 
 travagant habits which are so firmly rooted as to 
 be a part of our national character. 
 
 The fault is largely our national vanity. We 
 think it low, mean and stingy to be careful of the 
 pennies — the small things. We think it grand and 
 noble not to haggle over a flagrant overcharge, not 
 to wait for a cent or two of change, " not to make a 
 fuss " over petty money impositions, and to give or 
 throw away broken food stuffs. 
 
 Fools! If we could only see what a pitiful front 
 we present, with all our clothes on our backs, instal- 
 ment-plan furniture and an empty larder in our 
 houses we would begin to stop the foolish leaks in 
 our expenditures. 
 
 And one of the first reforms to be inaugurated 
 would be the removal of the contempt of small shop- 
 keepers for thrifty orders and careful computation 
 of cost. 
 
 It takes courage to announce to anybody — even 
 your servant or your butcher — that you are going to 
 save, but you can do it. 
 
 I well remember my first experience. I am natu- 
 rally extravagant, but I hate waste, and a few daily 
 trips to my ice-box made me sick. There, souring 
 
312 EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNORANCE 
 
 or dried up was enough to feed a family of four, yet 
 every day my necessary purchases amounted to the 
 same sum — unless it happened to be more. It was 
 never less. 
 
 Then I sat down to think things over. My first 
 resolve was to pay cash for everything. It is hard 
 work to pay out ready money. You don't order two 
 tins of sardines, if by stopping a moment, you realize 
 that one will do for you, and that the other will 
 probably be eaten on some extra occasion under the 
 familiar formula, " Oh, here is a box of sardines. 
 We might as well eat them, so as not to waste 
 them ! " 
 
 It is not easy to be extravagant with ready money. 
 Charge accounts cost every woman who has them, 
 many dollars each month, not the least of which are 
 false charges, even at the very best and most reliable 
 shops. For example, if there is a leader announced 
 for a certain day and you telephone your order, and 
 do not see your pass-book for a day or two, how are 
 you going to know whether you get the benefit of the 
 sale price or whether you paid just the few cents 
 extra which always go into the leak in your family 
 purse ? 
 
 I was once waiting my turn to be served when I 
 heard one clerk say to another : 
 
 " She ain't woith while. She watches things 
 weighed and pays cash ! " 
 
EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNORANCE 313 
 
 It set me to thinking, for at that time I was one of 
 those " worth while " charge customers. 
 
 Then I decided. I have been behind a runaway 
 horse, and once in danger of shipwreck, but on both 
 occasions I felt more courage than it took when I 
 went to the best butcher in a town near New York 
 where we were spending the summer, where more 
 than New York prices prevailed, and asked for the 
 proprietor. He came beaming. 
 
 I said : " I am a stranger, only here for the sum- 
 mer and have been told that you are the best butcher 
 in town." 
 
 He bowed and fairly licked his chops, scenting me 
 for a victim. 
 
 " We shall do our best to please you," he began. 
 
 " Wait," I said. " You may not want my custom 
 when I tell you the conditions. I shall pay cash for 
 everything. I am aware that cash customers do not 
 possess the same value in your eyes as a charge ac- 
 count, but I am doing it to save money. I want 
 your best, but I will not pay fancy prices for any- 
 thing except delicacies. Will you give me fair treat- 
 ment ? Will your clerks be as polite to me if I buy 
 only two lamb chops as if I bought ten? Will you 
 willingly tell me prices and warn me of the rise in 
 them? If so, I will deal with you. If not I will 
 send to New York twice a week and order every- 
 thing from there." 
 
314 EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNORANCE 
 
 He was a decent sort, as you will see from his 
 reply. 
 
 " Madam," he said, " I will do just that. Further- 
 more, I will introduce my foreman, and tell him 
 what you say. Now if anything goes wrong at any 
 time during the summer, — even after you have 
 cooked your meat, and it proves unsatisfactory, send 
 it back and I will make it good." 
 
 My heart ceased giving jumps of fright and 
 gradually thumped naturally again. 
 
 I tried the same thing with his partner who ran 
 the fish and grocery department, but after a few 
 weeks of thrifty buying, this man wouldn't speak to 
 me and I went elsewhere. But I was delighted to 
 find him sulky. It showed that he really wasn't 
 making enough off me to pay for selling me goods. 
 That saving, therefore, stayed in my pocket. 
 
 Always take courage, fellow sufferers among 
 women, when your tradespeople are rude to you. 
 It means that they are not robbing you to their entire 
 satisfaction. 
 
 But buying is only one infinitesimal detail. A 
 far greater is the inability of most women to use up 
 the food which is left, but the greatest of all is the 
 waste of servants. 
 
 Remember this. It is the small families in Amer- 
 ica who can afford but one servant who are paying 
 for the extravagances of other people. And all be- 
 
EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNORANCE 315 
 
 cause the mistress lacks the moral courage to insist 
 upon thrift, even though she changes servants every 
 week. 
 
 It take courage to inaugurate any reform, but 
 until housewives stand together on the servant ques- 
 tion, insisting on honesty, thrift and good service, 
 we shall all be just the slaves to the wastefulness of 
 the poor that we are now. 
 
 There is not a woman whose husband gets one 
 hundred dollars a month or less, who would not 
 welcome a raise of ten dollars a month with a breath 
 of relief. Well, will you believe me when I tell you 
 that you can actually save ten dollars a month out of 
 your servant's wastefulness if you care to take the 
 trouble ? 
 
 Where does all the butter go to? Tell me that. 
 I once found that my cook was throwing all the 
 broken butter balls into the garbage pail. 
 
 Who leaves things to dry up in tucked-away 
 paper bags ? Who lets things ferment and turn ran- 
 cid from neglect? Who throws away sour milk 
 from ignorance of its value? Who leaves the soap 
 in the water to dissolve ? 
 
 Oh, it is the not knowing how or what or why that 
 costs so much ! 
 
 Did you ever know a rich man or a rich woman 
 who spent his or her money to suit you? / never 
 did. 
 
3i6 EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNORANCE 
 
 But an act of a neighbour of mine caused me 
 more thought than any one thing that ever happened 
 in any Hfe except my own. 
 
 There was a family of six grown people in one 
 moderate sized house. It had a lawn back and front, 
 which one of the women cut, trimmed and watered. 
 They kept no servant. They did their own cooking, 
 even washing and ironing. 
 
 Suddenly without a word of warning to soften 
 the blow, they bought an automobile. 
 
 I knew nothing of themi — not even their names nor 
 their relationship to each other. I could only see 
 them at work. The woman wore gloves, and when 
 she came out to take down the clothes, she dropped 
 the clothespins into a bag made of bedticking with 
 a drawstring to it. 
 
 I went and looked into my ice box and counted 
 the clothespins rotting on our back lawn. 
 
 Then I knew why they had an automobile ! 
 
 Now, laugh if you want to, but I lost a very good 
 servant once because I remonstrated at buying two 
 dozen clothespins every week. 
 
 " I'll not stay with anny lady that grudges clothes- 
 pins — the chapest things there is! Why, my sister 
 never picks up her clothespins! She just trows thim 
 down ! " 
 
 Her sister stood at the wash tub six days in the 
 week, but what my servant said about clothespins 
 
EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNORANCE 317 
 
 was literally true. Yet in Ireland these people 
 burned peat and let the pig sleep in the house with 
 them. 
 
 The Irish are a wasteful race and naturally assist 
 Americans in their native extravagance, but it is an 
 extravagance which counts you nothing, brings no 
 pleasure, saves no trouble, does no one any good. 
 It is the extravagance of utter waste. 
 
 I once sent my Irish cook to buy one grape fruit, 
 and said, " Now I priced them, and I know they are 
 two for a quarter, so one will be thirteen cents. 
 If they try to charge you fifteen, ask to see those at 
 two for a quarter." 
 
 She came back with eyes sparking with delight. 
 
 " Here's your two cents, missis ! But oh, missis, 
 I never felt so ashamed in my life. I couldn't look 
 him in the eye, because I never jewed anybody down 
 before." 
 
 " Jewed him down ! " I said, " You didn't jew 
 him. That was the price. Didn't he give you the 
 same ones he first asked you fifteen cents apiece 
 for?" 
 
 " Yis, missis, but I was ashamed just the same ! " 
 
 Now her shame was genuine. How do you ex- 
 plain it, when at home in Ireland her family were of 
 the very poor ? 
 
 An Irish servant will cut the oil cloth covering her 
 own kitchen table every time she slices her own 
 
31 8 EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNORANCE 
 
 bread, with the same carelessness that she cuts yours, 
 so it is habitual waste and natural carelessness — a 
 wicked disregard of the value of money — which 
 every careful woman should endeavour to uproot as 
 far as in her lies, because it is a national menace, 
 which can only be overcome by personal endeavour. 
 
 Ever since the time I mention, the subject of 
 clothespins has interested me deeply. Whenever I 
 drive or take trolley rides and see a woman, be she 
 mistress or maid, taking down the clothes, I always 
 watch to see what she does with the clothespins. 
 And in five years of desultory observation, I have 
 never seen the care and thrift displayed by my auto- 
 mobile neighbour, of putting them in a bag, thus 
 keeping them dry and clean. 
 
 The next thing to it has been the peach basket, 
 at which the clothespins are thrown. If they land in 
 the basket, well and good. If not, they dull the lawn 
 mower. 
 
 Now the subject of clothespins is typical of the 
 thriftlessness of most poor Americans in small mat- 
 ters. They despise small economies. 
 
 And why? Because mothers never teach their 
 children the wisdom or the beauty of economy ! 
 
 Poor souls ! Can I blame them ? It is mother- 
 love — unwise but pure — which permeates all lands 
 and bids parents say " Our children, please God ! 
 shall never know the pangs of poverty that we have 
 
EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNORANCE 319 
 
 known ! " And straight way there grows up a race 
 of idle youngsters, destined to produce offspring 
 just as fooHsh, who spend money they have never 
 earned with no idea of its value. 
 
 One of the greatest curses America is suffering 
 from to-day is the unwise and misguided parental 
 love which pampers and spoils the children of sturdy 
 fathers and mothers, and deprives them of the wis- 
 dom whereby they might protect themselves from 
 their own education in folly. 
 
 The children of the middle-class Americans are 
 all overdressed. Would they could see the simple 
 clothes of the royal families of England and Ger- 
 many! 
 
 Bricklayers, saloon keepers, carpenters, drug- 
 clerks, and stenographers in America dress their 
 children in showier and more expensive clothes than 
 royal princes wear, who are destined to rule over 
 millions of human beings. 
 
 Is this wise? Or honest — when you cannot rea- 
 sonably afford to live up to it ? How many fathers 
 and mothers can really afford to live up to the way 
 their own children dress ? 
 
 And aside from dressing in materials far beyond 
 their means, how many girls, whether the children 
 of the poor or of the well-to-do, can cut and make a 
 dress or trim a hat ? Not one in a thousand. Even 
 the clerk on a hundred dollars a month counts on a 
 
320 EXTRAVAGANCE OF IGNORANCE 
 
 dressmaker's bill two or three times a year, when 
 that, at least, is something daughters could learn, 
 without affront to their false pride. 
 
 And again, in not teaching children the value of 
 money and the beauty of a reasonable economy, you 
 unwise parents, are robbing them of a strength of 
 character which you earned by the very trials you 
 would spare them. 
 
 Have you ever stopped to think that you are to 
 blame for your wayward sons and your wilful 
 daughters ? You are often bowed to the very earth 
 in shame for your petted children's wickedness, and 
 even as your heart breaks, you cry, " After all I 
 have done for them ! Even denying myself necessi- 
 ties that they might have luxuries ! " 
 
 Ay ! And that is the very reason why your heart 
 bleeds to-day. 
 
 Teach your children the value of money and to 
 reverence economy. Teach them — if you know it 
 yourself — the difference between vanity and pride. 
 Show them how not to save at the spigot and waste 
 at the bung. The ignorant know how to do without, 
 but they do not know how to economize. 
 
 It will exercise their cleverness. Do you not know 
 that it takes brains to economize ?, 
 
-•>!■;■' ;-"■