Part 17

Well, son, perhaps I unconsciously favor women because I belong to their lodge. Also, it is more difficult for a woman to catch a husband than it is for a man to get a wife, not only because women are more inclined to matrimony than men are, but because a woman’s pursuit of a man has to be stealthy and secret and under cover, with all of her tracks carefully hidden and her purposes veiled, whereas a man can go after a woman openly and aboveboard, with everybody looking on and applauding the chase. Therefore, the woman is more in need of any stray hints that may improve her technique than the man is. Still, far be it from me to withhold from my brothers any information I may have about the short cuts to the feminine heart. So to the really earnest seeker after knowledge on this subject I would say:

First. Study your girl. Catalogue her. Find out to what type she belongs and adapt your tactics to the situation, for all women no more rise to the same line of courtship than all fish bite at the same bait. There are some feminine hearts that can only be taken by assault and battery and others that surrender to patient siege. There are women whose love is for sale to the highest bidder and others who bestow it in pity. There are women who like a business proposition and women who fall only for the romantic wooing. So there you are, and your success will depend upon your ability to psychoanalyze the particular woman and upon the skill with which you suggest to her that you are the great unsatisfied need of her soul.

If the girl is of the clear-eyed, upstanding, competent business type, your best method of winning her is by the good, old, well-tried Platonic friendship method. She isn’t anxious to exchange a mahogany desk for a kitchen range nor to give up a good pay envelope and an easy job to toil for some man for nothing. Likewise, she has worked with men too long for her to see any rosy halo around the masculine brow, so she is pretty apt to shy off at any suggestion of marriage and balk at the thought of the altar. But life lacks savor to every woman without masculine society, and so this particular type of woman is especially allured by the idea of a beautiful and satisfying friendship with some man. And when a chap has got his toe that far into the door to a woman’s heart it is his own fault if he does not open it all the way.

Only there is this word of warning: Never pop the question to the business girl in the morning of a sunshiny day when she has on a new frock and a good hat and everything is going swimmingly at the office and she feels fit and fine and ready to buck the world. Instead, choose a rainy evening, when she is sitting alone at home, dejected and forlorn, when she is tired and the boss has been grumpy. Then the thing she wants most on earth is just a nice, strong masculine shoulder to cry on.

If the girl you want is a flapper, your best ally is your bankbook. All you need to look good to her is to be a good spender and a fast worker. Hold not your hand and count not the cost of jewelry and trinketry and candy and flowers and cabarets and eats and joy-rides, and remember that the man with the longest purse wins. Some day she will jazz with you to the preacher, and you will live scrappily ever afterward.

If the girl upon whom your affections are set is a demure little Puritan, make her your Mother Confessor. Confide to her all your sins, real and imaginary. Invent a dark past for her benefit. Make her believe that but for her Sacred Influence you would become an abandoned character and that she alone can lead you up to the higher life. All women have the reformation complex, and the better they are and the less they know of the world the harder they fall for the belief that a grown man’s character is like a piece of dough that they can mold into any shape they please. Once let a girl get the idea into her head that she is responsible for your soul, and she is yours for the taking.

If the girl you want is one that you made mud pies with in childhood and went to school with, and who refuses to see you in a sentimental light, don’t be discouraged by her telling you that she will be a sister to you. Just keep right on strutting your Rachel-and-Jacob stuff. Mighty few women can resist that. Make yourself a habit with the girl. Make yourself necessary to her happiness and comfort by always paying her the little attentions that women like. Fetch and carry for her. Be the one person in the world she can always depend upon to make life pleasant and agreeable for her.

Then suddenly drop her cold. Begin paying furious attentions to some woman she always accuses of being made up and older than she looks and an artful hussy, and it is a hundred-to-one bet that she will call you back and let you see that her feelings toward you were not at all what she had supposed they were. For when she thinks you are about to marry another woman she will wake up to the fact that life will be cinders, ashes and dust without you.

If the girl you desire is one of the morbid sort who hangs between “I will” and “I won’t,” who is always vivisecting her heart and taking her emotional temperature, what you need to use is caveman methods. She is just dying to have you drag her to the altar by the hair of her head, and if you are half a man you will do it. Don’t ever ask that kind of a woman to marry you. Tell her you are going to marry her and that you have the license and the ring in your pocket and are on the way to the chapel with her, and you will give her a thrill that will last a lifetime.

These are only a few of the many ways to win a wife. It is dead easy, and any man can do it who has gumption enough to work out a cross-word puzzle.

LVI

DANGEROUS GIRLS

Chief among the women from whom a young man should pray his guardian angel to deliver him is the Hinting Girl. She is a gentle grafter who holds up every man she meets with a pair of innocent-looking blue eyes that bid him stand and deliver just as effectually and efficiently as if he were looking down the barrels of a couple of blue-nosed revolvers in the hands of a highway robber. You will find these cheerful workers, son, where you least expect them. The very highest society is filled with girls of undisputed position and unquestioned morals, who ruthlessly plunder every man they meet, and you will never encounter an individual more to be feared than these bandits of the parlor.

Did you ever wonder why one girl receives so many more presents than another, and why every man who passes lays some offering on her shrine? Take it from me, this is the result of science and not mere chance. Observe, closely, and you will see, when you call, that she steers the conversation artfully around to the latest play, and before you know it you have offered to take her to it.

Also, she has let you know that violets are her favorite flower, and the date of her birthday. Before Christmas she artlessly confides in you where there is the jeweled vanity, or the hand-painted fan, that she has set her heart upon, and she couldn’t shout it at you any plainer if she bawled it to you through a megaphone that she expects you to come across, and will think you a piker if you don’t.

Beware the Hinting Girl, son. She is the woman who is accessory before the crime of half of the embezzlements of trusted clerks who go wrong, and who, if she got her deserts, would stand in the prisoners’ dock by the side of the poor, weak, trembling boy who has stolen to buy her jewels or to give her a good time. And she makes the sort of wife whose husband rises up and sits down to a never-ending chant of “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”

Then there’s the Girl With a Past. Very often she has been more sinned against than sinning. Probably her morals are just as good as your own, son; but, even so, such marriages rarely turn out happily. For we have to face the naked fact that, while a man may love a woman well enough to forget and forgive her indiscretions, society, which is not in love with her, remembers them all. And it reminds her husband that it recalls them. The man who marries a Woman With a Past is pretty much in the same fix as the man who hires a reformed embezzler to be his cashier. He hopes he will run straight, but he keeps an eye on the cash box—a situation which doesn’t make for domestic felicity. Of course, there are women who reform and gather in their wild oats crops and ever after raise nothing but garden truck around their doorstep, but even while their husbands are devouring their domestic cabbages and onions there rarely comes a family spat in which they do not throw in their wives’ teeth the kind of farmers they have been. The truth is that it takes a big man and woman to defy the conventions. That is what makes it safest for those of us who are little people to play the game according to the rules laid down by Hoyle. And one of these rules is that women must keep their skirts clean. By and large it is a good rule, son, for it means the purity of race, the integrity of society and a lot of other things that keep this old world going.

Then there’s the Weeping Girl. Whenever you meet with a gentle, sweet, soft, babyish-looking little girl, with a chin that trembles and big eyes that overflow with tears at the slightest provocation, and who can cry without her nose getting red, fly, son, fly. She will fasten herself upon you, and when you try to make a getaway she will cling to you and weep. And no man can behold unmoved a woman crying for him, because he is such a good thing. You will stop to wipe her eyes; and all will be over with you except the long, long years of rainy matrimony when you will have to deal with a wife who cannot be reasoned with or cajoled or coerced into doing anything she doesn’t want to do, because you will be so afraid of starting another freshet of tears.

Then there’s the Domestic Girl, who baits her hook with angels’ food. You might go farther and do worse than marry the Domestic Girl, for while romance is transient one’s appetite remains, and after one’s illusions are gone it is a comfortable thing to have a good dinner to fall back upon. Still, one must confess, the Domestic Girl is apt to have only a bread-and-butter conversation, of which a man might tire in time; so, unless your stomach is developed in excess of your heart, walk warily when the Domestic Girl begins to inveigle you into little meals for two that she cooks for you under a pink-shaded lamp.

Lastly, there is the girl who is just near you—the girl you work with, or who lives in the same boarding house with you, or who comes to visit your sister. Men who have escaped the dangers of all other women are the victims of propinquity which unites them to ladies they couldn’t otherwise have seen through a telescope. Somehow our very nearness to the people with whom we are thrown every day keeps us from getting a perspective on their faults and disabilities, and habit deceives us into thinking that they are more necessary to us than they are. And so we drift into the mismated marriages that keep the divorce courts busy and the world salted down with the brine of our tears.

Therefore, if you perceive that Mamie, whom you thought vulgar at first, no longer gets on your nerves; if you observe that Sadie, who bored you when you first met her, is beginning to interest you with her chatter about what “he said” and “I said,” and you discover that you have quit being shocked by Carrie’s gum-chewing and Mabel’s grammar, then, son, pack your trunk and leave while the leaving is good. Otherwise, the Girl Next to You will get you sure.

But why amplify the list? Some day a girl will tag you, and you will know you are “it,” and a million warnings could not save you from your fate.

LVII

WHEN A GIRL LOVES A MAN

A youth asks me how he can tell whether a girl loves him or not. Well, son, you can’t always tell. There are times when all signs fail, and there is no man so clever, so discerning, so sophisticated that a woman cannot fool him if she set her mind to doing so. For the many generations in which women were entirely subservient to men, and in which they had to get everything they had out of men, and in which all their pleasures and perquisites depended on their wheedling and cajoling men, have made them gifted liars and adept at befooling men.

However, the modern girl, being able to make her own living, and stand upon her own feet, and therefore being to a large degree independent of men, has less need to simulate emotions which she does not feel, and so she has lost the fine technique of her mother and her grandmother and her great-great-great grandmother. Flirting has become a lost art, and the methods of the gold-digger are so crude and raw that any man who is taken in by one deserves all he gets. The average girl is almost brutally frank about the state of her feelings. She hasn’t even subtlety enough about her to keep a man guessing.

But there is, of course, a sort of no-man’s land that lies between liking and loving in which the girl wanders, herself as uncertain and bewildered as you are. And, I take it, it is across this dangerous terrain that you wish to be guided. Sally is dear and sweet to you. She apparently enjoys your society, and you never have any trouble in making dates with her. She is the best little pal ever. But what you want to know is whether she cares for you just as she does for half a dozen other chaps, or whether you are the ONLY ONE.

First, Is she willing to sit at home of an evening with you or not? If she comes down with her hat on to receive you, or if she always wants to step out somewhere, you have not touched her heart. She regards you merely as a purveyor of good times, a theater ticket and a dancing partner, and any other youth who had the price would do as well. But things have got serious with her when she proposes to spend the evening at home under a pink-shaded lamp. That shows that she has begun to live a romance with more thrills to it than anything she can see depicted on the stage, and that she thinks that Valentino is a poor dub at love-making compared to you. Also it indicates that she desires to isolate you, to cut you out from the herd and put her brand upon you. Cupid is essentially a monopolist. Especially the Lady Cupid. The first thing that a woman does when she falls in love with a man is to try to shut him away from all other women. So long as a girl wants to go in crowds there is nothing doing with her in the love line. If she really cares for you, she will maneuver to get you off to herself.

Next. Observe how a girl treats your pocketbook. If she gets everything out of you that she can; if, when you go out, she has to have a taxi to convey her three blocks, although she can walk ten miles around a department store without turning a hair; if she always suggests orchids when flowers are mentioned, and invariably picks out the most expensive places to dance and the highest-priced dishes on the menu, you may be certain that she has no serious intentions concerning you. You are merely the good thing that a merciful Providence has brought forward for her sustenance. But when a girl begins to talk economy to a boy; when she suggests going to the movies instead of to the theatre; when she orders a ham sandwich instead of a chicken breast and mushrooms under glass, it is an unmistakable sign that she is regarding his bankroll as her own and is commencing to save up for furniture for her future home.

Next—and this is an acid test—talk to the girl about yourself and observe her reaction to it. Monologue along to her by the hour about what you are doing, about what you have done in the past and what you expect to do in the future. Tell her all about what you said to the boss and what the boss said to you. Explain to her all the details of the grocery business. Regale her with reminiscences of your childhood, when you were a fat little boy with green freckles on your hands.

If she yawns in your face or if she listens with the expression of a martyr being nailed to the cross; if she gets up and walks around the room or turns on the radio or interrupts you to ask what you think of the President’s foreign policy, you may as well abandon hope. Her affection is merely gold plated, not the real thing. But if she laps up your talk about yourself and asks for more; if she begs you to repeat that darling story of how naughty you were to your nurse, and if she sits, goggle-eyed with excitement, on the edge of her chair while you relate how you sold a bill of goods to a hard customer, rest assured that her heart is yours for keeps. For there are only two women in the world, a man’s mother and the woman who is his wife or hopes to be his wife, who want to hear him talk about himself.

Take note also of a girl’s attitude toward you. As long as she regards you as an intelligent, husky, able-bodied man, capable of taking care of yourself and with sense enough to come in out of the rain, her regard for you is merely platonic. But when a girl suddenly becomes anxious about the state of your health, when she worries over your getting your feet wet and is afraid you are not getting enough vitamines in your diet, when she warns you not to forget to put on your overcoat if it is cold and to look out for automobiles when you cross the street, then it is safe to begin pricing engagement rings.

Of course, there are other signs of love, such as a girl developing an acute attack of domesticity and passing up the display of French frocks in a window for that of aluminum pots and pans, and especially when she begins dragging a man to church with her, which are not to be ignored. But when a maiden begins to mother a chap and indicates that her idea of spending a perfectly hilarious evening is just to be alone with him, listening to him talk about himself, she is his for the taking.

LVIII

MARRIAGE LESSONS

What has marriage taught you?

“The chief thing that marriage has taught me,” said a man who has had forty years of experience in matrimony, “is that women are human beings. When a man acquires that piece of information it always gives him a bit of a jolt, for most men never really think of women as human beings at all. They think, according to their kind, of women as angels, above all earthly passions, with no nerves or tempers, or selfish cravings for pleasure and who find their joy in life in loving the unlovable and forgiving the unforgivable and being a sweet, gooey, sticky mass of gentleness and patience and unselfishness. Or they think of women as being baby dolls to be dressed up and played with and put on the shelf when they are tired of them. Or they think of women as pieces of household machinery—sort of automatic, self-starting cooks and carpet sweepers and washers and menders, who run on their own power and who don’t even have to be oiled up with a few lubricating words of praise now and then.

“And so husbands treat their wives according to their conception of what women are, and that is why marriage is so often a failure and why there are so many divorces. Women don’t want to be regarded either as saints or toys or domestic conveniences. They want to be treated as human beings and have their husbands give them the same sort of a square deal a man gives his business partner.

“About nine-tenths of the spats that married people have are over money. It gets on the husband’s nerves to have the woman eternally dunning him for money. It seems to him that before he gets his hat off in the evening she begins asking for a few dollars for this and for that. Then the bills come in, and they are always bigger than he expected, and he rows about it, and she thinks that he is stingy.

“The trouble is that the man isn’t treating his wife like a rational human being. He is expecting her to be a miracle worker and run a house on air. He is humiliating her and making her feel that he is a tyrant by making her come like a beggar to him for every penny because he has got an idea that women don’t mind panhandling. Furthermore, he is expecting her to gauge her expenditures wisely, when she hasn’t the faintest idea of what her resources are.

“I have found out that it saves friction over money to make my wife as liberal an allowance as I can. I have found out that if you will explain to a woman just exactly how the financial situation stands in the family and why you can’t afford the thing she wants she will not only do without it gladly but cut down her expenses in other ways and help you to save. It is believing that their husbands are holding out on them and not splitting fifty-fifty with them that makes women reckless spenders.