Part 6

A woman should never marry any man except the one with whom she is very much in love, because every woman craves romance, and if she doesn’t get it at home she is very apt to seek it abroad, or else she goes through life hungry, unsatisfied. The wives who get into scandals; who think they find soul-mates in their preachers, or their doctors, or long-haired poets; the wives who run off after strange cults and who burden down the mails with letters to movie actors are all women who married men they didn’t love.

The women who are crazily in love with their husbands make their own angel’s food at home and don’t have to go around trying to pick up stray crumbs on the street. Of course, the woman who loves her husband better than he does her has her moments of acute jealousy, but even these are full of ginger and are better than the dull stagnation of having a man that you don’t take the trouble to lock up at night because you know you can’t lose him.

Truly, it is more blessed to give than to receive, and it is better for a woman to love than to be loved.

XV

ARE YOU GOOD COMPANY FOR YOURSELF?

Do you ever think what poor company most of us are for ourselves? It is strange but true that the one individual on God’s earth who bores the average man and woman more than any one else is just himself and herself. There is no society they so dread as their own, and no expedient so desperate that they will not resort to it rather than be left alone with themselves. They will fasten themselves like leeches on kinspeople and friends who try to shake them loose. They will stay on in homes where they know they are not welcome. They will put up with any discomfort in order to herd together. They will hold up the telephone poles at the corners of streets, and walk the aisles of the department stores until they are ready to drop with fatigue.

They will belong to clubs where they foregather with the dull and prosy and fat-witted, and where they spend hours listening to egotists monologue about how great and wonderful they are. Evening after evening they go to vaudeville performances whose every turn is so stupid it is enough to make even a hero scream with pain, and to see moving pictures whose scenarios are an insult to the intelligence of an idiot.

Anything—anywhere, to get away from themselves, to escape having to spend an hour in their own company. So universal is the belief that it is the limit of social and mental poverty to be reduced to your own society for company, that we speak of those who live alone as being lonesome, and pity them accordingly.

It does not even occur to us that they may have that within themselves which could make them gay and witty companions to themselves, of whom they would never tire.

It is easy, of course, to see why many people are bored to tears with their own company. Men and women who never read anything can’t have very much that is new and interesting to say to themselves. After they have discussed the state of the green grocery trade with themselves, on which they are rather fed up anyway after having wrestled with it all day, or mulled over the last gossip about the neighbors next door, and wondered for the millionth time how the Joneses can afford a new car, and where the Smith girl has been spending the evening when she came home at 3 A. M., they find that they have exhausted their conversational repertoire.

But if they are reading people they can never have a dull instant when they are alone, for every book, every magazine, every newspaper is a magic carpet that takes them in an instant into the uttermost parts of the world. There isn’t a strange sight they may not see, or a secret whispered behind a closed door they may not hear; nor a romance unfolded whose thrill does not touch their hearts and stir their pulse. Education and cultivation would be worth while if they did nothing else except take the curse off loneliness.

You can see how people who are envious and jealous and quarrelsome and mean-spirited dread to be left alone with themselves. They have devils from hell for company, those men and women whose souls are filled with bitterness and hate, and who are forever thrashing over old grievances, recalling old wrongs, bringing to life again old enmities.

We all avoid the pessimistic and the cynical—those who can see nothing cheerful or good in the world, and with whom even a chance meeting seems to take the warmth out of the sunshine, and God out of His heaven, and make all life dark and foul. How terrible, then, must it be to live with yourself when you have nothing to say to yourself that does not leave a dark-brown taste in your mouth? It is not strange that those who have lived hard and selfish and grasping lives are poor company for themselves.

You cannot imagine a widow spending a cheery evening recalling how she nagged her poor, dead husband, how cross and peevish and complaining she was, or how little she had done to repay him for all that he had done for her. Neither can you imagine a woman enjoying telling herself that if she had been less extravagant, and content with simple things, if she hadn’t demanded fine clothes and jewels and trips to Europe, that her husband would not have had to kill himself working, and that she might now have some one to talk to, living and breathing, instead of a demon of remorse.

It is not strange that a man wants other company than the recollection of how his coldness and neglect turned the bright, joyous, loving, tender girl he married into a quiet, sad woman who cringed like a whipped dog before his cruel fault-finding. Nor is it strange that the man who has driven hard bargains and overreached in trade, who has ground down the faces of those who worked for him, who has taken advantage of the ignorant and the trustful, and built his fortune on the ruins of widows and children, does not find his own society exhilarating.

When we are old we have nothing but our memories left us. They are enough company if they are filled with the smiling faces of those we loved, who recall to us kindly acts we have done, helping hands we have held out, and if they murmur to us of kindly, gracious deeds. But they are terrible companions if they are filled with memories of cruelty and wrong. Considering that, do what we may, we can never escape from ourselves, that we are bound to endure our own society, is it not a pity that we do not emulate the poet who said, “My mind to me a kingdom is,” and make ourselves better company for ourselves!

XVI

KEEPING YOUNG

None of us wants to die. No matter how strong our religious faith, nor how lustily we sing “Heaven is my home,” none of us is in a hurry to go there. We prefer to stay in a world in which we are acquainted and acclimated. Likewise, we all dread old age. It fills us with horror to think of becoming bent and tottering old men and women, our vigor of mind and body gone, sans hair, sans teeth, sans everything. So from time immemorial humanity has been on the still hunt for some magic that will stay the devastating hand of time and enable it to hold on to the youth it prizes so dearly. The ancients sailed the world over seeking fabled islands and miraculous fountains of perpetual youth. We moderns pin our faith to the surgeon’s knife and the druggist’s bottles, to monkey glands, and face liftings, and paints, and powders, and hair dyes.

All in vain. The black oxen of the years march over us, treading out our youth and beauty, our strength and high spirits, and nothing that we can do will stop them. So it seems a pity that we should waste so much thought, so much struggle, and effort, and energy, and money in essaying an impossible task. For do what we may, we cannot keep young, and when we try to camouflage age as juvenility the only people in the world that we fool are ourselves.

We can dye our hair the gold, or the black, or the jet of girlhood, but we cannot put under it the fresh face of sixteen. We can have our skin gored and tucked until all of our wrinkles are taken out, but there still remain the tired, old eyes that have seen fifty or sixty years. We can starve ourselves until we get the figures of flappers, but we are not lithe and graceful. We are living skeletons. We can roll our stockings and borrow our granddaughter’s clothes, but it doesn’t make us look like debutantes. It makes us look like those afflicted with senile dementia. The truth is, the more we fight age the harder it fights back and the sooner it conquers us. None grow old so quickly as those who work themselves into premature age trying to keep young.

Once I was standing behind a jaunty little figure perched on the runningboard of a car. She wore the gayest and sportiest of sport suits. She had the thin figure of a girl of fifteen. Her bobbed henna-colored hair curled under the brim of a rakish little hat. Presently she turned around and disclosed a face that was like a mask, it was so plastered over with cosmetics. “Heavens! Did you ever see such an old hag?” exclaimed a man near me.

Now, this woman was not more than fifty years old. She was in the prime of life, at an age when many women are handsomer than they ever were in their lives. No one would have thought of her as being old at all, if she had been willing to appear her own honest age; if she had had the pleasing plumpness that belonged to her time of life; if her soft, gray hair had waved about her face, and if she had been appropriately dressed. It was her effort to appear kiddish that called attention to what an old goat she was.

If bobbing and dyeing their hair, and dieting themselves to emaciation, and wearing knee-length skirts made elderly women look young and girlish, they would not only be justified in doing so, it would be a virtue to do it, for thereby they would make themselves easy on the eyes. But just the reverse is true. Their affectation of youth only calls attention to what a long distance they have traveled from youth. Old mutton never seems so old, and tough, and stringy as when it is dressed as spring lamb.

And the folly of trying to act young after you are old is just as great as that of trying to look sixteen when you are sixty. Women have been told so often they must keep their spirits young, they must never think old thoughts, they must never speak of age, or admit to themselves they are getting older, that they have come to believe that, simply by forgetting their birthdays, they can maintain perpetual girlhood.

We all know women who begin every reminiscence by saying that they were very young at the time it happened, and who give us to understand their husbands were cradle snatchers, who married them when they were mere infants. We know old women who are always teasing themselves about men, and talking about their best beaus, and pretending to have flirtations with boys young enough to be their grandsons, and repeating compliments about their eyes or their fascinations they allege men paid them, but that even an idiot would know that they made up themselves. How ridiculous the poor souls make themselves! How infinitely older they appear than the women who do not try to pose as vamps after they have ceased to look the part, and who regard men just as they do women, as interesting and agreeable human beings.

Perhaps, after all, we make too big a bugaboo of growing old. The twilight has its charms no less than the dawn or high noon, and so the last lap of the journey of life has its compensations and its joys if we are willing to accept them.

Anyway, the only way we can escape old age is by dying young. But if we welcome it as a friend, it deals kindlier with us than if we fight it as an enemy.

XVII

GOSSIP, THE POLICEMAN

A young woman writes me that she considers that she has a right to live her own life in her own way and do exactly as she pleases. So she has broken most of the Ten Commandments and snapped her fingers in the face of Mrs. Grundy. And now that she finds that her reputation is being torn to tatters, she thinks that she is being most unfairly treated.

“Oh, how I hate the whole tribe of kitty-cats!” she wails. “Oh, how hard, and cruel, and unjust people are!” Then she asks, “Don’t you think that gossip is the unpardonable sin?”

Not at all. Gossip is one of the most powerful influences in the world for good. It is the invisible, omnipresent policeman that enforces law and order. It is the scourge that keeps the trembling wretch in order and makes the weak-kneed and the wobbly walk the straight and narrow path.

We can stifle the voice of conscience, but we can’t silence the voice of our neighbors. We can dope ourselves into believing that we have a right to make our own code of conduct, but we can’t force the community in which we live to take our point of view on the matter, or to make any exceptions in our behalf to the standards that society has set up for good behavior. And it is this fear of what “they’ll say” that makes us curb our appetites and passions and keep up at least an outward show of decency. For no matter how vain and egotistic we are; no matter how self-complacent and self-satisfied we are; no matter how independent we think we are, we are all cowards who grovel in the dust before public opinion. It is the lifted eyebrow. It is the cold, measured, appraising look that weighs us in the balance and finds us wanting. It is the turn of a shoulder away from us and the little hush that falls on a group as we approach that tells us that we have been the subject of unfavorable discussion, which we dread more than we do the wrath of God.

It is the knowledge that she will be gossiped about if she indulges in any flirtations which keeps many a bored young married woman with romantic yearnings from indulging in little affairs with good-looking bachelors. She knows there might really be no harm in her having lunch with Mr. A. or going to the theater with Captain C., but that she could never explain it to the woman who lives across the street.

And the next time the Current Events Club meets she knows that she will be the current event of burning interest discussed. Therefore she turns down the alluring invitations and stays at home, and minds her p’s and her q’s and her babies.

And it is the fear of gossip that makes many an indiscreet girl watch her step and saves her from the stumble that would land her in the pit. She is easy-going and good-natured, and warm-hearted and affectionate, and she sees no harm in letting boys that she likes kiss her and fondle her, but it makes the flesh creep on her bones to think of the Amalgamated Scandal Mongers’ Union getting out their hammers and going for her if she does. She knows well enough that the neighbors on either side keep tab on what hour her beaux go home and what goes on as they sit on the front porch or stoop of an evening, and she conducts herself accordingly. There is no chaperon so efficient as Mrs. Grundy.

If we could only do as we pleased and get away with it without any censorious comments from our fellow creatures, there would be many more philandering husbands and wives than there are, many more girls wandering down the primrose path, many more neglected children and ill-kept houses, many more wife-beating husbands and virago wives. It is the knowledge that, if they give way to their natural impulses, they will be talked about, which gives many would-be sinners the strength to resist the temptation to be as bad as they would like to be.

The people who think it is so wicked to be talked about are only those who have something to hide, something that reflects on their character. It is our bad deeds we don’t want discussed. We are tickled to death to have our good ones broadcasted to the ends of the earth.

No man objects to having it told about that he is a model husband, a good provider and a tender father. The thing he wants hushed up is that he half starves his family in order to spend the money on a flapper. No woman wants to put the soft pedal on the conversation when her friends are telling what a wonderful wife and mother she is; but she doesn’t know how women, who call themselves her friends, can be catty enough to whisper behind their hands that she went out joy-riding with young Snookums and didn’t get home until 4 in the morning, while the baby was nearly dying with the croup.

Those who are down on gossip and feel that the world should cover up their shortcomings with a blanket of silence are unreasonable. Why should other people be more careful of your reputation than you are yourself? If you do not care enough for your good name to protect it, why demand that service of the general public? Foolish and vain expectation! For the gossipers keep on their good work, and the only way you can escape being talked about is to be so exemplary that you are a dull subject for conversation.

XVIII

THE LUCKY WORKING WOMAN

Why do we hold to the theory that work is a blessing to men, but a curse to women? We know beyond all questioning that the necessity of earning his bread by the sweat of his brow was the consolation prize that Adam was handed along with his eviction papers when he was turned out of Eden. We know that the only happy man is the busy man. We know that only in constructive labor does a man find an interest that never palls and a game in which there is a perpetual thrill. We know that work is the greatest anodyne for sorrow and the best protection against temptation. We know that, as Stevenson says, “if a man loves the labor of any trade apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him, and he is of all men most enviable.”

So manifold are the benefits men derive from work, so salutary are its effects upon them, that we have a contempt for the idle, purposeless man and feel that, no matter how much money he has, he has no right to spend his life in loafing. We are eager to get our boys to work, so that their restless young energy may find a legitimate outlet, instead of being employed in devising new forms of dissipation. The young man must have something to do, and if he isn’t bending his back in honest farming he will be breaking his neck in sowing a wild-oats crop.

Our attitude, however, toward women and work is diametrically opposite. We do not regard work as a good thing for women. On the contrary, we consider it a misfortune for a woman to have to work. We have even coined a phrase for it and speak of the woman who must earn her own living as a “poor working woman.” Worse still, the woman who works pities herself. The mother whose daughters go down to business every morning bewails their fate and feels that destiny has dealt most unkindly by them. The woman who must do her own housework, and look after her own babies, and make her own clothes sheds barrels of tears over her lot.

Men also accept this view of the situation that labor is a curse to women, and work themselves to death in order that their wives and daughters may live in parasitic ease, with servants to wait upon them and have nothing to do but kill time. In fact, the consensus of opinion seems to be that the ideal state for a woman is that in which she never performs any useful labor, but merely sits on a silk cushion and feeds upon strawberries, sugar and cream. All of this is a distorted view of the situation. Women need to work just as much as men do. Idleness has just as disastrous an effect upon the feminine character as it has upon the male, and among women, as among men, the only happy, contented ones are those who are so much engrossed in some useful labor that they haven’t leisure in which to consider whether they are satisfied or not.

Mother “poor Marys” and “poor Sallys” her daughters who have to earn their living, but nowhere else will you see healthier, happier girls than those holding down good jobs in stores and offices. Nine times out of ten the girl behind the counter is brighter, more alert, and finds life a far more entertaining proposition than does her purposeless idle sister before the counter.

Nor is the domestic woman who has to do her own housework entitled to shed any tears of self-pity on our necks. There is no more reason why a husky young woman shouldn’t do her share of the work of the domestic partnership than there is why her husband should not do his. It is no more of a hardship for her to have to work than it is for him, and many a rich old woman who sits now with empty hands that ache for occupation will tell you that her happiest days were the busy, crowded ones when she got up at five o’clock to cook her husband’s breakfast before he went to the factory and sat up until eleven o’clock washing and patching his clothes so that he could make a decent appearance next day.

It is a significant fact that the women who fill sanitariums and enrich nerve specialists are not the overworked, hard-driven wives and mothers. They are the middle-aged and elderly women, who have nothing to do but to canvass their systems for symptoms of every disease they read about in the magazines. It takes leisure to develop invalidism. Busy people keep well because they haven’t time to be sick.

Nearly every man’s ambition is to keep his wife in idleness, and he thinks that he is being a good husband when he can boast that she hasn’t a thing on earth to do but to amuse herself. It is pathetic that the thing that so many good husbands strive for is their undoing. For it is the idle women who are the peevish, fretful, discontented wives. It is the idle women who run off with all sorts of fool fads and fancies. It is the idle women who decide that their good, honest, hard-working husbands are not their real soul-mates, and who get into scandals with jazzhounds and elope with romantic-looking sheiks they have picked up in hotel lobbies.

The idle woman is never a happy woman. Having nothing to do but to think about herself, she is sure to prod around in her mind until she finds a grievance. Having nothing to do, she is sure to get into mischief. Having no interesting occupation, she begins to hunt for thrills. And the net result is that she works harder trying to amuse herself than she would at scrubbing floors, and the only reward is that life is flat, stale and unpalatable in her mouth.

Let us hope that the time will soon come when we will have enough intelligence to perceive that work is a woman’s salvation even as it is a man’s, and when we will congratulate the woman with a job instead of pitying her.

XIX

AN INDOOR SPORT

This is a sad world, mates, with too little sunshine in it, so far be it from me to abridge, abate or curtail any innocent pleasure. But it does seem to me that there are certain diversions that should be indulged in only in the privacy of home. One of these is the family spat. Apparently a large number of men and women get married for the sole purpose of providing themselves with a sparring partner, with whom they can put on the gloves at a moment’s notice with, or without, the slightest provocation. Life has no dull moments for them, because they are always saying something that draws blood, or framing a retort that will cut to the quick, and the excitement of a battle to the death is perpetually thrilling their nerves.

Without doubt, it is a merry and adventurous existence for the doughty domestic warriors who enjoy that kind of thing! I would not be cruel enough to deny them the cheery pastime of going to the mat over every trivial difference of opinion. But I do contend that conjugal quarrels are an indoor sport that should be pursued only when the participants have sought the seclusion that the cabin grants, as they used to say in “Pinafore,” and when all the shades have been pulled down and the keyholes stuffed with cotton.