Part 3

Poor penniless Dick Wadleigh is in a dreadful fix. He has promised that he will tender his heart and hand to Loretta Lorillard, the rich sister of his over-seas American chum. And now he is gazing upon the lady for the first time and finding that she is, socially and physically speaking, a dud. Just to make things pleasanter, brother Lorillard is hoarsely whispering: “Do it now, old boy, do it now.”

ENTER THE HERO

Having tried everything else at least once, our hero feels that it is only fair to see if there’s anything in matrimony, so he has set forth in quest of something really good in the way of a wife. He is here shown at the conclusion of his affair with Mirabel, a debutante with every qualification of the Perfect Helpmate. But just as everything was getting pleasantly arranged he discovered her secret vice--she is a slave to free verse. She pours out her soul in unfettered rhythms for a whole evening and, really, he never could have anything like _that_ in the house.

On the Trail of a Wife

_Détours on the Road to Matrimony_

THE SECOND ENTRY

The next event in the series is Phyllis, who specializes in Early Victorian work--blushes, swoons, down-cast eyes, dropped handkerchiefs, and all the rest. Our hero was just about to fall a prey to her appealing femininity and beg her to name the bridesmaids. And then they chanced to drop in at an informal little sparring match, and he caught a glimpse of Phyllis’ inner nature (Phyllis is here pictured in action). Our hero is painfully realizing that this effectually shatters his dream of a sunny married life.

EXHIBIT C

Reader, let us present Chloe, Exhibit C in our hero’s collection of possibilities. From the moment he met Chloe he was intrigued; he followed her about doggedly, always pining to see more of her. Alas, he got his wish when he invited her to the opera, and she appeared in her new Paris gown. Although he feels that, after seeing her in the dress, the ethical thing to do would be to marry her, he cannot help insisting on having a little illusion left--so he regretfully passes out of her life.

THE ORDEAL BY AIR

The next in the batting order is Daphne, who appeared, for a time, to be the Ultimate One. In fact, it was all practically settled until she invited our hero to accompany her on a little jaunt in her aeroplane. He felt that there were few lengths to which he wouldn’t go on the ground, but up in the air was unmistakably something else again; so he progressed easily to the next young siren on the list.

THE SAD CASE OF PEGGY

And then there was Peggy. Really, he couldn’t have found a more perfect helpmate than Peggy--civil to her parents, pleasant to have around a bridge table, fond of children and potted plants. Nothing could have been sweeter--until she took him out motoring. He is here registering a silent vow that if he ever gets home all in one piece, he will never permit himself to so much as gaze upon his adorable little Peggy again.

ANOTHER BLOW

By turning your head just a trifle to the left, you will got a rather good idea of Dolores, the next to crash in our hero’s youthful affections. He was in a fair way to get all worked up over Dolores’ vamping specialties--until in a confidential moment she laid bare her strange, exotic, Ballet Russe sort of soul to him.... After that he knew that things between them twain could never be the same again.

THE BITTER END

And just below is the end of the whole affair; trying out a half-dozen of the most efficient sirens of his acquaintance, our hero finally marries Mary, who rates about minus 30 in looks, brains, and charm. No one has ever discovered why the veteran of countless affairs always eventually marries a complete physical and intellectual blank. As the proverb so aptly puts it, matrimony does make strange bedfellows.

THE ENDLESS CHAIN

Only the shortage of white paper prevented the artist from prolonging the above idea indefinitely. It is the motif for a frieze entitled “Matrimony”--rather a quaint little conception, isn’t it? If you are at all married--or even if you are only an innocent bystander--you will get the idea without a struggle. As soon as divorce mercifully looses one set of shackles, a change of partners is rapidly effected, new bonds are formed--and there they are, right back at the very beginning again.

Divorce: A Great Indoor Sport

_It is Beginning to Rank First Among Our Fashionable and Popular Pastimes_

THE DAWN OF A NEW LIFE

Perhaps the sweetest time in a girl’s life is that roseate moment when she gets her first divorce. It is a time that comes but once to a girl. When at last her final decree arrives, she stands, in innocent wonder, on the threshold of a new life. What pretty, girlish dreams are hers as she goes out into the great world in search of a minister, so that she can start things all over again.

THE FLAW

There is, unfortunately, a bad hitch in the process of obtaining a divorce. They haven’t perfected the method, as yet--it needs a lot of working over. This having to wait about for months or years is really too tiresome; it cuts in so on one’s time. Why, any really earnest worker, going on the schedule of a forty-four-hour week, could be married and divorced three or four times over in the time it now takes a lady to be legally free from only one husband.

THE DIVORCE SPECIAL

Any time that you want to see a bit of life, go to an American railway station and watch the outgoing trains to Nevada. Several ticket agents have to be constantly on duty in the window where both-way tickets to Reno are sold; one man couldn’t keep up with the rush of trade. A typical line at the ticket office is shown here--it is considered _de rigueur_ for husbands to accompany their outgoing wives to the train. If you are contemplating a jaunt to the nation’s reconstruction center in the near future, it is a bit safer to book seats several weeks ahead.

OLD HOME WEEK

It is so nice for the new bridegroom to meet his wife’s collection of former husbands. It is something for him to look forward to, all through the honeymoon. These little gatherings are so delightfully home like--it is reassuring to feel that you are all members of the same club.

BACK TO THE START AGAIN

This little scene is the sort of thing that divorce leads to,--hope springs eternal, and all that. A divorce simply gets one into the right frame of mind for a fresh start in matrimony. After all, Nature will have its own way; there’s nothing like love--it is the passion to which the best divorce lawyers attribute their success.

Wild Bores We Have Met

_Question! Who--in Society--Is the Unadulterated, 100 Per Cent. Bore?_

BEHIND THE “TIMES”

Bores may be met with at all times of the day, but none bores so blightingly as he who bores at breakfast. Who more completely spoils a déjeuner than the hideous male shown above who absolutely refuses to pick up his cues in the sweet little matutinal dialogue?

THE MONDAY-TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY BORE

Mrs. Ormsby-Jones, at right, represents that class of almost unbearable bores whose social slogan is “Never take no for an answer,” a group otherwise known as the “Come-Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Class.” The Newly-Wed Pangborns, at the other end of the wire, have already fought off three different dinner suggestions from Mrs. O.-J. and can only think of death from apoplexy as an avenue of escape. But is Mrs. O.-J. down-hearted? Never! “Well, then, how about Thursday?” she asks sweetly.

THE BABY BORE

In ancient times, Spartans used to expose their infants on the mountains to test their toughness. The people at Mrs. Willoughby’s tea are wishing that this test had been tried on little Gladys, who has been exhibited by her enthusiastic mother and made to recite La Fontaine’s “Maître Corbeau” in the original Ollendorf. Major Radcliffe, who possesses only military French, is seriously considering going over the top--with Gladys as his objective.

THE BOASTFUL BORE

A bore of tremendous calibre is the plutocratic person who enjoys what psychologists call “acute caste-consciousness.” Take Mrs. Eric Appledorn, for instance, who is the lady shown above with a map of the Amazon River appliquéd on her façade. Can’t you imagine how it bores Dorothy Dobbee, whose nearest approach to car-ownership is a pair of yellow goggles, to be told of the six Rolls-Royces which Mrs. Appledorn has bought for her children?

THE DIETETIC BORE

If I were little Ouija, I should certainly tip the table over on that insufferable blighter who, at every meal, demands a special menu of gluten bread, goldfish wafers, and prunes. “Nothing acid!” he cried; “Nothing starchy! Nothing albuminous! No sugar! Have you saccharine?” Geska, the maid, has no idea what saccharine is, but she is willing to try ground glass on this creature--at a venture.

THE THEATRE BORE

To end a day of perfect boredom, it is only necessary to go to the theatre with a person who has seen the play before and tells the plot to all those within earshot. At the big moment, pictured at the right, he has just crashed into the silence by assuring the Wilberforce girls that Vera, the heroine, isn’t really killed at all. “Just wait until the next act,” he says cheeringly, “she shoots _him_ then.”

THE AWAKENING TO SPRING

If you are at all interested in tracing the love interest back to its very beginnings, all you have to do is to visit the nearest park, any bright Spring morning. Little scenes like this are going on all over the place; any member of the younger set, between the ages of two and five, can give you all the information you may require on just how wonderful nature really is. There is only one difference between love and any other contagious disease: once you have had the other disease, you are immune from a second attack.

HAIL, THE CONQUERING HERO!

When first love takes the form of hero worship, there is practically nothing that can be done about it. The case illustrated below is almost at the last stage, as is shown by the patient’s complete loss of appetite. The object of her maiden dreams is her mother’s guest, a returned big-game hunter--one of those bronze-skinned, clean-limbed outdoor men. Really, these people with clean limbs and chiseled features ought not to be at large; they get a young girl’s innocent inhibitions and major complexes all tangled up.

THE PROFESSIONAL SIREN

Don’t dwell too long on the picture above, gentle reader; if you have any heart at all, you will just break down and have a good hard cry. This is one of the bitterest phases of first love--the case of the adolescent moth and the professional flame. The youth is at that tender age where he classes all women under thirty-five as crude, and all unmarried women as uninteresting. The lady in the case is just about old enough to be a nice, understanding great-aunt. She is graciously allowing the youth to pour out his heart to her in a series of home-made sonnets,--after all, his little stunt helps to pass away the time until her next dance.

The Throes of First Love, in Society

_A Few Fashionable Little Variations on the Oldest Theme in the World_

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

The great romantic tragedies are no more tragic than an affair like this; for sheer bitterness, the epic of little Gladys and her adored Unknown makes “Romeo and Juliet” look like a bedroom farce. While walking in the park with her nurse, little Gladys, up to that moment but a headless slip of a girl, comes face to face with her fate--her Soul-Mate, her Ineffable One, her Man. It is love at first sight; but the anguished lovers are torn asunder almost immediately. The cruel nurse drags the stricken heroine home to her nap, while the Unknown’s father insists that he must deport himself like a little Man.

THE DANGEROUS DÉBUTANTE

And now we must witness the futile yearnings of the youth who has fallen in love with the most popular débutante of the season. He is virtually in a state of shell-shock. The thing has hit him so hard that all power of speech has completely left him. It is seldom that love affects anyone this way, in later life. You just take these little things as all in the day’s work, after you’ve had a few years’ experience with them.

FIRST LOVE--AND THE NOBLE THEATRICAL GOD

Here is an experience that comes but eight or ten times to a young girl--her worship of the dramatic hero. There are few purer forms of love than these idylls, and few more lucrative emotions--from the box-office standpoint. The youthful worshippers, chastely chaperoned by a vestal, attend every matinée, to bask in the glances of their idol. All their childish pennies are scraped together to buy the front row seats. It’s just the old, old story--it’s the woman that pays, and pays, and pays.

GARDENING

Gardening is always an extremely popular sport,--some people do so love to get close to nature. Of course, there are many who won’t have anything to do with this sport; they remember that all the trouble in the world started in a garden. It is not at all difficult to become a highly accomplished gardener. All it requires is a study of that invaluable text-book “How to Know What Makes the Wild Flowers Wild.”

A Calendar of Popular Outdoor Sports

_As Practised Among Persons of Breeding and Quality_

LAWN TENNIS

Lawn tennis is one of those sports that are very popular among the onlookers. Ladies who can’t tell a tennis racket from any other noise, and gentlemen who never have been able to understand why the players stand on different sides of the net, are most enthusiastic tennis spectators, never missing any of the big matches. Oh, well, history has proved that there always has been a certain deadly fascination in watching one’s fellow creatures suffer needlessly.

INDOOR GOLF

Golf, that greatest of all reasons why men leave home, has become a delightful indoor sport. All butlers count as hazards, and footmen may not be removed from the course. Mr. Reginald Vere de Vere, one of our best known after-dinner golfers, is here portrayed demonstrating that fine shot he nearly made on the eleventh hole.

SUMMER BOATING

Are you one of those who have always believed that a punt is the lowest form of wit? If you are, you must change your views, for punting is bound to happen at all the smartest wet places. All our dowagers and dancing men are delighted with the sport. It’s so pleasant to fish from a punt,--some people do so love to angle for anything that seems to be in the social swim.

CROQUET

The clergy is going in for croquet more strenuously than ever before. It is indeed splendid exercise; there is no better way of developing the vocabulary. The reverend gentleman on the right really should not hit his adversary over the head with his mallet. He should know that whoever hits his opponent with a mallet loses his next turn. The correct thing to do is to hit him with one of the stakes.

The Seven Deadly Temperaments

_As Frequently Met With in the Ladies_

THE FELINE TEMPERAMENT

Four members of the feline, velvet-pawed, low-springing, meat-eating, Cat family, shown in the act of trepanning little Angela, the sweet, blonde, yielding, and wholly worshipful being who is seated on the sofa before you. There is not one single nasty thing that the felines have forgotten to say about Angela, a girl who never did a wrong thing--except that she allowed Destiny to make her attractive to married men.

THE MATERNAL TEMPERAMENT

Here we see the ideal mother, the chatelaine type, a type upon which so many poets, novelists, and music hall singers have dilated. The future of the race is hers. It is a trifle hard to tell--whether she is a futurist sofa pillow or a marble parquet floor. This type of lady is always irresistible to the clergy, especially when they are of the Protestant persuasion. As will be observed, upon a closer scrutiny of the lady and her biological factor--the union has been fruitful.

THE SOULFUL TEMPERAMENT

Always devoted to calla lilies, rhythmic (or self-expression) dancing, and loose-fitting Greek robes. She usually displays an abnormal interest in what’s what on the buffet. Leave this type of girl alone with a tableful of truffles, pâtés, mushrooms, macaroons, queen olives, peaches, and chocolate éclairs, and the place, after a bit, will look like Bapaume, after the German evacuation.

THE NAGGING TEMPERAMENT

You know the kind. She simply won’t let you alone. Picking on you, all day long. She starts right in on you at breakfast, along with the coffee and the toast. She always gets up early and comes down all dressed and ready for a good day’s nagging. There is no known form of temperament so horrible, so poisonous, so soul-blighting--and so certain to marry. Oh, wives and mothers, what a lesson this picture should be to you.

THE ROMANTIC TEMPERAMENT

Cupid just leads her around from one dark corner to another and from one brave man to another. She lives exclusively upon little pencilled notes, chocolate bon bons, pressed violets, Percy Shelley, moonlight, and the strains of the guitar. Dangerous to a man in his first season. Equally dangerous to a man in the bald-headed fifties, but particularly dangerous to a man who is tottering on the brink of the grave.

THE PRACTICAL TEMPERAMENT

A frequent and highly commendable type of womanhood. She always knows exactly what she wants--which is usually something under the classification of Jewels. Furthermore, she knows how to get it, and she knows where to go for it. In short, she is a ferret.

THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT

Last, but most frequently met with of all, we behold the artistic temperament. By that we mean the lady who _feels_ things so keenly, suffers so acutely, and kicks so ferociously, that we know instinctively, on observing her, that she is passionately devoted to ART. Have you noticed that they always wear clinging robes and are very rude to their maids?

Six Brands of Week-End Hostesses

_It’s a Lusty Life, if You Don’t Week-End_

THE UNSEEN HOSTESS

The self effacing hostess is a very popular brand. If it weren’t for her week-end parties, society never could catch up with its correspondence. She isn’t in the least entertaining--and she mercifully doesn’t try to be. She thoughtfully effaces herself, and leaves you in your room after supplying each guest with crested paper, assorted pens, and unused stamps. Spending a week-end at her house is much the same thing as spending it in the writing room of the Ritz.

THE BISHOP’S MOVE

The absent-minded hostess has ruined many a promising young week-end by her unfortunate affliction. She can never quite remember just what people she has asked for the week-end and she _will_ go and ask a bishop, at the last moment. Of course, bishops are a splendid institution and you really couldn’t want anything nicer around a cathedral, but, at a week-end party, when all the tired guests are having their relaxation, a bishop is about as welcome as an outbreak of beri-beri.

THE MUSICAL HOSTESS

The hostess who is _so_ musical is one of those blessings that we could all get along without. She is always exploring among the fauna of Bohemia and capturing some particularly wild specimen. Her guests spend the week-end, like Daniel, in a lion’s den. There is no let-up to the atrocities. The guests sit in horror, thinking of the things they might be doing in the city, while a hairy conscientious objector does unmentionable things to a piano.

THE WELL MEANING HOSTESS

The well-meaning hostess is one of the lowest forms. She insists upon everybody’s getting together and having a jolly time. She can’t call it a week-end till each of her guests has committed at least one parlor trick. She is here portrayed in her favorite pursuit of dragging an inoffensive guest to the piano, insisting that she just _knows_ he sings. People spend exactly one week-end at her place; after that, “Very important business keeps me away. So sorry.”

THE VANISHING HOSTESS

The perfect, or disappearing, hostess is rare. She always invites the One Person you want to spend the week-end with, and then lets nature take its course. She has a perfectly bearable house surrounded by really wonderful grounds. This hostess appears occasionally at dinner, but at all other times she vanishes completely, leaving things to the careful supervision of the faithful family gardener, who has probably seen more biological history in the making than any man in the county.

PALM SUNDAY

The gilded hostess has one of those rustic cottages, where her guests rough it over Sunday surrounded by vintage champagne, Swiss butlers, liveried footmen. The sketch--from life--shows a guest’s retreat to the city, after a week-end’s bridge; note how effectively the footmen decorate the sketch with palms.

After-the-War Servant Problems

_How the Great Conflict ended the Golden Days of Service in the Houses of the Elect_

GILDING THE LILY

In the good old ante-bellum days, scenes like this were every-day occurrences in the life of Mr. J. Wallingford Smith,--inventor and sole owner of Smith’s Slenderizing Stays--They Lace on the Side. Mr. Smith simply could not call it a day unless at least five male menials were involved in the process of getting him dressed. All his puttings on and takings off were personally attended to by these motherly creatures. And then, just as everything was going nicely, the world had to get mixed up in that dreadful war, so that poor Mr. Smith now has to adjust his jewelry without a corps of specially trained liveried attendants.

TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE

Portrait impression--from memory--of Mr. and Mrs. J. Wallingford Smith, motoring in their third-best Rolls-Royce, just about two weeks before the Kaiser turned on the war. Note the attendant chauffeur and footman--Mr. and Mrs. Smith wouldn’t dream of going out without two men on the box. But things aren’t what they used to be. The chauffeur and footman now own their own motors--after two years in the provision business.

WHY BOYS LEAVE HOME

This scene, almost too terrible to look upon, is absolutely true--it’s not one of those faked war pictures at all. It reveals the hideous, dreadful privations, that the war brought upon some of us. It shows the bitter anguish of the J. Wallingford Smiths as they watched a battalion of their footmen, chauffeurs, butlers, valets gardeners, coachmen, grooms, house detectives, and resident photographers departing for the Saar Valley. How silent and lonely the house has seemed, the past year, without these brave youths!

TIGER! TIGER!

Conscription was the mother of invention--Mrs. Smith recently conceived the brilliant idea of engaging a mere stripling to understudy for the footman who was removed by the war. Someone simply has to carry the family ermines around--you can’t expect a lone lady to do it all by herself. The accompanying picture graphically portrays the new footman in action--playing the part of a movable human coat-room.

THE ULTIMATE STRAW

And now, even Mrs. Smith’s maid has gone and done it--she decided to remain permanently in the Woman’s Motor Corps. The uniform is so much more becoming than those trying maid’s costumes. She is pictured with her latest and very best Young Man.