Part 1

SAY IT WITH BRICKS BY NINA WILCOX PUTNAM

SAY IT WITH OIL BY RING W. LARDNER

_Say It With Bricks_ A FEW REMARKS ABOUT HUSBANDS

BY _Nina Wilcox Putnam_

_Author of “Laughter Limited,” “West Broadway,” “Tomorrow We Diet,” etc._

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

_Copyright, 1923, By George H. Doran Company_

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY

SAY IT WITH BRICKS. II

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

_To_

JOHN M. SIDDALL

_Who suggested the idea, I dedicate my half of this ½ portion book, With best regards_ N. W. P.

_Say It with Bricks_

My Publisher is a nice man, but he has got a way of asking a person that they should write him pieces about impossible things. And you say why, no, I can’t do that, and then he will pass some remarks such as oh, shucks or something, and the next thing a author knows why they are down in print to the effect he wants them to be.

That is how I come to refuse to write anything about husbands, because one day this Publisher says to me why not write what you think about husbands and I says because it couldn’t be printed. And he says well I will pay cash for the piece. And I says that is certainly an awful temptation to any woman, being asked not alone to tell what is on her mind about husbands, but offering to pay her for doing it, but no, I don’t think I had better, it wouldn’t be delicate.

And then I stopped talking so’s he could get a chance to urge me but he merely sat, and so after a while I thought, well, I had not ought to let the conversation drag like that, it is not polite, and so I says well, having had two husbands and been a widow in the meantime, I suppose I am unusually competent to tell about them. But all he says to that is, I don’t want I should urge you against your will. And then I seen my chance slipping, so I says well I might leave out that part about what I think of husbands and make a few remarks merely about what I _know_ about them and he says, well try what you can do. And I says, oh dear, I don’t think I have anything to say about husbands, and he says all right, I’m sorry.

So I went home and I met my husband in the hall and he was looking through the bills that the postman had left, the old ones with the dust on them as well as the nice clean new ones; I suppose he was trying could he by luck find something readable. And I says hello George what do you think, I got a job to write a piece about husbands, and he says, well, if you do I will break your neck.

Well after that I guess you can figure out for yourself what I at once thought, and that I suddenly found I had several things to say about husbands, after all. Or, if a husband yourself, why undoubtedly you will know what was going on in what George calls his mind when he passed that remark. So I will merely proceed and tell you about the talk I and he had concerning why I should not write this story, and how I come to refuse to do it.

Well, when George says that about my neck, and so forth, I come back at him with, since when are you telling me what I am to write? And he says I should think some things was sacred, and I says, do you actually believe there is anything sacred about the things you are afraid I will tell on you? And he says well, husbands is a outrageous subject, and then I says yeh, you said a mouthful. And then he says well, I forbid you to write it, anyways.

And believe you me that is where George pulled a boner, because of course that decided me, and I made up my mind I wanted to write it, and that I would do so only for being fond of my neck and having already told my Publisher I would not. But I says to George how do you get that forbid stuff? and he says in the marriage ceremony, didn’t you promise to love, honor, and obey? And I says I did not, Gorgeous, not at my 2d marriage, which was to you, on account I had already been stung that way once. And George didn’t have any comeback to that because, come to think of it, that was the truth. Which only goes to prove how much clearer women remembers their marriages than men do.

Well, they generally have more cause to on account husbands go out in the morning and leave marriage behind them for the whole entire day, that is unless they are the kind comes home for lunch. But as a rule they usually outgrow home-lunches after about the 1st yr., and coming home to lunch is one of the few bad habits a wife can cure after marriage. Other bad habits such as gambling, drinking, and preferring toothpicks to any other form of dessert, why if he has these habits while still a man, it is likely they will not get better when he has become merely a husband, and you know the old saying about no man will reform after marriage if he won’t before and I always say, well why would he.

Well anyways I had it on George, see, because of me having been married 1 time before, and I knew enough to leave that obey stuff out the 2d time and other items as well. And what is further, a 1st husband is a great weapon and every married woman should have one, because no matter what he was like when living, if no longer so, you can always hold him up as a sample. No matter what George does, why I am in the position to say, well Joe never did. So my advice to young girls is always have a 1st husband somewhere in your past, even if you have to invent him, then you can pull the Tom-never-acted-like-that stuff, and even though your husband will say, no, thank heaven, I am not such a dumb-bell, or maybe let on like he thought you was exaggerating a good deal, why, you can at least have the comfort of kidding yourself that maybe life would of been sweeter with Tom if only I hadn’t made this terrible mistake, and ect.

Now there are quite a few things all husbands have in common and believe me common is just what I mean. I don’t know how they get that way unless it’s an infection, but going around the room with a shirt on and a neck band with one collar button fastened in front and one sticking out behind but as yet no collar to justify it, is common indeed to all of them, and in the mind of any wife living, should constitute grounds for divorce. I don’t know just what is wrong about a husband with no collar but a adams-apple working where a necktie ought to be, but something is. It ought to be stopped by law.

Another outrage that we wives have to endure is the license husbands get to tell the same story in our presence as many times as he can find a victim who has either never heard this story, see, or is too polite to admit that he has when he finds out how anxious George is to tell it. And not alone are we wives expected to listen for the thousandth time without protest, but we are actually expected to lead up to this story when in company, of our own free will, and give him the chance to tell it, and what is even stranger, we do.

We wives also suffer a lot from teethbrushing, and if somebody would only invent a silencer for husband’s tooth brushes they would confer a big favor on humanity. And to see the ideal of our girlhood days who we had only considered as perpetually wearing a dress suit, come wandering out of the bathroom in a undershirt, suspenders draped gracefully over both hips, a face like a soap-bubble-party gone wrong, waving a razor and passing some remark about hey listen, whatter you think I told that old cheese of a manager of ours to-day, well, a thing like that is a terrible blow to love’s young dream. In fact it is generally sufficient of a blow to knock said dream for a goal, and yet a person has to endure it year after year and smile and say nothing except maybe “What, dear?” or something.

Of course, if George was ever to stop doing it I would have a fit and commence to think there was another woman, and be as completely, comfortably miserable as only a wife can be when she has nothing else to do. But just the same it is grounds for complaint.

Then on the other hand I will admit that husbands is got their good points. For a sample, if you got to help them push their old jokes out of the garage in public, they will in turn back up any brag that their wife pulls about what rent we pay or the big salaried position that he turned down when it was almost offered to him, and ect., and even once in a while he will confirm something you say you done yourself, such as making the cake you bought at the woman’s exchange and brought it to the picnic, for any human wife will fall for a little white lie like that once in a while. The only trouble is, that a wife is never sure will he really back her up, or will he say, why, Nina Putnam, that dress ain’t imported, it’s the one you made me come across with the seventeen-fifty for, over on Forty-second Street, don’t you remember? And if it should happen to be one of them days with him, why there is no use pretending you can’t remember, because he will hound you until you do.

However, husbands are temperamental and the very next day they will back you up when you least expect it, even to the extent of speaking to the cook about the condition of the ice box, and it is these precious moments keeps us chained to them.

Husbands’ memories is notedly strong on things like the kind of a cook his mother was, what he went around the last nine holes in, the exact raise of salary he needs, and the only time you had one cocktail too many. But they have a blind spot in their minds when it comes to anniversaries, mailing letters, and promises to get around more in the evenings to shows and things like we used to when we was engaged. It’s no sooner promised than forgotten, with them, but they will hound you to death over a little thing like a button on a shirt, which you have overlooked a few times on account of having different things on your mind such as trying to match that difficult dress sample of Elephant Blue, or your regular Bridge Thursday.

Women have so many more things to think of than men do, what with the Eternal Question of what’ll we eat, and can I trust that new Maggie with the baby while I run downtown or must I take him over to Mommer’s, and numerous other details, that it’s a wonder we ever get around to holes in socks or bawling out the laundry because the only decent dress-shirt collar out of six—mind you, Nina, the only one that was really any good—has been chewed at the edges so’s it fits around the neck like a hack-saw.

Of course I realize that all the above type of beautiful domestic detail, which is part of every true woman’s sacred homelife, is extremely elevating. In fact I have frequently found it so elevating that I have went right up in the air about it. But programs of that sort are what any husband expects his wife will gratefully accept, and it’s the truth she is generally able to discount it, learn to get a little pleasure out of crabbing about it, and would not give it up for the world, because then she would have to commence and look around for some new thing to holler over. One good point about husbands is that they provide all the subjects for those w. k. female brand of talks commencing, well I don’t believe in discussing my private affairs with anybody, but I _will_ say that George, and ect.

Other good things about husbands is that they are certainly useful for closing trunks and opening bottles. Also they are good practice for ladies intending to enter the diplomatic service, which some of us some day undoubtedly will, now that we have got the vote, and any woman who has put in a few years managing an average husband will be able to take a foreign diplomat’s job, and these astute Mike O’Valleys they got over in them foreign countries, why, they will be a mere child in our hands.

Well, if I was to write a story on husbands, one thing I would certainly do over George’s dead body if necessary is show up a few of the things husbands have been getting credit for these many years, when all the credit belonging to them in these respects could be written on a pl. remit notice. And the first of these false-fronts that they have been putting up is that a woman is never ready on time and a husband is always champing at the leash with his watch in one paw hollering out remarks about the first act or the last train or something, while his better half is making herself look as much better as she knows how and taking not alone her own time about it, but everybody else’s time as well.

Now where every husband I have had is concerned, it is enough to say, dinner is ready, dear, for him to beat it in the opposite direction from the dining-room to wash his hands and comb his hair and peer at his collar, and feel does he need a shave and this is especially true if we have a omelet or pea soup. Even then he will not take the blame, but try to hold the cook responsible for the fact that the omelet has fell and he was not there with the old field work, or that the pea soup is all right, only now being cold all it needs is a little wall paper and a brush to go with it. On time? The only thing a typical husband is ever on time for is his own funeral and that generally occurs too late to be of any good to his widow.

More husbands has caused the missing of a first act by forgetting the tickets than wives has caused the same thing through faults of her own. And if a wife is not dressed on time for the seven-forty-five car into town, it is usually because she has got a sudden hole in her silk ones, or she didn’t get time to curl her hair before dinner on account of that dreadful Mrs. Hoosis staying so late, or she was cutting out a new pair of rompers and forgot to stop in time, or some real, genuine reason like that.

And as for delaying auto rides, well, it’s a lucky thing I decided _not_ to write any article telling about husbands, because of the mouthful I could say on this subject alone, or in company either! The times I have sat in the car and waited while George took up the hood and looked earnestly at the engine for a long time, until the engine stared him out of countenance and he put the hood down again without doing anything else, but with the eternal hope I would be impressed! Then again the sitting I have done while he filled the radiator and looked to see did we need any gas, and made me get up so’s he could get a screw driver out of the tool box under the seat, and then decide he didn’t need the screw driver after all, and make me get up again so’s he could put it back! I have waited while he give the oil gauge a good manicure and cursed when he discovered he done it with his handkerchief by mistake and gone back in the house for a clean one, and then decided maybe he would just run in and get a sweater in case it got cold before we come home.

And then, after all those brands of delay, George will get in the driver’s seat and say, well, we are going to be late, I don’t see why you couldn’t of been ready on time, and I will say nothing. That is, nothing except a few words about why don’t you take care of the car in advance, it is your province, or am I expected to do it as well as all the housekeeping, because if you say so, I will, and then there won’t be no delay, and it’s a man’s job, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Just merely a few things like that, because I don’t believe in starting out on a trip sore at each other.

As for the times I have sat outside of some office when George has said I want to run in here on business I won’t be a minute, well, I’ll tell the world he said a mouthful, because he never is a minute, he is an hour as a general thing. And another time I have waited for a husband is when he said he would be home early to-night, dear, but he had to work overtime at the office, after all.

Well, if I was to write this book I am telling you about, why, those are a few things I would mention right here, and another bluff about men which I would dynamite, is about how strong they are.

Somehow the idea has got around, probably circulated by men, that men are stronger than women. Well, some of them are strong all right, I personally myself know one man and he was so strong he captured a wild packing box on its native hearth, and sat on it to tame it while his wife took in washing on _her_ native hearth and worked at it for twelve hours a day. I also know another strong husband who used to clerk in a drug store, and come home at night all wore out from wrapping up the big husky gumdrops they carried, to find his wife cheerful and refreshed from her nice homey day, where she hadn’t a thing to do except the housework and the marketing and the washing, and a few little things like that, when she was perfectly free to spend her evening sewing for the kids. In a coupla years this husband strained his imagination lifting a package of absorbent cotton and had to retire for life; but she, being a weak woman, merely took on a little stenography and they get along pretty good.

So I always claim you can’t tell a sturdy oak from a clinging vine until they start to grow, and then, on the other hand there is George and his threat about breaking my neck, and he is perfectly capable of doing it with one hand, as I know, on account I have seen him open a box of shoe polish with a single gesture, and after an exhibition of strength like that, why, I don’t care to take any chance, which is why I couldn’t very well write this book that he objected to.

But it does seem a pity, though, for me not to be free to write it because there are several good things I would like to be able to call attention to about husbands, and I would put them into the story, and one of them would be how a husband makes a person feel safe going out with him, nights, and how they are real handy when you need a little change. I mean both in the money sense and when you want to get away from where you are.

Husbands is also a great comfort in a lonely house at night, and the superstition about they will chase burglars has reached such a popular point that old maids frequently keep a male hat or two parked on the rack in the hall, hoping all burglars will enter by the front door, see the hats and be so scared they will beat it at once. But these old maids, why they do it in their innocence on account they have no real experience. And anyone on the inside knows that a genuine husband, if his attention is called to some noise, will merely pull the blanket further up over his head and say oh, nonsense, it is only that darn cat again, how many times have I got to get up at night and stalk that animal. Still, it is better to have a husband in the house than a mere hat, because then if the burglar does come, at least you can die together, or maybe it will be only the husband that will get injured.

Another thing I would love to discuss on the subject of husbands and why they are that way, is mothers-in-law of both sexes. Few people is lucky enough to marry orphans, and a mother-in-law on one side of the family is a element in almost any marriage. And believe you me, a husband’s mother has got it on a wife’s mother, and when she comes to visit she may be as nice as nature allows in such trying circumstances, but she has a far more eagle-eye on the way you run things for her boy than your mother ever has on friend husband and the way he is treating you. And this is because his mother always has a you-stole-him-from-me-hussy! feeling toward you, while your own mommer, no matter how she may pick on him as a provider and she usually does, though in a nice way, well, she always has a dash of thank-heaven-you-took-her-off-my-hands in her manner. Which naturally makes him more so than ever, if you get me.

Now I have give a lot of serious thought to marriage, and if I was ever to write a piece about it, I would admit that, honest, there is something funny about marriage. I mean funny in the most serious sense. There is something about marriage does funny things to people once they get into it. I mean funny things such as being nasty to each other, and cruel, sometimes, and even unfair. It takes a nice, snappy-dressed young chap that is crazy about going to the pictures and is a regular spendthrift with ice-cream sodas, after, and plants him in the back parlor with his vest unbuttoned, his face under a newspaper and his feet under the lamp. It likewise grows curl papers and dressing sacks on females that once took ’em off before he had a chance to see ’em. Marriage goes even further. It runs up bills for groceries instead of for taxis: it traps a person into having a bunch of kids that looked fine on magazine covers when we was engaged, but now look best when finally in bed and asleep. In fact, anybody who could write, could holler on about marriage and husbands and what is wrong with them, with all the violence of a Red Radical and with more truth by far, because pretty near any complaint you can make about husbands and marriage would be a true one. And only one thing about them has got me buffaloed. Would I be willing to do without them? And the answer to that is “No.”

Because for the life of me I can’t think of any better arrangement to take the place of marriage, and neither have I seen anybody else of who it was a true fact that they have found something just as good. These free-love-radicals that you read about in the papers, why as a rule their chief dread in life is that somebody will look up the marriage records in their home town and expose to the world the horrid fact that they are not living in sin after all, for somebody is always taking the bull out of life, and leaving us face to face with the truth. And in this case I guess we will have to reluctantly admit that marriage is the best way to get rid of a troublesome suitor, of which we know as yet.

Personally, I am for it, even after a coupla trys, and I got a feeling that there is in marriage, something that a person might justifiably call divine, and also a sneaking idea, which I naturally put out of my head as quick as possible whenever it comes to me, and that idea is that maybe there is nothing wrong with marriage itself, but that the trouble is with the ones that goes into it. I have, as I mentioned, tried it twice. Maybe it is like eating peanuts, you don’t know when to stop. But then again it may be because of some holy thing that a woman can find in a good husband. And if I was to write a book about husbands, I would tell you what this is. And if I did, why then George _would_ break my neck, and I don’t know that I would be able to blame him!

_Say It With Oil_ A FEW REMARKS ABOUT WIVES

BY

_Ring W. Lardner_

_Author of “You Know Me, Al,” “Gullible’s Travels,” “The Big Town,” etc._

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

_Copyright, 1923, By George H. Doran Company_

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY

SAY IT WITH OIL. II

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

_My ½ of this book is dedicated to whoever likes it better than the other ½_ R. W. L.

_Say It with Oil_

My Publisher asked me would I write a book on my impressions in regards to wives.

“Well,” I says, “I have only got the one wife, and wile I admit she has made quite an impression, still and all it seems to me like you ought to get a hold of a husband with more experience.”

So he says:

“Yes, I know you have only got one yourself, but you must be acquainted with a whole lot of them.”

“I suppose I am,” I said, blushing furiously; “I guess I am personally acquainted with practally every A-No. 1 wife around N. Y. City except Nina Wilcox Putnam.”