WIVES

"Are you the captain of your soul?"

"Sort of a second lieutenant," ventured Mr. Henpeck dubiously.

  "Come, come," said Tom's father, "at your time of life,     There's no longer excuse for thus playing the rake.   It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife."     "Why, so it is, father,--whose wife shall I take?"

  --_Thomas Moore_.

The younger man had been complaining that he could not get his wife to mend his clothes.

"I asked her to sew a button on this vest last night and she hasn't touched it," he said. At this the older man assumed the air of a patriarch.

"Never ask a woman to mend anything," he said. "You haven't been married very long and I think I can give you some serviceable suggestions. When I want a shirt mended I take it to my wife and flourish it around a little and say, 'Where's that rag-bag?'

"'What do you want of the rag-bag?' asks the wife. Her suspicions are aroused at once.

"'I want to throw this shirt away. It's worn out,' I say, with a few more flourishes.

"'Let me see that shirt,' my wife says, then, 'Now, John, hand it to me at once.'

"Of course, I pass it over and she examines it.

"'Why, it only needs--'; and then she mends it."

"Why are you so pensive?" he asked.

"I'm not pensive," she replied.

"But you haven't said a word for twenty minutes."

"Well, I didn't have anything to say."

"Don't you ever say anything when you have nothing to say?"

"No."

"Will you be my wife?"

"What's Blinks going to do with his new noiseless typewriter?"

"If he takes my advice he'll marry her."--_Life_.

MRS. KNAGG--"Did the doctor ask to see your tongue?"

HUSBAND--"No; I told him about yours and he ordered me away for a rest."

"This is a very sad case, very sad indeed," said the doctor. "I much regret to tell you that your wife's mind is gone--completely gone."

"I am not a bit surprised" answered the husband. "She has been giving me a piece of it every day for the last fifteen years."

A sheik was speaking to a crowd of men in a mosque and said, "All of you who are afraid of your wives stand up." All stood up except one man. Afterwards the sheik went to this man and said, "Evidently you are not afraid of your wife." The man responded: "She gave me such a beating this morning that I was too lame to stand up."

A well-to-do Scottish woman one day said to her gardener:

"Man Tammas, I wonder you don't get married. You've a nice house, and all you want to complete it is a wife. You know the first gardener that ever lived had a wife."

"Quite right, missus, quite right," said Thomas, "but he didna keep his job long after he gat the wife."

CREWE--"Good heavens, how it rains! I feel awfully anxious about my wife. She's gone out without an umbrella."

DREW--"Oh, she'll be all right. She'll take shelter in some shop."

CREWE--"Exactly. That's what makes me so anxious."

Mrs. Clarke came running hurriedly into her husband's office one morning.

"Oh, Dick," she cried, as she gasped for breath. "I dropped my diamond ring off my finger, and I can't find it anywhere."

"It's all right, Bess," replied Mr. Clarke. "I came across it in my trousers pocket."

  _And Then Some_

  MAN expects his wife to be:     Perpetuator of the Race.     Domestic Science Expert.     Trained Kindergartner.     Social Diplomat.     Purchasing Agent.     Superintendent of Operating.     Accountant.     Social Secretary.     General Counsel.     Manager Lost and Found Department.     Advertising Agent.     Intelligence Bureau.     Family Statistician.     Mistress of the Exchequer.     Playground Supervisor.     Judge of Juvenile Court.     Valet.     Nurse.     Employer of Labor.     Artist in the Art of Living.   WOMAN is seeking an even larger sphere.

MRS. A.--"Does your husband consider you a necessity or a luxury?"

MRS. B.--"It depends, my dear, on whether I am cooking his dinner or asking for a new dress."

There are certain family privileges which we all guard jealously:

An attorney was consulted by a woman desirous of bringing action against her husband for a divorce. She related a harrowing tale of the ill-treatment she had received at his hands. So impressive was her recital that the lawyer, for a moment, was startled out of his usual professional composure. "From what you say this man must be a brute of the worst type," he exclaimed.

The applicant for divorce arose and, with severe dignity, announced: "Sir, I shall consult another lawyer. I came here to get advice as to a divorce, not to hear my husband abused!"

_See also_ Domestic finance; Marriage; Woman

WOMAN

The reason we never hear of a self-made woman is because she changes the plans so frequently that the job is never finished.

             _If They Meant All They Said_

  Charm is a woman's strongest arm;   My charwoman is full of charm;   I chose her, not for strength of arm   But for her strange, elusive charm.

  And how tears heighten woman's powers!   My typist weeps for hours and hours:   I took her for her weeping powers--   They so delight my business hours.

  A woman lives by intuition.   Though my accountant shuns addition   She has the rarest intuition.   (And I myself can do addition.)

  Timidity in girls is nice.   My cook is so afraid of mice.   Now you'll admit it's very nice   To feel your cook's afraid of mice.

  --_A.D. Miller_.

"De little girl," said Uncle Eben, "dat's allus takin' her dolly and dishes an' sayin' she won't play, grows up to be de lady dat says unless she's de chairman dar ain' g'ineter be no meetin'."

"Brown acknowledges that he knows nothing about women."

"What an immense experience with them he must have had."

"Does your wife neglect her home in making speeches?"

"Not a bit of it," replied Mr. Meekton. "She always lets me hear the speeches first."

A lady was sitting in the garden with the family stocking basket beside her, and was examining the holes in her little boy's socks, when the old gardener came by with his wheelbarrow. "What beats me," he remarked, "is you ladies. Always lookin' for what you don't want to find!"

"Hello! Is this a party wire?"

"My dear sir, it's worse. It's a woman's party wire."

A red-haired, freckle-faced boy of fourteen, weighed down with the responsibility of his first essay, walked into a city library the other day. He approached the reference librarian rather timidly, standing on one foot, then on the other, and finally said:

"Say, boss, I've gotta write an essay on 'Woman.' Where'll I begin?"

"I was outspoken in my sentiments at the club today," said Mrs. Garrulous to her husband the other evening. With a look of astonishment he replied:

"I can't believe it, my dear. Who outspoke you?"

A party of Americans were dining in Paris with Premier Clemenceau, when one of the Americans was heard to say: "I'll bet she will--"

"I wouldn't do that," interposed Clemenceau--"bet on anything that she will do. You can never tell what a woman will do."

"Ah," said the American, "but you interrupted me too soon, monsieur. I was going to say that I would bet that she would do the unexpected."

"Ah, but don't do that, either," cautioned Clemenceau. "Even that is not a safe bet."

The most consoling thing about going to the cinemas is seeing so many women in the pictures opening their mouths and not saying a word you can hear.

  When lovely woman wants a favor,   And finds, too late, that man won't bend,   What earthly circumstance can save her   From disappointment in the end?

  The only way to bring him over,   The last experiment to try,   Whether a husband or a lover,   If he have feeling is--to cry.

  --_Poebe Cary_.

During the flu epidemic in San Francisco, when all public meeting-places were closed, and the entire population was compelled to wear masks to prevent the spread of the disease, a drunken man was overheard muttering:

"Well, I'm an old man, but I have lived my time and am ready to quit. I have lived to see four great things come to pass--the end of the war, the churches closed, saloons left open, and the women muzzled."--_Judge_.

A crabbed old misogynist said to Ethel Barrymore at a dinner in Bar Harbor:

"Woman! Feminism! Suffrage! Bah! Why, there isn't a woman alive who wouldn't rather be beautiful than intelligent."

"That's because," said Miss Barrymore calmly, "so many men are stupid while so few are blind."

HE--"When I proposed to Flossie she asked me for a little time to make up her mind."

SHE (the hated rival)--"Oh! So she makes that up too, does she?"

Woman is certainly coming into her own. Even in tender romance she is exerting an influence.

The young man had just been accepted. In his rapture he exclaimed, "But do you think, my love, I am good enough for you?"

His strong-minded fiancee looked sternly at him for a moment and replied, "Good enough for me? You've got to be!"--_Judge_.

ONE--"Yes, in a battle of tongues a woman can always hold her own."

THE OTHER--"Perhaps she can. But why doesn't she?"

Young Arthur was wrestling with a lesson in grammar. "Father," said he, thoughtfully, "what part of speech is woman?"

"Woman, my boy, is not part of speech; she is all of it," returned father.

During the recess period several teachers became engaged in a heated argument over that old theme, "Man _versus_ Woman."

"Well, anyway," concluded the dyspeptic male teacher of Latin, "women are more finicky than men."

"Recite an instance, please," put in the dainty little teacher of domestic science.

"If a woman loses a stitch, she'll unravel a ball of yarn trying to find it."

"That's nothing, compared with what a man will do," she came back quickly. "If a man loses a quarter in a card game, he'll spend $10 trying to win it back."

_Woman_--A Mistress of Arts, who robs a bachelor of his degree, and forces him to study philosophy by means of curtain lectures.

_See also_ Age; Clothing; Epitaphs; Fashion; Talkers; Wives; Woman suffrage; Worry.

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