A Guide to Men: Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl

Love is woman's eternal spring, man's eternal fall.

It isn't beauty, and it isn't cleverness, and it isn't clothes that make a particular woman fascinating. It is just a sort of magnetic current which seems to run around her and set her eyes a-twinkling – and a man's heart tingling.

It is utterly useless to tell a man the honest truth. That is the last thing on earth which a man ever tells a woman – so of course it's the last thing on earth which he ever expects to hear from her.

The average man, like "all Gaul," is divided into three parts: his vanity, his digestion and his ambition. Cater to the first, guard the second and stimulate the third – and his love will take care of itself.

There is no such tonic for a man's nerve as a capricious wife and no such softener for his backbone as a self-sacrificing one.

A man can sit in the moonlight and talk "New Thought" to a pretty girl and at the same time look right into her eyes with all the old, old ones.

Bohemia is an oasis in the desert of life where only the rich-in-dreams may go and only the poor-in-purse may stay.

There is no way of two people really knowing each other until after they are married and have to share the same dollar, the same table, the same newspaper and the same chiffonier.

WHAT EVERY WOMAN WONDERS

THERE are gardens full of flowers that I feared to pluck.

There are eyes full of promises that I dared not believe.

There are lips full of sweetness, from which I turned away.

I wonder if Paradise holds anything for me, one-half so beautiful

As the joys I have renounced for its sake!

A man's life is like a musical comedy; there is always one woman in it who is the star – but it takes ninety-nine others to make up the "ensemble."

Nothing so annoys a man as to have a woman "cheer him up," when he is enjoying the exquisite luxury of feeling sorry for himself.

The modern girl's "perfect candor" has taken the sin out of sincerity – and most of the sweet scent out of the flower of sentiment. Without the Serpent, the Garden of Eden would seem a dull old place to most men.

Love is neither a bonfire, nor a kitchen-fire; but an altar-fire, to be kept burning forever with prayer and reverence.

In the language of love, "Forever!" means for quite a little while and "Never!" means not until next season.

"A fool there was, and he made his prayer" – to two women on the same party wire.

Love is a matter of give and take – marriage, a matter of misgive and mistake.

Even a fool knows enough to laugh at a man's joke – but only a born Siren knows enough to hang onto his coat-lapel and beg him to "Tell it again!"

Some men are born for matrimony, some achieve matrimony – but most of them are merely poor dodgers.

There are many times when a woman would gladly drop her husband, if she did not feel morally certain that some other woman would come right along and pick him up.

Alas! In choosing a husband, it seems that you've always got to decide between something tame and uninteresting, like a gold-fish, and something wild and fascinating, like a mountain goat.

Perhaps the first time a young man actually realizes that he is married is when he catches himself looking at other women with that strange, new, wistful sort of interest.

It is at once the mission and the punishment of the flirt to go through life tapping the hearts of men, that they may overflow – for other women.

The sweetest things in a woman's life are her "yesterdays" – the sweetest things in a man's life are his "tomorrows."

The man who is fondly looking for a perfect angel almost invariably ends by marrying some little devil who knows how to persuade him that her horns are merely the signs of a budding halo.

Woman is to most men what "heart-failure" is to the doctors – something that it is always convenient to blame any old thing on.

"The mind has a thousand eyes – the heart but one!" – and that usually goes fast asleep, after marriage.

Philosophy is the only kind of "sweetening" with which to make life palatable.

Estimated from a wife's experience, the average man spends fully one-quarter of his life in looking for his shoes.

An "idealist" is a man who is content to worship a woman from afar – and let some gross, unselfish materialist marry her and support her.

Changing husbands is about as satisfactory as changing a bundle from one hand to the other; it gives you only temporary relief.

France may claim the happiest marriages in the world, but the happiest divorces in the world are "made in America."

No doubt, even Solomon told each of his 700 wives that he had merely thought he loved the others, but that she was the only girl he "ever really cared for" in just that way.

Love is what makes a man appear blissfully happy, when a woman is mussing up the precious wisp of hair across his bald spot.

Love is what makes a woman laugh delightedly when a man is telling her for the second time, a story which she knew by heart before he told it to her the first time.

All this "sex-antagonism" must have started when Adam brought in the first rabbit and ordered Eve to make it into Chicken-a-la-King.

When a man takes a notion to marry, he doesn't start following it up – he merely stops running away.

A woman is young until the light dies out of her last lover's eyes.

Whenever a pretty girl runs her fingers through his hair, a cautious bachelor can't help thinking of what happened to Samson.

Success in flirtation, as in gambling, consists in "getting out of the game" at the psychological moment before your luck begins to turn.

Being a husband's "economic equal" may be awfully noble and advanced; but it usually means being all of his ribs and most of his vertebrae.

Men have been classified as "what women marry." They have two feet, two hands and sometimes two wives – but never more than one collar-button or one idea at a time.

When a man says, "Nobody understands me," don't fancy he is suffering. He is merely trying to let you know, in a modest way, that he is a profound, fascinating mystery.

A man snatches the first kiss, pleads for the second, demands the third, takes the fourth, accepts the fifth – and endures all the rest of them.

After two years, an engagement doesn't need to be broken; it just naturally sags in the middle and comes apart.

Eve had as much choice in the matter of a husband as any other woman. She merely accepted what fate sent her, and pretended to have gotten her "ideal."

It is not much comfort to be able to keep your husband's material body in the house evenings, when his astral body keeps wandering off to the club, every few minutes.

In love, sweet are the uses of diversity!

A woman's love "bursts into flower," but judging from the time it takes him to discover it, a man's love must be developed by the wearisome process of geological formation.

If a man and a diamond are big and brilliant enough, one doesn't mind a few flaws in them; but, for some reason, Heaven knows why, a woman and a pearl are expected to be absolutely perfect.

When Fate places a laurel wreath on the brow of a genius she hitches a plough to his shoulders and holds a Tantalus cup to his lips.

It isn't the man who paints his virtues in three colors and begs her to marry him, but the one who paints his sins in vermilion and begs her to "save" him who usually wins the girl.

If you want a man to propose don't try to make your family coddle him. Make them hate him, because a man never really "takes hold" until somebody begins to pull the other way.

The man who falls in love at first sight never knows what has struck him, and therefore mercifully escapes all the agonizing slow-torture of feeling himself sink, inch by inch, into the quicksands of matrimony.

Never believe that justice is all you owe your husband; what every man needs, from the woman who loves him, is faith, hope and charity – and above all, mercy.

Even a coquette can be loyal to one man – until she prefers another; but a man's heart is like a ferry-boat – always going backward and forward, and never staying "docked."

Soft, sweet things with a lot of fancy dressing – that is what a little boy loves to eat and a grown man prefers to marry.

SECOND INTERLUDE

TO find your mate – that is luck; to know him when you find him – that is inspiration; to win him when you know him – that is art; and to keep him when you've won him – that is a miracle.

A woman wastes more time in dreaming over a past flirtation than it would take a man to start a half dozen new ones.

Flattery affects a man like any other sort of "dope." It stimulates and exhilarates him for the moment, but usually ends by going to his head and making him act foolish.

The only way to be happy in this world is to take men and flirtations as they come – and let them go as they go.

Almost any straight path of devotion will lead to a woman's heart. It's this zigzagging from sentiment to cold fear and from adoration to self-preservation, that makes the way so long and dangerous for the average man.

Solomon may have been the most famous husband who ever lived, but as a hero he isn't in it with the man who manages to get along happily and contentedly all through life with just one wife!

Woman! The peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch, and the sinner his justification!

Everybody seems to be going through life at automobile speed nowadays; but alas, there are no sentimental garages by Life's wayside at which we may obtain a fresh supply of emotions, purchase a new thrill or patch up an exploded ideal.

A man's work lasts from sun to sun, but his excuses for staying late at the office are never done.

Every man wants a woman to appeal to his better side, his nobler instincts and his higher nature – and another woman to help him forget them.

Never rush into a love affair. Love is a waiting game, which requires nerve, concentration, and a poker face.

The average man marries one woman just in order to escape from a lot of others – and then flirts with a lot of others just in order to forget that he is married to one.

Once a girl's heart beat faster at the sound of her sweetheart's footstep on the garden path; but now it requires the hum of a twelve-cylinder motor-car to rouse her from her lassitude.

The one thing about love-making that the modern man simply can't understand is that, in order to make it thrilling and interesting, he must really put a little love in it.

In the war of the sexes a woman hides her scars of battle beneath a smile and a coat of rouge. A man goes about displaying his as proudly as though they were medals.

Occasionally one meets a man who plunges into a love affair as he plunges into the surf, but most of them just sit back lazily on the beach and let the waves of emotion splash harmlessly over them.

THE GREATEST SHOCK A TEMPERAMENTAL WOMAN CAN RECEIVE IS TO WAKE UP AND FIND THAT SHE IS MARRIED TO A HUMAN BEING INSTEAD OF AN IDEAL

BRIDES

"NEVERS" FOR THE "RIB."

NEVER ask him to kiss you. Make your kisses a privilege, not a duty; a luxury, not a morning and evening "chore."

Never refuse to kiss him – but sometimes keep him waiting a little while. Love thrives so much better on the stimulant of suspense than on the anaesthetic of memory.

Never question him about his past love affairs. It is not the women he has loved, but those he has not yet loved, who will bother you.

Never fling your old flames in his face. If you do he will soon cease to be jealous of the men you "might have married" and begin to envy them.

Never accuse him of being less ardent than he was before he married you. Many a husband would never discover that he was no longer madly in love, if his wife did not keep constantly reminding him of it.

Never chide him for the same fault more than once.

A man can become so accustomed to the thought of his own faults that he will begin to cherish them as charming little "personal characteristics."

Never refer to your own defects. A man always accepts a woman at her own valuation; and he doesn't prize anything that advertises herself as a "second."

Never laugh at him. Woman is supposed to be the only human joke and man the only laughing animal – except the hyena.

Never cry before him. A woman's tears soon wash all the color out of a man's love; after the third deluge they have no power to move him – except to move him out of the house.

Never threaten him, scold him nor argue with him. Act! A woman's arguments affect a man as water does a cat. He simply waits for them to dry up – and then he goes out and does as he pleases.

Never doubt his word – even when you know he is lying. A husband is like religion: to give you any real comfort, he must be taken with blind faith.

Never put him on a leash. The dog or the husband that has to be tied is always the one that eventually has to be advertised in the "lost" columns.

Never forget that marriage should be a privilege, not a prison; home a refectory, not a reformatory; and wives jolliers, and not jailers.

SYNCOPATIONS

A "SOUL-MATE" is seldom the siren who manages to drive a man to distraction, but just the sympathetic little thing who always happens to come along when he is looking for distraction.

Hanging on a man's word may flatter him, but hanging on his neck merely frightens him.

Every gay dog has his day – after.

One may be loved forever! It is the vain desire to go on being a "heart-breaker" after one's flirting days are over that constitutes the real tragedy of age.

A man regards a woman's love first as an unattainable dream, then as a boon, then as a blessing, then as a right, then as a matter-of-course – and, last, as a punishment.

A man's idea of "preserving the unities" is to find out what side of an argument his wife is on, and then take the other side, in order to keep it from sagging.

After a bachelor's heart has been patched up, cut down and remodeled to fit the romantic ideal of one girl after another, there is seldom enough of it left to go all the way around the honeymoon.

There is no question of degree in matrimony. You can be a little bit in love or a little bit ill; but you can't be a little bit married or a little bit dead.

Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.

If your husband is wrapped up in his work from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. you needn't bother to investigate his morals. Satan wouldn't waste his talents trying to tempt a man with so little time and energy for the devil's business.

You can't argue, frighten or nag a man into loving you just because he "ought to" – because, dearie, love is not exactly a man's feeling for a thought-censor, a creditor or a critic-on-the-hearth.

There are more ways of killing a man's love than by strangling it to death – but that's the usual way.

In matters of the heart most men are still in a state of barbarism, slightly tempered by woman.

A man is never old until his spirit is worn out, his rosy hopes have turned gray, his illusions have faded and he has wrinkles on his heart.

An optimist is merely an ex-pessimist with his pockets full of money, his digestion in good condition and his wife in the country.

Every time a man hits a woman's vanity he makes a dent in her love.

A man's first lie wounds a woman's heart, the second breaks it, the third mends it, and all the rest simply harden it.

Dissimulation is the price of peace – but it's awfully hard for a married woman to preserve the peace by deceiving her husband into thinking that he is deceiving her, every time he tries.

Of course men are not so suspicious as women. A woman in love would be jealous of a store dummy; but how can a man possibly suspect that any girl on whom he may bestow himself could ever think of anybody else?

A good woman inspires a man, a brilliant woman interests him, a beautiful woman fascinates him – but the considerate woman gets him.

There never was a man too nearsighted to see the look of admiration in a pretty woman's eyes.

WIFE: The woman from whom a man failed to escape and to whom he complacently refers as "the little woman I married."

MARRIAGE: The intermission between the wedding and the divorce.

WEDDING: The point at which a man stops toasting a woman and begins roasting her.

Most girls, nowadays, would give a lot for a few solid vows, a few unshrinkable signs of devotion and a really convincing kiss.

It isn't a husband's disinclination to listen to his wife's conversation, but that "I-am-ready-to-bear-with-you" expression with which he does it that grates on her nerves so.

The average man has so much heart that he apparently thinks it a pity to waste it all on one woman.

Alas! Why is it that when your cup of happiness is full somebody always jogs your elbow!

Never judge a man's love by the ardor of his first kiss, nor by the tenderness of his second, but by the eagerness with which he seeks the third.

When it comes to making love, a girl can always listen so much faster than a man can talk.

If nothing but their heart-strings became entangled, people would not find the marriage tie so binding; it is a man's purse-strings and a woman's apron-strings that really form the Gordian knot.

In love, a man loses first his head, then his vanity, then his poise – and, last of all, his heart.

It is much more comfortable to be considered a "little devil" and get a credit mark every time you do anything right, than to be considered an "angel" and get a black mark every time you do anything human.

Love is a game at which a woman must play against stacked cards, and without the slightest inkling of the trump.

A woman's last resort is henna – a man's Gehenna.

To a woman marriage is the beginning of life; to a man it is the end of "liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Perfect wife: That which a married man always fancies he might have gotten if he had kept on experimenting a little longer.

Why is it that, no matter how much a man thinks of one girl, he can't help thinking of a lot of others at the same time?

Don't waste time trying to break a man's heart; be satisfied if you can just manage to chip it in a brand new place.

IT IS QUITE CORRECT TO SEND YOUR FORMER HUSBAND A GIFT ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF YOUR DIVORCE, IN REMEMBRANCE OF "THE MANY HAPPY DAYS WHICH YOU HAVE SPENT – APART"

DIVORCES

LOVE, the quest; marriage, the conquest; divorce, the inquest.

Most marriages, nowadays, seem built for speed rather than for endurance.

A divorcée is one who has graduated from the Correspondence School of Experience.

Marriage, according to the merry Widow-reno, is a "perfectly lovely experience to have had!"

Grass Widow: The angel whom a man loved, the human being he married, and the devil he divorced.

Most actresses are married – now and then; most literary women – off and on; most society women – from time to time.

In olden days, the lover cried, in burning words and brave,"Oh darling, be my Queen, my Bride – and let me be your slave!"But nowadays, he murmurs, over cigarette and tea,"Say, when you get your next divorce, will you (puff) marry me?"

When a woman obtains her second divorce, one hardly knows whether to class her as a good loser, a bad chooser, or just a "poor sport."

Why is it that when a man hears that a woman has had a "past," he is always so anxious to brighten up her present?

Many a woman's sole reason for getting a divorce is because she is tired of holding onto heaven with one hand and onto a man with the other.

When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that they "don't understand" one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.

That "just-after-the-divorce" feeling is not the exhilarating thing many people imagine it. It is more like the mingled sensation of pain and relief that comes the moment after you have removed a tight slipper and before the ache has subsided.

Divorce is the Great Divide, over which most men expect to pass into the Happy Hunting Grounds.

Reno! The land of the free and the grave of the home!

THIRD INTERLUDE

IN the abstract a man admires nobility and intelligence in a woman; but in the concrete he always prefers a bird of Paradise to a wren, a decoration to an inspiration and incense to common sense.

"Intuition" is what a man calls a girl's ability to see through him, before marriage; "suspicion" is what he calls it, after marriage.

Satan, himself, could no doubt make any woman love him, if he took the trouble to convince her that it was "her beauty that drove him to Hades."

Of course, polygamy is dreadful; but, at least, an Oriental wife can come within four or five guesses of knowing where her husband spends his evenings.

Take care of a woman's vanity – and her love will take care of itself.

Ever since Eve started it all by offering Adam the apple, woman's punishment has been to have to supply a man with food and then suffer the consequences when it disagrees with him.

The wings of love are not clipped by marriage; they merely molt for lack of exercise.

All love is 99.44 per cent pure: pure imagination, pure vanity, pure curiosity, pure folly or whatever else it happens to be.

Don't waste your tears on the girls a heart-breaker should have married and didn't; save them for the girl he will marry and shouldn't.

It requires a little moisture to make a postage stamp stick and a little cold water of indifference to make a sweetheart stick.

There are only two kinds of perfectly faultless men – the dead and the deadly.

In order to see a man in his most interesting colors a woman always has to scrape off a lot of unnecessary whitewashing.

Marriage is a discord that turns "Love's Old Sweet Song" from a eulogy into an elegy.

The height of the average girl's ambition is just about six feet.

You can always cure a man of love-sickness with "mental suggestion" merely by suggesting to him that the girl is trying to marry him.

Marriage is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egotism are extracted without an anaesthetic.

Jealousy is the false alarm that wakes us up from love's young dream.

The most successful men are not those who have been inspired by a wise woman's love, but those who have perspired in order to gratify a foolish woman's whims.

It is easier to keep half a dozen lovers guessing than to keep one lover after he has stopped guessing.

A man's soul lies so close to his digestion that when he looks blue and downhearted, a woman never knows whether to offer him a kiss, a meal, a dose of philosophy or a dyspepsia tablet.

A woman is so complex that she can prove to a man by every possible convincing argument that she feels nothing but platonic friendship for him, at the same time that she is thinking how she would like to run her fingers through his hair.

One reason why a man's life is so much fuller than a woman's is because he spends nearly three-quarters of it in hunting up things for a woman to do.

Oh yes, a woman always looks up to a brave, strong man whom she can respect – and then nine times out of ten, goes and marries some pallid weakling whom she can "mother."

A man spends his boyhood struggling against an education, his youth struggling against matrimony and his middle-age struggling against embonpoint; but sooner or later he succumbs to all of them.

No man wants an "equal" but an angel. If Satan himself should decide to marry he wouldn't go around looking for a congenial little Satanette, but for a paragon who had a pull with St. Peter.

HALF A LOVE IS BETTER THAN NONE

WIDOWS

A WIDOW is a fascinating being with the flavor of maturity, the spice of experience, the piquancy of novelty, the tang of practiced coquetry, and the halo of one man's approval.

Second mourning is that interesting period, at which a widow continues to weep with one eye while she begins to flirt with the other.