Men I'm Not Married To; Women I'm Not Married To
Author: Dorothy Parker; Franklin P. Adams
Date: 2017-10-02T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Women -- Humor; Men -- Humor

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Title: Men I'm Not Married To; Women I'm Not Married To

Author: Dorothy Parker

Franklin P. Adams

Release date: October 2, 2017 [eBook #55670]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEN I'M NOT MARRIED TO; WOMEN I'M NOT MARRIED TO ***

Men I'm Not Married To
By Dorothy Parker
—
Women I'm Not Married To
By Franklin P. Adams

MEN
I’M NOT MARRIED TO

MEN
I’M NOT MARRIED TO

BY
DOROTHY PARKER

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

CONTENTS

| PAGE
Freddie | | 2
Mortimer | | 12
Raymond | | 12
Charlie | | 13
Lloyd | | 21
Henry | | 21
Joe | | 25
Oliver | | 26
Albert | | 26

MEN
I’M NOT MARRIED TO

No matter where my route may lie,
No matter whither I repair,
In brief—no matter how or why
Or when I go, the boys are there.
On lane and byways, street and square,
On alley, path and avenue,
They seem to spring up everywhere—
The men I am not married to.

I watch them as they pass me by;
At each in wonderment I stare,
And, “but for heaven’s grace,” I cry,
“There goes the guy whose name I’d wear!”
They represent no species rare,
They walk and talk as others do;
They’re fair to see—but only fair—
The men I am not married to.

I’m sure that to a mother’s eye
Is each potentially a bear.
But though at home they rank ace-high,
No change of heart could I declare.
Yet worry silvers not their hair;
They deck them not with sprigs of rue.
It’s curious how they do not care—
The men I am not married to.

L’Envoi

In fact, if they’d a chance to share
Their lot with me, a lifetime through,
They’d doubtless tender me the air—
The men I am not married to.

Freddie

“Oh, boy!” people say of Freddie. “You just ought to meet him some time! He’s a riot, that’s what he is—more fun than a goat.”

Other, and more imaginative souls play whimsically with the idea, and say that he is more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Still others go at the thing from a different angle, and refer to him as being as funny as a crutch. But I always feel, myself, that they stole the line from Freddie. Satire—that is his dish.

And there you have, really, one of Freddie’s greatest crosses. People steal his stuff right and left. He will say something one day, and the next it will be as good as all over the city. Time after time I have gone to him and told him that I have heard lots of vaudeville acts using his comedy, but he just puts on the most killing expression, and says, “Oh, say not suchly!” in that way of his. And, of course, it gets me laughing so that I can’t say another word about it.

That is the way he always is, just laughing it off when he is told that people are using his best lines without even so much as word of acknowledgment. I never hear any one say “There is such a thing as being too good-natured” but that I think of Freddie.

You never knew any one like him on a party. Things will be dragging along, the way they do at the beginning of the evening, with the early arrivals sitting around asking one another have they been to anything good at the theatre lately, and is it any wonder there is so much sickness around with the weather so changeable. The party will be just about plucking at the coverlet when in will breeze Freddie, and from that moment on the evening is little short of a whirlwind. Often and often I have heard him called the life of the party, and I have always felt that there is not the least bit of exaggeration in the expression.

What I envy about Freddie is that poise of his. He can come right into a room full of strangers, and be just as much at home as if he had gone through grammar school with them. He smashes the ice all to nothing the moment he is introduced to the other guests by pretending to misunderstand their names, and calling them something entirely different, keeping a perfectly straight face all the time as if he never realized there was anything wrong. A great many people say he puts them in mind of Buster Keaton that way.

He is never at a loss for a screaming crack. If the hostess asks him to have a chair Freddie comes right back at her with “No, thanks; we have chairs at home.” If the host offers him a cigar he will say just like a flash, “What’s the matter with it?” If one of the men borrows a cigarette and a light from him Freddie will say in that dry voice of his, “Do you want the coupons too?” Of course his wit is pretty fairly caustic, but no one ever seems to take offense at it. I suppose there is everything in the way he says things.

And he is practically a whole vaudeville show in himself. He is never without a new story of what Pat said to Mike as they were walking down the street, or how Abie tried to cheat Ikie, or what old Aunt Jemima answered when she was asked why she had married for the fifth time. Freddie does them in dialect, and I have often thought it is a wonder that we don’t all split our sides. And never a selection that every member of the family couldn’t listen to, either—just healthy fun.

Then he has a repertory of song numbers, too. He gives them without accompaniment, and every song has a virtually unlimited number of verses, after each one of which Freddie goes conscientiously through the chorus. There is one awfully clever one, a big favourite of his, with the chorus rendered a different way each time—showing how they sang it when grandma was a girl, how they sing it in gay Paree and how a cabaret performer would do it. Then there are several along the general lines of Casey Jones, two or three about negroes who specialized on the banjo, and a few in which the lyric of the chorus consists of the syllables “ha, ha, ha.” The idea is that the audience will get laughing along with the singer.

If there is a piano in the house Freddie can tear things even wider open. There may be many more accomplished musicians, but nobody can touch him as far as being ready to oblige goes. There is never any of this hanging back waiting to be coaxed or protesting that he hasn’t touched a key in months. He just sits right down and does all his specialties for you. He is particularly good at doing “Dixie” with one hand and “Home, Sweet Home” with the other, and Josef Hofmann himself can’t tie Freddie when it comes to giving an imitation of a fife-and-drum corps approaching, passing, and fading away in the distance.

But it is when the refreshments are served that Freddie reaches the top of his form. He always insists on helping to pass plates and glasses, and when he gets a big armful of them he pretends to stumble. It is as good as a play to see the hostess’ face. Then he tucks his napkin into his collar, and sits there just as solemnly as if he thought that were the thing to do; or perhaps he will vary that one by folding the napkin into a little square and putting it carefully in his pocket, as if he thought it was a handkerchief. You just ought to see him making believe that he has swallowed an olive pit. And the remarks he makes about the food—I do wish I could remember how they go. He is funniest, though, it seems to me, when he is pretending that the lemonade is intoxicating, and that he feels its effects pretty strongly. When you have seen him do this it will be small surprise to you that Freddie is in such demand for social functions.

But Freddie is not one of those humourists who perform only when out in society. All day long he is bubbling over with fun. And the beauty of it is that he is not a mere theorist, as a joker; practical—that’s Freddie all over.

If he isn’t sending long telegrams, collect, to his friends, then he is sending them packages of useless groceries, C. O. D. A telephone is just so much meat to him. I don’t believe any one will ever know how much fun Freddie and his friends get out of Freddie’s calling them up and making them guess who he is. When he really wants to extend himself he calls up in the middle of the night, and says that he is the wire tester. He uses that one only on special occasions, though. It is pretty elaborate for everyday use.

But day in and day out, you can depend upon it that he is putting over some uproarious trick with a dribble glass or a loaded cigar or a pencil with a rubber point; and you can feel completely sure that no matter where he is or how unexpectedly you may come upon him, Freddie will be right there with a funny line or a comparatively new story for you. That is what people marvel over when they are talking about him—how he is always just the same.

It is right there, really, that they put their finger on the big trouble with him.

But you just ought to meet Freddie sometime. He’s a riot, that’s what he is—more fun than a circus.

Mortimer

Mortimer had his photograph taken in his dress suit.

Raymond

So long as you keep him well inland Raymond will never give any trouble. But when he gets down to the seashore he affects a bathing suit fitted with little sleeves. On wading into the sea ankle-deep he leans over and carefully applies handfuls of water to his wrists and forehead.

Charlie

It’s curious, but no one seems to be able to recall what Charlie used to talk about before the country went what may be called, with screaming effect, dry. Of course there must have been a lot of unsatisfactory weather even then, and I don’t doubt that he slipped in a word or two when the talk got around to the insanity of the then-current styles of women’s dress. But though I have taken up the thing in a serious way, and have gone about among his friends making inquiries, I cannot seem to find that he could ever have got any farther than that in the line of conversation. In fact, he must have been one of those strong silent men in the old days.

Those who have not seen him for several years would be in a position to be knocked flat with a feather if they could see what a regular little Chatterbox Charlie has become. Say what you will about prohibition—and who has a better right?—you would have to admit, if you knew Charlie, that it has been the making of him as a conversationalist.

He never requires his audience to do any feeding for him. It needs no careful leading around of the subject, no tactful questions, no well-timed allusions, to get him nicely loosened up. All you have to do is say good evening to him, ask him how everybody over at his house is getting along, and give him a chair—though this last is not essential—and silver-tongued Charlie is good for three hours straight on where he is getting it, how much he has to pay for it, and what the chances are of his getting hold of a couple of cases of genuine pinch-bottle, along around the middle of next week. I have known him to hold entire dinner parties spellbound, from cocktails to finger bowls, with his monologue.

Now I would be well down among the last when it came to wanting to give you the impression that Charlie has been picked for the All-American alcoholic team. Despite the wetness of his conversation he is just a nice, normal, conscientious drinker, willing to take it or let it alone, in the order named. I don’t say he would not be able to get along without it, but neither do I say that he doesn’t get along perfectly splendidly with it. I don’t think I ever saw any one who could get as much fun as Charlie can out of splitting the Eighteenth Amendment with a friend.

There is a glamour of vicarious romance about him. You gather from his conversation that he comes into daily contact with any number of picturesque people. He tells about a friend of his who owns three untouched bottles of the last absinth to come into the country; or a lawyer he knows, one of whose grateful clients sent him six cases of champagne in addition to his fee; or a man he met who had to move to the country in order to have room for his Scotch.

Charlie has no end of anecdotes about the interesting women he meets, too. There is one girl he often dwells on, who, if you only give her time, can get you little bottles of chartreuse, each containing an individual drink. Another gifted young woman friend of his is the inventor of a cocktail in which you mix a spoonful of orange marmalade. Yet another is the justly proud owner of a pet marmoset which becomes the prince of good fellows as soon as you have fed him a couple of teaspoonfuls of gin.

It is the next best thing to knowing these people yourself to hear Charlie tell about them. He just makes them live.

It is wonderful how Charlie’s circle of acquaintances has widened during the last two years; there is nothing so broadening as prohibition. Among his new friends he numbers a conductor on a train that runs down from Montreal, and a young man who owns his own truck, and a group of chaps who work in drug stores, and I don’t know how many proprietors of homey little restaurants in the basements of brownstone houses.

Some of them have turned out to be but fair-weather friends, unfortunately. There was one young man, whom Charlie had looked upon practically as a brother, who went particularly bad on him. It seems he had taken a pretty solemn oath to supply Charlie, as a personal favour, with a case of real Gordon, which he said he was able to get through his high social connections on the other side. When what the young man called a nominal sum was paid, and the case was delivered, its bottles were found to contain a nameless liquor, though those of Charlie’s friends who gave it a fair trial suggested Storm King as a good name for the brand. Charlie has never laid eyes on the young man from that day to this. He is still unable to talk about it without a break in his voice. As he says—and quite rightly, too—it was the principle of the thing.

But for the most part his new friends are just the truest pals a man ever had. In more time than it takes to tell it, Charlie will keep you right abreast with them—sketch in for you how they are, and what they are doing, and what their last words to him were.

But Charlie can be the best of listeners, too. Just tell him about any little formula you may have picked up for making it at home, and you will find the most sympathetic of audiences, and one who will even go to the flattering length of taking notes on your discourse. Relate to him tales of unusual places where you have heard that you can get it or of grotesque sums that you have been told have been exchanged for it, and he will hang on your every word, leading you on, asking intelligent questions, encouraging you by references to like experiences of his own.

But don’t let yourself get carried away with success and attempt to branch out into other topics. For you will lose Charlie in a minute if you try it.

But that, now I think of it, would probably be the very idea you would have in mind.

Lloyd

Lloyd wears washable neckties.

Henry

You would really be surprised at the number of things that Henry knows just a shade more about than anybody else does. Naturally he can’t help realizing this about himself, but you mustn’t think for a minute that he has let it spoil him. On the contrary, as the French so well put it. He has no end of patience with others, and he is always willing to oversee what they are doing, and to offer them counsel. When it comes to giving his time and his energy there is nobody who could not admit that Henry is generous. To a fault, I have even heard people go so far as to say.

If, for instance, Henry happens to drop in while four of his friends are struggling along through a game of bridge he does not cut in and take a hand, thereby showing up their playing in comparison to his. No, Henry draws up a chair and sits looking on with a kindly smile. Of course, now and then he cannot restrain a look of pain or an exclamation of surprise or even a burst of laughter as he listens to the bidding, but he never interferes. Frequently, after a card has been played, he will lean over and in a good-humoured way tell the player what he should have done instead, and how he might just as well throw his hand down then and there, but he always refuses to take any more active part in the game. Occasionally, when a uniquely poisonous play is made, I have seen Henry thrust his chair aside and pace about in speechless excitement, but for the most part he is admirably self-controlled. He always leaves with a few cheery words to the players, urging them to keep at it and not let themselves get discouraged.

And that is the way Henry is about everything. He will stroll over to a tennis court, and stand on the side lines, at what I am sure must be great personal inconvenience, calling words of advice and suggestion for sets at a stretch. I have even known him to follow his friends all the way around a golf course, offering constructive criticism on their form as he goes. I tell you, in this day and generation, you don’t find many people who will go as far out of their way for their friends as Henry does. And I am far from being the only one who says so, too.

I have often thought that Henry must be the boy who got up the idea of leaving the world a little better than he found it. Yet he never crashes in on his friends’ affairs. Only after the thing is done does he point out to you how it could have been done just a dash better. After you have signed the lease for the new apartment Henry tells you where you could have got one cheaper and sunnier; after you are all tied up with the new firm Henry explains to you where you made your big mistake in leaving the old one.

It is never any news to me when I hear people telling Henry that he knows more about more things than anybody they ever saw in their lives.

And I don’t remember ever having heard Henry give them any argument on that one.

Joe

After Joe had had two cocktails he wanted to go up and bat for the trap drummer. After he had had three he began to get personal about the unattractive shade of the necktie worn by the strange man at the next table.

Oliver

Oliver had a way of dragging his mouth to one side, by means of an inserted forefinger, explaining to you, meanwhile, in necessarily obscured tones, the work which his dentist had just accomplished on his generously displayed back teeth.

Albert

Albert sprinkled powdered sugar on his sliced tomatoes.

WOMEN
I’M NOT MARRIED TO

WOMEN
I’M NOT MARRIED TO

BY
FRANKLIN P. ADAMS

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

TO
MRS. FRANKLIN P. ADAMS

BUT   FOR   WHOM   THIS   BOOK
MIGHT NOT   HAVE BEEN   WRIT-
TEN,   BUT   FOR   WHOM   IT   WAS

CONTENTS

| PAGE
Elaine | | 2
Maude | | 7
Anne | | 11
Flo | | 15
Belinda | | 16
Blanche | | 19
Marguerite | | 21

WOMEN
I’M NOT MARRIED TO

“Whene’er I take my walks”—you know
The rest—“abroad,” I always meet
Elaine or Maude or Anne or Flo,
Belinda, Blanche, or Marguerite;
And Melancholy, bittersweet,
Sets seal upon me when I view—
Coldly, and from a judgment seat—
The women I’m not married to.

Not mine the sighs for Long Ago;
Not mine to mourn the obsolete;
With Burns and Shelley, Keats and Poe
I have no yearning to compete.
No Dead Sea pickled pears I eat;
I never touch a drop of rue;
I toast, and drink my pleasure neat,
The women I’m not married to!

Fate with her celebrated blow
Frequently knocks me off my feet;
And Life her dice box chucks a throw
That usually has me beat.
Yet although Love has tried to treat
Me rough, award the kid his due.
Look at the list, though incomplete:
The women I’m not married to.

L’Envoi

My dears whom gracefully I greet,
Gaze at these lucky ladies who
Are of—to make this thing concrete—
The women I’m not married to.

Elaine

There have been more beautiful girls than Elaine, for I have read about them, and I have utter faith in the printed word. And I expect my public, a few of whom are—just a second—more than two and a quarter million weekly, to put the same credence in my printed word. When I said there have been more beautiful girls than Elaine I lied. There haven’t been. She was a darb. Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax, her eyebrows were like curved snowdrifts, her neck was like the swan, her face it was the fairest that e’er the sun shone on, she walked in beauty like the night, her lips were like the cherries ripe that sunny walls of Boreas screen, her teeth were like a flock of sheep with fleeces newly washen clean, her hair was like the curling mist that shades the mountain side at e’en, and oh, she danced in such a way no sun upon an Easter day was half so fine a sight! If I may interrupt the poets, I should say she was one pip. She was, I might add, kind of pretty.

Enchantment was hers, and fairyland her exclusive province. I would walk down a commonplace street with her, and it would become the primrose path, and a one-way path at that, with nobody but us on it. If I said it was a nice day—and if I told her that once I told her a hundred times—she would say, “Isn’t it? My very words to Isabel when I telephoned her this morning!” So we had, I said to myself, a lot in common.

And after a conversation like that I would go home and lie awake and think, “If two persons can be in such harmony about the weather, a fundamental thing, a thing that prehistoric religions actually were based upon, what possible discord ever could be between us? For I have known families to be rent by disagreements as to meteorological conditions.

“Isn’t this,” my sister used to say, “a nice day?”

“No,” my reply used to be; “it’s a dreadful day. It’s blowy, and it’s going to rain.” And I would warn my mother that my sister Amy, or that child, was likely to grow up into a liar.

But, as I have tried to hint, beauty was Elaine’s, and when she spoke of the weather I used to feel sorry for everybody who had lived in the olden times, from yesterday back to the afternoon Adam told Eve that no matter how hot it was they always got a breeze, before there was any weather at all.

It wasn’t only the weather. We used to agree on other things. Once when she met a schoolgirl friend in Hyde Park whom she hadn’t seen since a year ago, out in Lake View, she said that it was a small world after all, and I told her she never said a truer word. And about golf—she didn’t think, she said one day, that it was as strenuous as tennis, but it certainly took you out in the open air—well, that was how I felt about it, too. So you see it wasn’t just the weather, though at that time I thought that would be enough.

Well, one day we were walking along, and she looked at me and said, “I wonder if you’d like me so much if I weren’t pretty.”

It came over me that I shouldn’t.

“No,” I said, “I should say not.”

“That’s the first honest thing you ever said to me,” she said.

“No, it isn’t,” I said.

“It is, too,” was her rejoinder.

“It’s nothing of the kind,” I said.

“Yes, it is!” she said, her petulant temper getting the better of her.

So we parted on that, and I often think how lucky I am to have escaped from Elaine’s distrust of honesty, and from her violent and passionate temper.

Maude

Maude and I might have been happy together. She was not the kind you couldn’t be candid with. She used to say she admired honesty and sincerity above all other traits. And she was deeply interested in me, which was natural enough, as I had no reservations, no reticences from her. I believed that when you cared about a girl it was wrong to have secrets from her.

And that was her policy, too, though now and then she carried it too far. One day I telephoned her and asked her what she had been doing that morning.

“I’ve been reading the most fascinating book,” she said.

“What book?” I asked politely.

“I can’t remember the title,” she said, “but it’s about a man in love with a girl, and he——”

“Who wrote it?” I interrupted.

“Wait a minute,” said Maude. I waited four minutes. “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said. “I mislaid the book. I thought I left it in my room and I looked all around for it, and then I asked Hulda if she’d seen it, and she said no, though I asked her that the other day about something else, and she said no, and later I found out that she had seen it and put it in a drawer, so I went to the library and the book wasn’t there, and then I went back to my room and looked again, and I was just coming back to tell you I couldn’t find it when here it is, guess where, right on the telephone stand. Who wrote it? Hutchison is the author. A. M. S.—no, wait a minute—A. S. M. Hutchinson, not Hutchison. There’s an ‘n’ in it. Two ‘n’s’ really. But I mean an ‘n’ between the ‘i’ and the ‘s.’ I mean it’s Hut-chin-son, and not Hut-chi-son. But what’s the difference who writes a book as long as it’s a good book?”

There may have been more, but I was reasonably certain that the author’s name was Hutchinson, so I hung up the receiver, though the way I felt at the time was that hanging was too good for it.

I had dinner with her that night at a restaurant.

“Coffee?” asked the waiter.

“No,” I said. And to her: “Coffee keeps me awake. If I took a cup now I wouldn’t close an eye all night. Some folks can drink it and not notice it, but take me; I’m funny that way, and if I took a cup now I wouldn’t close an eye all night. Some can, and some can’t. I like it, but it doesn’t like me. Ha, ha! I wouldn’t close an eye all night, and if I don’t get my sleep—and a good eight hours at that—I’m not fit for a thing all the next day. It’s a pretty important thing, sleep; and——”

It was important to Maude, self-centred thing that she was. Here was I confiding to her something I never had told another soul, and she wasn’t merely dozing; she was asleep. I rattled a knife against a plate, and she awoke.

It was a good thing I found out about her in time.

Anne

In winter, when the ground was white,
I thought that Anne would be all right;
In summer, quite the other way,
I knew she’d never be O. K.

She liked to go to the theatre, but what she went for was to be amused, as there was enough sadness in real life without going to the theatre for it. She told me that I was just a great big boy; that all men, in fact, were just little boys grown up. I took her to a movie show, and she read most of the captions to me, slowly; and when she read them to herself her lips moved. She never took a drink in days of old when booze was sold and barrooms held their sway—that is my line, not Anne’s—but now she takes a cocktail when one is offered, saying, “This may be my last chance.” Women, she told me, didn’t like her much, but she didn’t care, as she was, she always said, a man’s woman. Just the same, folks said, she told me, that she was wonderful in a sick room.

And so, what with the movies and one thing and another the winter passed. She was glad I was a tennis player, and we’d have some exciting sets in the summer. No, she said games. I should have known then, but I was thinking of her hair and how cool it was to stroke.

Well, one May afternoon there we were on the tennis court. It belonged to a friend of hers, and it hadn’t been rolled recently, nor marked, though you could tell that here a base line and there a service line once had been.

I asked her which court she wanted and she said it didn’t matter; she played equally rottenly on both sides. Nor was that, I found it, overstating things. She served, and called “Ready?” before each service. When she sent a ball far outside she called “Home run!” or “Just out!” And if I served a double fault she said either “Two bad” or “Thank you.” When the score was deuce she called it “Juice!” And when I beat her 6-0—as you could have done, or you, or even you—she said she was off her game, that it was a lot closer than the score indicated, that she’d beat me before the summer was over, that didn’t the net seem terribly low or something, and that I wasn’t used to playing with women or I wouldn’t hit the ball so hard all the time.

Little remains to be told. Anne is now the wife of a golfing banker. Wednesday night I met her at a party.

“Golf?” she echoed. “Oh, yes. That is, I don’t play it; I play at it. Tennis is really my game, but I haven’t had a racket in my hand in two years. We must have some of our games again. I nearly beat you last time, remember.”

Flo

I hadn’t seen Flo since she was about fourteen, so when I got a letter asking me to call I said I’d go. She was pretty, but the older I get the fewer girls I see that aren’t.

Of course I ought to have known. The letter was addressed with a “For” preceding my name, instead of “City” or the name of the town, Flo had written “Local.” Even a professional detective should have known then.

It was just her refined vocabulary that sent me reeling into the night. She wondered where I “resided” and how long I’d been “located” there; she had “purchased” something; she said “gowned” when she meant “dressed”; she had “gotten” tired, she said, of affectation. She said she had “retired” early the night before, and she spoke of a “boot-limber.”

And as I was leaving she said, “Don’t remain away so long this time. Er—you know—hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

Belinda

I remember Belinda. She was arguing with another young woman about the car fare. “Let me pay,” said Belinda; and she paid.

“There,” I mused, “is a perfect woman, nobly planned.”

I met her shortly after that, and she came through many a test. Once I saw her go up to an elevated railroad station, hand in a nickel, and not say, “One, please.” Once I asked her about what day it was, and she said “Wednesday” without adding “All day.” She spoke once of a cultivated taste without adding “like olives,” and once said “That’s another story” without adding “as Kipling says.” And once—and that was the day I nearly begged her to be mine—when she said that something had been grossly exaggerated she failed to giggle “like the report of Mark Twain’s death.”

So you see Belinda had points. She had a dog that wasn’t more intelligent than most human beings; she wasn’t forever saying that there was no reason why a man and a woman shouldn’t be just good pals; she didn’t put me at ease, the way the others did, by looking at me for three minutes and then saying that good looks didn’t matter much to a man, after all; she didn’t, when you gave her something, take it and say coyly, “For me?” as who should say, “You dear thoughtful thing, when you might have brought it for John D. Rockefeller.” And she didn’t say that she couldn’t draw a straight line or that she had no card sense or that she couldn’t write a decent letter.

She could write a decent letter. She did. Lots of them. To me, too. She wrote the best letters I ever read. They were intelligent, humorous, and—why shouldn’t I tell the truth?—ardent. Fervid is nearer. Candescent is not far off. And that is how I lost her.

“P. S.” she wrote. “Burn this letter, and all of them.”

A few weeks later Belinda said, “At the rate I write you, my letters must fill a large drawer by this time.”

“Why,” I said, “I burn them. They’re all burned.”

“I never want to see you again as long as I live,” she said. “Good-by.”

And my good-by was the last communication between me and Belinda.

Blanche

Blanche is a girl
I’d hate to wed,
Because of a lot
Of things she said.

“Excuse my French”
When she says “Gee-whiz!”
On the telephone:
“Guess who this is.”

You ask her did
She like the show
Or book, she’ll say,
“Well, yes and no.”

For the “kiddie” she
Buys a “comfy” “nighty”;
She says “My bestest,”
And “All rightie.”

“If I had no humour,
I’d simply die,”
Says Blanche.... I know
That that’s a lie.

She wouldn’t marry;
“Oh, heaven forbid!
“Men are such brutes!”
You said it, kid.

Marguerite

Marguerite was an agreer. She strove, and not without success, to please. She hated an argument, one reason perhaps being—I found this out later—that she couldn’t put one forth on any subject. But I had theories, in the days of Marguerite, and I wanted to know whether she was in sympathy with them. One of my theories was that a lot of domestic infelicity could be avoided if a husband didn’t keep his business affairs to himself, if he made a confidante, a possible assistant, of his wife. I had contempt for the women whose boast it was that Fred never brings business into the house.

So I used to talk to Marguerite about that theory. When we were married wouldn’t it be better to discuss the affairs of the business day at home with her? Certainly. Because simply talking about them was something, and maybe she could even help. Yes, that was what a wife was for. Why should a man keep his thoughts bottled up just because his wife wasn’t in his office with him? No reason at all; I agree with you perfectly.

About politics: Wasn’t this man Harding doing a good job, and weren’t things looking pretty good, everything considered? He certainly is and they certainly are, was Marguerite’s adroit summing up.

Well, I had theories about books and child labour and pictures and clam chowder and Harry Leon Wilson’s stuff and music and the younger generation and cord tires and things like that, and she’d agree with everything I said.

Then one night, as in a vision, something came to me. I had a theory that it would be terrible to have somebody around all the time who agreed with you about everything. Marguerite agreed.

I had another theory. Don’t you agree, I put it, that we shouldn’t get along at all well? And never had she agreed more quickly. I thought she really put her heart into it.

And we never should have hit it off, either.

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Table of Contents

- MEN I’M NOT MARRIED TO

- CONTENTS

- MEN I’M NOT MARRIED TO

- L’Envoi
- Freddie
- Mortimer
- Raymond
- Charlie
- Lloyd
- Henry
- Joe
- Oliver
- Albert

- WOMEN I’M NOT MARRIED TO

- CONTENTS

- WOMEN I’M NOT MARRIED TO

- L’Envoi
- Elaine
- Maude
- Anne
- Flo
- Belinda
- Blanche
- Marguerite
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE