“'Say!' says Joe to Wild Willie as he toins her mug to his an' smacks her onct for luck, 'I won't do a t'ing but make it a t'ousand dollars in d' kecks of them ducks who's doin' that song. I'll woik d' dough to 'em be some of d' boys, see!'”
BINKS AND MRS. B.
BINKS was an excellent man, hard-working and sober. He made good money and took it home to his wife for her judgment to settle its fate; every dollar of it. Mrs. Binks was a woman among a thousand. When taken separate and apart from his wife and questioned, Binks said she was a “corker.” Binks declined all attempts at definition, and beyond insisting that Mrs. Binks was and would remain a “corker,” said nothing.
From what was told of Mrs. Binks by herself, it would seem that she was a true, loving wife to Binks, and that, aside from the duty every woman owed to her sex and the establishment of its rights in all avenues of life, she held that with the wedding ring came a list of duties due from a good woman to her husband, which could not be avoided nor gone about.
“Some women,” quoth Mrs. B., “worry their husbands with a detail of small matters. A woman who is to be a helpmeet to her husband, such as I am to Binks, will be self-reliant and decide things for herself. In the little cares of life which fall to her share, let her go forward in her own strength. What is the use of adding her troubles to his? If she has plans, let her execute them. If problems confront her, let her solve them. If she tells her husband aught of the thousand little enterprises of her daily home life, then let it be the result. When success has come to her, she may call her husband to witness the victory. Aside from that she should face her responsibilities alone.”
Of course Mrs. B. did not mean by all this that she would not be open and frank with Binks, and confide in him if a burglar were in the house, or if the roof took fire in the night that she would not arouse Binks and mention it. What she did mean was that when it came to such things as dismissing the servant girl, the wife should gird up her loins and “fire” the maiden singlehanded, and not ring her husband in on a play, manifestly disagreeable, and likely to subject him to great remorse.
It chanced recently that an opportunity opened like a gate for Mrs. B. to illustrate her doctrine that wives should proceed in a plain duty alone, without imposing needless anxiety on the head of the family.
Mrs. Binks had decided to visit her sister in Hoboken. She was to go Thursday, and Binks, who was paid his sweat-bought stipend on Monday, was to furnish the money Monday evening wherewith to make the trip.