"One for week days and one for—holidays?" inquired the widow sarcastically.
"Yes," acquiesced the bachelor, "one for each side of him, the tame side and the untamed side. One to serve as a harbor and make him a home and fulfill his domestic longings and bring up his children and keep him sane and moral; and the other to amuse him and entertain him and inspire him and put the trimmings on life and the spice and flavor in the matrimonial dish."
"A sedative and a stimulant!" jeered the widow. "One to stir you up and one to calm you down; one to spur you forward and one to pull on the curb—a Hebe and a Minerva! And then you'd be running around demanding a Venus to make you forget the other two. Whatever woman a man marries, he invariably spends his life sighing for something different. If he is tied to a nice, soft sofa pillow, he longs for a backbone. If he marries a parlor ornament, he yearns for a kitchen utensil. If his wife has a Greek nose, he discovers afterward that what he really admires is pugs. If he picks out red hair or black, he will go blocks out of his way to pursue every yellow glint that catches his eye. And if he married a whole harem at once he would discover that what he really wanted was monogamy, and a single wife with a single idea. There aren't enough kinds of women in the world to fulfill any one man's idea of what a wife should be."
"And yet," sighed the bachelor, "I once knew a woman who would have done that—all by herself."
The widow looked unconvinced.
"Was she a model wife?" she inquired, skeptically.
"How do I know?" said the bachelor. "She wasn't my wife."
"Of course not!" cried the widow. "It is always the other man's wife who is our ideal——"
"She wasn't my ideal," protested the bachelor. "She was the storm that shattered my ideal and spoiled me for matrimony. She was a whole garage, a whole stable, a whole harem in one."
The widow looked distinctly disapproving.