HOT SKETCH NO. 16
The Benedict Who Wisdomed-Up
MARK McMARK was one of those good-lord-look-at-this-desk Business Bees that fish their noonday grub out of a Pie Incubator and rush up and pay what they think is approximately correct, and then snap back to their offices like a rubber band.
When it came to Fortune Farming, Mark McMark was cutting a good clean furrow and he was as happy as the day is wide. In spite of this, he decided to get married.
He did not first make up his mind to rivet-up, and then roll up his sleeves and go out on a hunt for the girl.
On the contrary Mark had a keen contempt of large circumference for that type of male kanoop that sits around his bachelor dugout until the microbe of Melancholy begins to take up its winter quarters in his corrugated heart, and then decides he wants a Home and goes out and sizes up every girl he meets like a bumpkin in to buy a bullock.
Mark believed that Love chases not her own. He said that for every masculine mammal there was a feminine complement browsing somewhere along Life’s ranch, and that all you had to do was to stick around and the Right One would loom up over the hills before sunset.
There was no doubt in Mark’s mind that the Right One had credentialed in his case. He said he could tell it in any one of a dozen ways, no matter who held the cards. He was so german-sure about it that he began to get sort of section-boss with all his bachelor friends and told them that they were only Half Men and he spread considerable First Lesson Philosophy wherever he went.
All the married men in the office used to sit tightly non-commital when Mark raved. Their silence was about as quiet as a Miners Protest Meeting but it got right by Mark every time. He just kept on baiting everybody and maintained that no Business Man ever worked at maximum efficiency until he was buckled and had a man’s responsibility and some incentive to spur him on to Greater Achievement.