Threads of Grey and Gold

by Myrtle Reed

And we wish that when the proper time comes for you to speak your mind you’d try to do it artistically. Of course you can’t write it, unless you are far away from her, for if you can manage an opportunity to speak, a resort to the pen is cowardly. And don’t mind our evading the subject—we always do that on principle, but please don’t be scared, or at least don’t show it, whatever you may feel. If there is one thing a woman dislikes more than another it is a man who shows cowardice at the crucial point in life.

Every man, except yourself, dear reader, is conceited. And one particular sort of it makes us very, very weary. You are so blinded by your own perfections, so sure that we are desperately in love with you, that you sometimes give us little unspoken suggestions to that effect, and then our disgust is beyond words.

Another cowardly thing you sometimes do, and that is to say that we have spoiled your life—that we could have made you anything we pleased—and that you are going straight to perdition. If one woman is all that keeps you from going to ruin, you have secured a through ticket anyway, and it’s too late to save you. You don’t want a woman who might marry you only out of pity, and you are not going to die of a broken heart. Men die of broken vanity, sometimes, but their hearts are pretty tough, being made of healthy muscle.

You get married very much as you go down town in the morning. You run, like all possessed, until you catch your car, and then you sit down and read your newspaper. When you think your wife looks unusually well, it would not hurt you in the least to tell her so, and the way you leave her in the morning is going to settle her happiness for the day, though she may be too proud to let you know that it makes any difference. Women are quick to detect a sham, and they don’t want you to say anything that you don’t feel, but you are pretty sure to feel tenderly toward her sometimes, careless though you may be, and then is the time to tell her so. You don’t want to wait until she is dead, and then buy a lily to put on her coffin. You’d better bring her the lily some time when you’ve been cross and grumpy.

But don’t imagine that a present of any kind ever atones for a hurt that has been given in words. There’s nothing you can say which is more manly or which will do you both so much good as the simple “forgive me” when you have been wrong.

Rest assured, gentlemen, that you who spend the most of your evenings in other company, and too often find fault with your meals when you come home, are the cause of many sorrowful talks among the women who are wise enough to know, even though your loyal wife may put up a brave front in your defense.

How often do you suppose the brave woman who loves you has been actually driven in her agony to some married friend whom she can trust and upon her sympathetic bosom has cried until she could weep no more, simply because of your thoughtless neglect? How often do you think she has planned little things to make your home-coming pleasant, which you have never noticed? And how often do you suppose she has desperately fought down the heartache and tried to believe that your absorption in business is the reason for your forgetfulness of her?

Do you ever think of these things? Do you ever think of the days before you were sure of her, when you treasured every line of her letters, and would have bartered your very hopes of heaven for the earthly life with her?

But perhaps you can hardly be expected to remember the wild sprint that you made from the breakfast table to the street-car.