FOREWORD

A SMALL phial, I doubt not, could contain the attar of the epigrammatic literature of all time. Few of the perfumes of this diminutive form of wit and satire have survived. Pretty and scented vaporings, most of the thousands and thousands of them, that have died on the air of the foibles of their day.

Yet how the pungent ones can persist! The racy old odors, which are as new as now, that still hover about the political and amorous quips of the Greeks. The nose-crinkling ones of the French, more vinegar-acrid than perfumed, although a seventeenth-century proverb calls France "a monarchy tempered by epigrams." The didactic Teutonic ones, sharply corrosive.

The greatest evaporative of course of this form of bon mot is mere cleverness. Wit is the attar which endures. The wit of Pope and Catullus, Landor, Voltaire, Rousseau and Wilde.

That is what Rapin must have had in mind when he said that a man ought to be content if he succeeded in writing one really good epigram.

Helen Rowland stands pleasantly impeached for writing many. She has a whizz to her swiftly cynical arrow that entitles her to a place in the tournament.

She is not merely anagrammatical, scorns the couplet for the mere sake of the couplet, and has little time for the smiting word at any price.

In the entire history of epigrammatic expression there are few if any whose fame rests solely upon the brittle structure of the bon mot. Martial, about whose brilliant brevities can scarcely be said to hover the odor of sanctity, is, I suppose, remembered solely as a wielder of the barbed word.

Miss Rowland is balanced skilfully upon that same slender trapeze, doing a very deft bow-and-arrow act, her archery of a high order.

She wields a wicked bow, a kindly bow, a swift, a sure, a ductile bow.

Matrimony is her favorite target (so was it Bombo's and Herrick's and even political Parnell had his shot at it) and her little winged arrows are often bitingly pointed with philosophy, satire, wit and sometimes just a touch of good old home-brew American hokum.

For this wise woman with the high-spirited bow behind her arrow, these little pages speak eloquently.

FANNIE HURST.

OVERTURE

 
Would you your sweetheart's secret seek to spell?
There are so many little ways to tell!
A hair, perhaps, shall prove him false or true —
A single hair upon his coat lapel!
 

PRELUDE

THE sweetest part of a kiss is the moment just before taking.

Love is misery – sweetened with imagination, salted with tears, spiced with doubt, flavored with novelty, and swallowed with your eyes shut.

Marriage is the miracle that transforms a kiss from a pleasure into a duty, and a lie from a luxury into a necessity.

A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted.

A man's heart is like a barber shop in which the cry is always, "NEXT!"

The discovery of rice-powder on his coat-lapel makes a college-boy swagger, a bachelor blush, and a married man tremble.

It takes one woman twenty years to make a man of her son – and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him.

By the time a man has discovered that he is in love with a woman, she is usually so fagged out waiting for the phenomenon, that she is ready to topple right over into his arms from sheer exhaustion.

A man always asks for "just one kiss" – because he knows that, if he can get that, the rest will come without asking.

Somehow, the moment a man has surrendered the key of his heart to a woman, he begins to think about changing the lock.

There are only two ages, at which a man faces the altar without a shudder; at twenty when he doesn't know what's happening to him – and at eighty when he doesn't care.

THE REFRAIN

 
THERE'S so much saint in the worst of them,
And so much devil in the best of them,
That a woman who's married to one of them,
Has nothing to learn of the rest of them.
 

SOMEHOW, JUST AT THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT WHEN A BACHELOR FANCIES THAT HE IS GOING TO DIE FOR LOVE OF A WOMAN, ANOTHER WOMAN ALWAYS COMES ALONG AND INTERRUPTS HIM

BACHELORS

THE modern bachelor is like a blotting pad; he can soak up all the sentiment and flattery a woman has to offer him, without ever spilling a drop.

A confirmed bachelor is so sure of his ability to dodge, that he is willing to amuse every pretty girl he meets, by handing her a rope and daring her to catch him.

A bachelor is a large body of egotism, completely surrounded by caution and fortified at all points by suspicion. His chief products are wild oats and cynicism; his chief industry is dodging matrimony; his undeviating policy "Protection!" and his watch-word, "Give me liberty or give me death!"

The average bachelor is so afraid of falling into matrimony, nowadays, that he sprinkles the path of love with ashes instead of with roses.

The care with which a bachelor chaperones himself would inspire even the duenna of a fashionable boarding school with envy.

A bachelor's idea of "safety first" consists in getting tangled up with a lot of women in order to avoid getting tied up to one.

He is an altruist who refrains from devoting himself to one woman in order that he may scatter sweetness and light amongst the multitude.

There is nothing quite so intriguing to a bachelor as flirting with the "idea of marriage" – with his fingers crossed. He just loves to "consider marrying" in the abstract and to go about pitying himself for being so "lonely."

There are three kinds of bachelors: the kind that must be driven into matrimony with a whip; the kind that must be coaxed with sugar; and the kind that must be blindfolded and backed into the shafts.

If you want to be chosen to brighten a bachelor's life, first make it dark and dreary; so long as women are willing to make his existence one long sweet song, naturally he isn't anxious to exchange it for a lullaby.

When a man actually asks a girl to marry him in these days of bachelor comforts and the deification of single-blessedness, she has a revelation of human unselfishness that stands as the eighth wonder of the world.

That tired expression on a bachelor's face is not so often the result of brain-fag from an overworked mind as of heart-fag from overworking the emotions.

Lovers look at life through rose-colored curtains; old bachelors see it through a fog.

Somehow, a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever!

A bachelor fancies that it is his wonderful sixty-horse will-power that keeps him from marrying, whereas it is nothing but his little one-horse won't-power.

One consolation in marrying a bachelor over forty is that he has fought so long and so hard to escape the hook that there is no more fight left in him.

Never give up hope as long as a bachelor declares definitely, "No woman can get me!" Wait until he is so sure of his immunity that he sighs regretfully, "No woman will have me!"

The "vicious circle" in a bachelor's opinion, is the platinum one on a woman's third finger.

A Bachelor of Arts is one who makes love to a lot of women, and yet has the art to remain a bachelor.

FIRST INTERLUDE

IN the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns – and turns – and turns!

There are lots of "sure cures" for love, but the quickest and surest is —another love.

If there were only two women and one man in the world, the man would marry the brunette and then spend the rest of his life peeping over her shoulder and trying to flirt with the blonde.

A woman always embalms the corpse of a dead love; a man wisely cremates it, and plants a new love in the ashes.

A fool and her money are soon courted.

A woman's pity for a man who loves her against her will may be akin to love; but a man's pity for a woman who loves him without his permission is a twin brother to boredom.

Marriage is the miracle which affords a woman a chance to gratify her vanity, pacify her family, mortify her rivals, and electrify her friends, all at the same time. Marriage is sweet!

Love is what incites the caveman to drag a woman around by the hair and makes the civilized man permit a woman to drag him around by the nose.

The heart of a woman is a secret sanctuary where she is constantly burning incense and candles before a succession of idols of clay.

Nowadays, a man's faith in women and heaven seems to disappear with his milk-teeth and to reappear again with his false teeth.

To most men "repentance" is merely the interval between the headache and the next temptation.

Most bachelors regard the "flower of love" as a species of poison ivy.

Even Satan could find a woman to call him "Dearie," if he would simply tell her that all he needed was "a beautiful woman's uplifting influence."

A man may be guilty of stealing a girl's heart, but he always feels hurt and indignant if she refuses to take it back again after he has finished with it.

Woman's love – a mirror in which a man beholds himself glorified, magnified and deified.

Always try to be the "guiding star" of a man's life, but never make the mistake of fancying that you are his whole planetary system.

A woman must keep her conscience, her complexion and her reputation snow-white. But a man is satisfied if he can just manage to keep his so that they comply with the pure food laws.

Art is inspiring, but you can't run your fingers through its hair; a career is absorbing, but you can't tie ribbons on the curls of your brain-children; work is ennobling, but, alas, it hasn't got a shoulder to cry on!

When a girl refuses to kiss a man he is never disconcerted; he is merely astonished that she could be so blind to her own feelings.

A summer resort is a place where a girl spends half her time in making herself alluring – and the other half in yearning for something to "lure."

When a girl marries a man she is sadly aware that all his old sweethearts are wondering how she did it, and that all her old sweethearts are wondering why.

Marriage will never be safe until we stop making it an "ideal" and begin trying to make it a square deal.

Just before marriage a man's coat lapel acquires that grayish look which comes from the constant contact with face powder, but it's wonderful how soon it brightens up and gets back its natural color after the wedding.

Love is like appendicitis; you never know when nor how it is going to strike you – the only difference being that, after one attack of appendicitis, your curiosity is perfectly satisfied.

No matter how many men have tried to flirt with her, a girl will step cheerfully up to the altar in the firm belief that she has found the one perfect human being in trousers who will never look at another woman.

After marriage, a woman's sight becomes so keen that she can see right through her husband without looking at him, and a man's so dull that he can look right through his wife without seeing her.

A man recuperates so much more quickly from his remorse than a woman does from her indignation that by the time she has forgiven him he is tired of being good and ready to sin again.

Before marriage, a man will go home and lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage, he'll go to sleep before you finish saying it.

A man can never understand how a woman gets so much joy out of leading him all the way to the threshold of love and then sweetly closing the door in his face.

Solitaire – the married woman's game.

A man's greatest conquest is self-conquest; his greatest possession, self-possession; and his greatest love – Oh, well, you fill in the rest.

Why does a man take it for granted that a girl who flirts with him wants him to kiss her – when, nine times out of ten, she only wants him to want to kiss her?

Plunging into a hasty marriage in order to escape from a foolish entanglement is like rushing under a trolley car in order to escape from a taxicab.

Nowadays a girl's favorite way of committing suicide for love of a man, is to marry him and worry herself to death over him.

A good wife is always her husband's "guide, philosopher and friend"; also his guardian, digestion, conscience, time-table and valet.

A man never knows how to say goodby; a woman never knows when to say it.

A woman's greatest "right" is the right husband.

A woman might forgive a man for all his sins; it's that stained-glass attitude with which he decides to "give them up" when he is tired of them that exasperates her so.

A MAN DOESN'T WANT A WIFE WHO PLACES HIM ON A PEDESTAL OR KEEPS HIM ON A FOOTSTOOL, BUT ONE WHO WILL TAKE HIM AS A MERE MAN – AND LET HIM GO ON BEING "MERE"