Tag Archives: family

Keep the Reform Fires Burning

Ring Lardner

The Morning Union/January 30, 1921

Several people has wrote to me lately complaining that they hasn’t been no new reforms suggested in the land of the free in the last couple of Wks, and it begins to look like the boys that takes care of our morals was loafing on the job and why didn’t I step in and give them some new idears to work on. 

Well, I can name a whole lot of things that could stand a trip to the cleaners only you can’t expect to reform everything at once, and you half to pick out one to start in on so why not begin with the advertising business which some of my best friends is mixed up in it, but when the public welfare is conserned a man shouldn’t let personal feelings interfere. They’s plenty of room for a moral uplift amongst the boys and gals that writes our ads and a man don’t realize how much till you make a study of it like I done. 

The way I come to get Interested in it was last fall when I was talking to a friend of mine that writes ads and I was telling him how hard it is to make both ends meet the other and he asked me why didn’t I try and write ads too which he says they was good money in it. 

So I told him I couldn’t never be a ad writer because I haven’t got no imagination, so he says that is the last thing a man needs to write ads because when you write them now days for a first class consern they won’t let you tell nothing but the truth about their goods and further and more if you don’t tell the truth the high class magazines won’t print the ads. 

So I says do you mean to say that all the ads you read in the magazines is nothing but facts, and he says you bet they are and I will give you a dollar for every miss statement you find in them so I asked him what he considered was the high class magazines and he named a few of them and I bought them and when I didn’t have nothing else to do I looked through them at the ads. Well friends, if I had of tooken this bird up on his offer he could of paid his sir tax with the change from a ruble. 

One of the first ads I run acrost was a ad of a cold cream and the people that makes it is A. No. 1 and O. K. but here is how the ad started out.

Most of us can remember when our mothers or grand mothers on retiring used to take with them to their rooms a saucer of fresh cream.

Well personly I didn’t remember no such a thing but I wanted to make it a fair test so I chose 10 people at random and says to. them one at a time: 

“Can you remember when your mother or grand mother on retiring used to take with them to their room a saucer of fresh cream?”

Six out of the 10 replied with the short and ugly word “no!” Three of them give me a dirty look and the other says: 

“I have heard that, one!” 

Investigating Further.

I come to a ad of a winter top for cars that for all as I know it may be a good winter top, but the ad says: “Bad weather is the time you need your car most.”

So I asked 4 guys when they needed their car most and 3 of them says in summer when its the golf season and the other one says whenever it’s laid up in the garage. And wile we are talking about automobile accessorys, they was another ad that said:

“Every owner wants his gold initials on side door of his automobile.” 

I made inquirys about this from 3 birds that owns cars and couldn’t get a civil answer out of none of them. 

Then they was a ad that said: 

“No gift from a father to a son could be more sensible than a razor.” 

I didn’t halt to make no inquirys about that as I have got 4 sons of my own and its just a question in my mind whether it would be more sensible to give them a razor or lock them up in a room with a mad dog.

And speaking about razors they was a shaving cream that they claimed made shaving a pleasure, but I will bet that even when the men that makes it and gets it for nothing, I bet when they are through their work and out for a good time they don’t run home and shave themselfs all the evening or they don’t never think of spending their vacation removeing thir wiskers with this here cream.

Another ad sung the praises of a certain mince meat and it said down at the bottom “Thursday is pie day and as such is observed nationally.”

Well friends how many of you gets every Thursday off or tends church services once a wk. in honor of mince meat and how many of you goes around all day Thursday saying, “Merry Pie Day,” to your friends?

“Cleanliness brings happiness and good cheer” is another bold statement which it looks like it was open to question.

For inst. I got 4 people right here in the house that ain’t happy if they ain’t dirty, and just the idear of getting cleaned up is enough to send then into a tantrums. 

Then I come acrost 2 ads of musical instruments one of which I happen to know about personly myself. It says:

“You can double your income, your pleasure and your popularity with a saxaphone.” Well one of them things was give to me 2 yrs. ago and so far my income ain’t nowheres near double,. and in the second place I can enjoy a good show or a fight just as much or even more so if I leave my saxaphone home, and as far as popularity is conserned I kind of feel like maybe we would have more callers if we traded this elegant instrument for a couple bottles of Scotch.

Ukelele Player Lonesome.

The other ad said: 

“If you can play quaint dreamy Hawaiian music or latest songs on the ukelele you will be wanted everywhere.” 

Well, I know a bird that can do that little thing and I can name 100 places he ain’t wanted, to none where he is wanted, and if the mail man didn’t have nothing to do but deliver this guy’s invitations they would lock him up as vagrant. 

And another one was the washing machine ad.

It says: 

“For a mother, young or old, no gift could be better proof of thoughtful affection.”

I know mothers both young and old that if you handed them any kind of a washing machine they would show their appreciation of your thoughtful affection with a wallop in the jaw. 

Those is only a few samples but they are enough to convince me that the advertising game is far from pure and I don’t see why the lords day alliance or somebody don’t get busy and not only make these guys tell the truth about their goods but make them tell the whole truth. 

For inst., if they are advertising say the Perfect Cord Tire, why let their ad read:

“The Perfect Cord sells for $70 and it’s pretty near as good as a $75 tire. It is a non-skid tire when the car is standing still on a dry road and it don’t hardly ever get a puncture unless you run over a mall or something. The Perfect Tire is guaranteed for 6000 miles which means that if one of them blows out when you haven’t only drove it 1000 miles, why take it to one of our agents and try to get a new one.”

Or if they was advertising a car itself: 

“The price of the Echo Six complete is $1685 F. O. B. Albany, meaning that if you live way off somewheres like Utica the chassis won’t only cost you $1750 and then all as you half to buy is a body and a steering wheel and a couple spare tires. The 7 passenger model has room for 3 grown ups and a weasel. The Echo don’t need no patent safety locking device. Her looks is her protection.”

That is the way to make them advertise, gents, and when you get a system like that working, they won’t be no more pitifull cases like the poor sap I spoke of that went and learned how to play quaint dreamy Hawaiian music on a ukulele and there’s only one place he is ever asked to go. 

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The Charity Bill

H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/May 4, 1910

What does it cost Lord Baltimore, in hard cash and by the year, to be so charitable? How much does he dole out to his unfortunates and his incompetents? Two millions? Five? Six? Ten? No one seems to know; no records are kept by any central authority. The money comes pouring in from the State and city treasuries, from endowments and from private contributions, and it is poured out again in the same lavish manner. No one seems to have any authority to inquire into either its collection or its expenditure. How much, for instance, does the Salvation Army, with its junk wagons and its organized begging, rake in every twelve-month? And what is done with the money? 

Some notion of the colossal cost of public charities in a city the size of Baltimore may be gained from the fact that there are, at present, more than 30 orphan asylums within the city limits—all crowded and nearly all constantly asking for aid. In addition, there are no less than 39 hospitals, most of which receive the poor without charge, and 23 free dispensaries. Finally, there are 30 “homes” of various species—for the aged, the insane and the crippled, for out-of-works, convalescents and veterans of the wars. 

Who is The Gainer?

Who profits by all of this outpouring of alms? Certainly not the average, hardworking, thrifty Baltimorean. The thousands given to the local hospitals, for example, bring him no personal benefit. If he falls sick himself he must pay for lodging and attendance—and the bill he gets is ordinarily so large that paying it keeps him on short commons for a year afterward.

At one of the largest local hospitals, I am informed, the minimum charge for a private room is now $30 a week. If the patient is so ill that he needs a special nurse he must pay her $25 a week more, and give the hospital $6 or $7 a week for boarding her. And, in addition, be must pay his own private physician for visiting him, and must meet the staggering hills of the surgeons, learned consultants and other pundits called in to give aid. 

What does the patient get with his $30 room? Little more than the tiny, cheerless room itself and the few victuals his agonies permit him to eat. True enough, he has the services of a day and night staff nurse, and of the hospital’s staff of resident physicians, but each of those staff nurses has ten or a dozen other patients, to look after, and most of those resident physicians are both extremely young and extremely busy. If the patient is sick enough to need real nursing, he must hire his own nurse. The result is a copious outpouring of his currency. Six weeks in hospital are just about as expensive as six weeks in Europe.

It is but natural then to assume that the hospitals make enormous profits on their private patients—profits beside which the gains of a Washington hotelkeeper on Inauguration Day must seem puny. But do these profits go into the pockets of the eminent chirurgeons who run them? Very seldom. Nine times out of ten those gentlemen get little more than glory out of their endeavors. The real beneficiaries, of course, are the free patients—and fully half of the latter are shiftless negroes. 

The Dependent African.

The city negro, as everyone knows, is a far from healthy animal. Maladies serious and trivial constantly pester him, and he is an incessant patron of the dispensaries and free wards. Of the 90,000 odd negroes in Baltimore it is probable that not 10,000 ever pay for medical attendance. Why should they? They are able to get all of it they need, with medicines, board in hospital and nursing thrown in, without money and without price. 

Ambitious and skillful young surgeons stand ready to excise their appendices free of charge: there are free beds for them in comfortable wards; they may have all of the castor oil and quinine pills they care to swallow for the mere asking; and if, perchance, their assiduous swallowing reduces them to helpless invalidism, there are agreeable and salubrious asylums for them, wherein the struggle for existence need not worry them.

The light-hearted Afro-Baltimorean, indeed, is the chief beneficiary of Lord Baltimore’s charity. Sick or well, his hand is always out. He comes into the world under the benign auspices of the public treasury, he is fed and clothed at the public expense whenever he approaches starvation or orphan asylums, almshouses and jails; he is boarded and lodged and is given the best of care when he is sick, and when, finally, he goes to his reward, the city stands ready to relieve his relatives of the expense of burying him.

Many a Baltimore darky who earns say, $200 a year by his occasional labors, gets as much more from the public in the form of charity. The sojourn in hospital, which would cost a well-to-do white man $500, costs the lowly ex-chattel not a cent. Directly or indirectly, he is constantly profiting by the industry and greater efficiency of his betters. What his average annual profit in that direction comes to it is hard to say, but it cannot be much less than $100 a year. Accepting that as a fair estimate, and assuming the number of aided negroes to be 25,000—certainly no extravagant guess—the annual cost to the city works out to $2,500,000 a year. 

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Money Could Be Made to Talk Louder Than It Does

Ring Lardner

Duluth News Tribune/January 23,1921

I have about given up hope of getting any answer to all the letters I been writing to Pres. Harding, and it begins to look like he either had the writers cramps from signing caddie’s cards and the doctors is keeping his condition a secret, either that or he never got my letters as I didn’t put down no St. number and maybe the mail carrier in Marion don’t know which is his house. But whatever the trouble is, the time has past for monkey business and I and my friends has decided to appeal to the voters to go to the front in my behalf and they will not only be doing me a favor but themselfs as well, because if the people don’t step in and make my fight their fight, the pres. elect is lible to surround himself with the same kind of male help we been enjoying for the past 8 yrs, and the coming administration will be another dud.

Therefore I and my friends request all right thinking Americans to write to their congressmen in words of one syllable and ask them to bring pressures to bare on Mr. Harding to apt. me to one of the cabinet positions, and it don’t matter which one though I would prefer secy. of the treasury or one of the 3 others that I been after. But he don’t pay no tension to me, namely secy. of State or Agriculture or post master gen.

In the past few wks. I have give the public some idear of my qualifications for the last 3 named portfolios and it will not be necessary to go over them again, so at present I will content myself with a few words in regards to the treasury dept. In the first place the dutys of the secy. of that dept. now days is different than former yrs. when he was just supposed to see that they wasn’t no money stole out of the treasury. If that was all he had to do now his job would be a good deal like the man that kicks goals from touchdowns at Yale. Dame Rumor hath it that the treasury is as clean as Washington’s record in the world serious and the vaults in the treasury bldg. is like a poker game in the press club—full of I.O.Us.


 How I Qualify


So the secy. don’t half to be a watch dog just now and that is why I don’t see no sense in appointing Gen. Dawes to this portfolio, as with all due respects to the Gen. he has always worked in a bank that had money in it, and stick him in the treasury and he would be a lost soul just like the Phillies signing up Bill Donovan as mgr. because he can handle ball players. The man that is needed as head of the treasury dept. now is not the man that is use to taking care of money but the man that is use to being without it.

Brothers, I am that man.

Now I don’t want nobody to think from that remark that I don’t pay my bills some way another, because I generally always manage to scrap up enough to tend to them when they fall due, like for inst. our piano which we bought it on monthly installments and I haven’t missed a payment in 18 yrs. That is just the pt. I am trying to make, namely that where Gen. Dawes has probably always got a few berrys in his kick, why they’s whole wks. at a time when I don’t half to take nothing out of my pants pockets nights but my comb and brush, but just the same my creditors always leaves my door satisfied, provided they come with 5 or 6 mos. rations. Sometimes we half to borrow last June’s wages back from the cook lady and other times the mail man happens to come along with a check that I just write down my name on the back of it and hand it to whoever has been standing longest in line, which once in a wile reachs way out in the front yard and people going by thinks we are haveing a big funeral or something.

But as I say, I get it when I got to have it to pay my debts and I would get it a whole lot easier to pay the country’s debts because they’s a way a govt. can get money that if a private citizen done it he would go south for several winters, and that is what I will explain in a few wds.

Of course as far as the U. S. is conserned, borring is out of the ? as they’s nobody to borrow off from. And when you can’t borrow and people can’t pay their income tax till the brokers has wore out their voice hollering more margin, why in a crisis like this a man like I that can think of a scheme like I have thought of is a better man than you are Gen. Dawes or any of the others that has been mentioned for this high office.

My scheme can be told in 2 words namely:

More mints.

I would hop on a train and every town we went through that advertised free factory sights I would jump off and start a mint and you wouldn’t half to build them all new neither. You can buy some at a bargain that use to be used to make juleps. And until we had made money enough to carry us over the present shortages. I would run some of them double time and call them “double mints” and keep some of them open evenings and call them “after dinner mints.”

 Chicken Feed at First

Of coarse the money you make in mints is all chicken food and for the present we would half to pay the country’s debts in dimes and quarters and etc. but only till I have time to get another scheme working in regards to currency. They tell me that the reason the govt. is shy of currency is acct. of the high price of paper and printers wages and every piece of paper money the govt. puts out costs them more than its worth.

Well, they was a plumber resting in the house the other day and wile he was here the idear flashed on me and I asked him to let me take a $20 bill a minute and he let me take a federal reserve note for that amt. and sure enough it was just like I remembered it. They was a picture of Cleveland on one side of it and the other side showed a train and a aeroplane and a automobile and a big steam boat and a little tug boat and what any of them things had got to do with $20 is a misery to me, unlest the automobile was a taxi which you could see it wasn’t because the driver was looking ahead.

So I seen my idear was O.K and if put in operation the govt. could at lease break even on currency and probably make a good profit and I haven’t had time to work out the details but I will give a outline of the scheme so as you can see what I am getting at.

In the 1st place they’s no sense making bills now days in denominations like1$ and $5 and $20 and etc. what they should ought to be is $1.10, $5.50, $22, $27.50 and so on up. Then instead of sticking pictures on them that don’t mean nothing, I would have pictures of the different things that can be boughten for the amt. of the bill and whatever articles the govt advertised this way, why somebody would half to pay for the advertisement just like it was in a magazine or a newspaper.

Like for the inst on a $1.10 bill on the side where they usually have a picture of Cleveland or somebody, I would have a picture of man that only gets $1.10 per hr. like a U.S senator or a window wiper or something. On the other side they would be a picture of a man getting a shave in the hotel, an order of spinach and whatever else you can buy for $1.10 which I can’t think of nothing just now. 

On one side of the $5.50 bill would be a picture of a $5.50 per hr. man, say a plasterer or a man that puts up screens. On the advertising side they would be pictures of a ticket to the Follies, five lumps of coal, a lower berth from one town to another like Minneapolis to St. Paul, a safety razor, and etc.

The $22 bill would show on one side a skilled labor that earns $22 per hr. like a hat check boy. The other side would have pictures of a silk shirt, a pair of shoes, and etc.

And so on up to the big bills like the $5,000 bill which I would have on one side of it a picture of one of the white Sox that has involuntarily retired from baseball and the other side would be all margin, an ad of some brokerage firm.

Advertising rates would be more on the smaller bills on acct. of the differents in circulation, but where could they be a better medium especially when the public began to pay premiums for the bills that has pictures of their favorite ball player or plumber. And don’t forget that my autograph would be on every bill as secy. of the treasury.

These is the kind of idears I would bring into the treasury dept. gents, and if you want these kind of brains in that dept. or any other dept. write to your nearest congressman and tell him to get busy in my behalf. And if Mr. Harding asks him what kind of a man I am personly, tell him to say my handicap at great neck is an eagle 30.

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The Next Secretary of Agriculture Has Got to Be a Diplomat

Ring Lardner

The Morning Union/January 16, 1921

It begins to look like all the letters I write you is opened by mistake or somebody and at lease I don’t get no answer to them but as far as the last letter I wrote is conserned it don’t make no differents if you got it or no, as I have changed my mind since writeing it. I said in that letter about wishing you would give me the post master gen. portfolio in your cabt. but I don’t want that birth now, Hon., because in the 1st. place one of my actor friends has pointed out that I was all wrong in thinking it would be a soft spot to make a hit in just like following a bum act on a vaudeville bill.

He says on the contrary that it would be one of the toughest jobs I could pick out as it is next to impossible to get the tension of a audience after they been laughing themselfs sick at a comical sketch. And in the 2d. place things has came up lately that makes it look like they was a more important job than post master gen. or secy. state or any of them, namely secy. of agriculture. 

Up to now about all a secy. of agriculture had to do was run the weather burro and find out the different zones where democrats would grow and speaking about democrats we use to hear them spoke of as died in the wool, but it looks now like some of them had found cotton just as fatal, but what I am getting at is that the last few wks. has broughten up a question that bids fair to revolutionize country life in America and If you go and appoint some dumb bell as secy. of agriculture, in a crisis like this here, why 4 yrs. from now they won’t be enough rubes left in the republican party to hold the convention. 

The question I refer to is how many wifes or husbands a farmer and his wife should ought to have and vice versa. It seems like the question started by a farmer out west somewheres saying that every farmer should ought to have 2 wifes because they was so much work for one that they generally always died off by the time they was 35 and left the farmer a widower with his garden full of widower weeds. But if they was 2 of them, why they would both live to 70 and enjoy the drugery of a farmer’s wife twice as long.

Two Sides to Every Question.

Well then a farmer’s wife come back and said the problem could be solved by the wife haveing 2 husbands, one to raise the crops and the other to stick around the house and crank the Ford and cows which is the drugery that kills the wife the way things is now. 

A good many jokes is made at farmers expense by funny writers and actors and etc, but when you come to cases, as they say, why this country could probably spare all the funny writers and actors easier than they could spare all the farms and in fact how could we live without ye hick. So America’s biggest problem today, outside the question of bobbing their hair, is how to keep the saps and their wifes satisfied and that is the problem that needs a master mind to set in as secy. of agriculture, and that is why I withdraw my application for post master gen, and offer myself and brains to what has now became the most vital place in your cabt—namely the aggie portfolio. 

You will want to know have I give any time to the study of this situation. The best way I can answer that question is write down some of my idears on same and leave you judge for yourself.

Well, to begin with, if a farmer needs 2 wifes, give him 2 wifes and I know several city husbands that is willing to contribute to the good cause. And if a farmer’s wife needs 2 husbands give her 2 husbands. But in both cases it has got to be done with reservations.

For inst. you couldn’t give every farmer’s wife 2 husbands and every farmer 2 wifes because that would mean 2 doubly marred couple liveing together on every farm, and the whole mixed foursome would die of murder long before they was 35 yrs. old. They would half to be 2 wifes and one husband on one farm and 2 husbands and one wife on another farm, and so on till you come to the city limits. 

Second Husband in Bad.

They would half to be a set of strick rules governing the dutys of the respective husbands on the farm where males was most populous and another set for the wifes on farms where they was a surplus of the fair sex. For inst. on. a 2-husband farm, the husband that done all the hard work in the fields would be the captain and first husband, and the one that stayed home and done the chores would be the second husband.

I suppose you think that all the men folks would want to be somebody’s second husband, but the job ain’t as easy as it sounds like. For inst. one of his chores would include seeing her most all day and it’s a custom amongst some farmer’s wifes to go around in their bear ft, and a mother Hubbard and not comb their hair till the cows comes home. And dureing the day time the second husband wouldn’t be allowed to even step outside of the vicinity of the house, barn and etc. which could be known as “Chore Acres.” He couldn’t go out in the evenings neither without the first husband’s permission and the latter would have first choice at escorting the Mrs. in town to the movies when she said let’s go.

So all and all the first husband would be the best job and I would award it to the man that past the best examination which I would hold myself personly in Washington every so often and ask them a few questions on intensive farming like how many ears is they in a acre of corn and etc. But which ever one would have the best job the system would make farming more attractive to men than it is now, because now under the one-husband system, the farmer has got to shave every Saturday where with 2 of them it would be every other Saturday off. 

On a 2-wife farm you couldn’t work the first and second wife plan or have one of them captain of the team because wile all men is born pretty near equal, all women is born a whole lot better than each other and the only order one woman will take from another is go lay down a wile and let me wash the dishes. 

The way a 2-wife farm would have to be ran would be to run it in shift’s, a day on and a day off, or a week on and, a week off. Probably it would be better to make it week and week so as the wife that wasn’t working would have a little time to get use to shoes. But any shift would do just so the work was split even and the both of them could live to be 70, and by that time it would be mighty sweet household to live in.

On a wife’s week off our mutual husband would have to take her to town as many evenings as she wanted to go and chances is that he wouldn’t live to be more than 22 himself but I would always try and have such nice wifes on a 2-wife farm that they would be a long waiting list of replacements for the husbands that felt in battle.

Of course they would half to be a rule preventing communication of any kind between 2 farms of opp sex because if a farm with 2 wifes and 1 husband was on friendly terms with a farm that had 2 husbands and 1 wife, they might be results that would upset the whole scheme. Social relations would only be allowed between farms of the same gender.

That is how I got the problem worked out in my mind. Hon., but it will take a man like I to step in and run things and see that everybody is satisfied with the spouses I provide for them, and I could go into more details about the plan only how, do I know it you read my letters or not, so I will close with just a word in regards to saveing the govt. money if you give me this job.

One of my first acts would be can all the high price experts in the weather burro because I can just as good as they can and I can go them one better and make whatever kind of weather the farmers wants. For inst. if they’s a dry spell and the crops is burning up, why all as I halt to do is jump in the car and start for town and before I get ½ way there its raining pitchforks, which I would also send around to the farmers partial post along with the sorrel seeds.

And just another word Hon., when man is elected President or to a high Office they generally always begin talking about doing away with party lines and etc. Well if you make me secy. of agriculture I will do away with the party lines between farms and give the farmers’ wifes more time to druge. They’s enough time wasted in citys answering your own phone, but when you half to and listen every time one of your neighbors gets called up no wonder you die at 35.

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Twenty Years

Annie Laurie

San Francisco Examiner/July 30, 1909

A WOMAN died of joy the other day because her son was coming to visit her.

She had not seen him for twenty years.

He telegraphed her that he was on his way, and when she went down to the station to meet him the excitement was too much for her and she dropped dead in the waiting room.

Twenty years? I wonder if it was worth while waiting all that time?

Twenty years–and the boy she knew was man grown, a man with a family, and she had never seen him since she kissed him good-by when he was a rosy youngster, and let him go out into the world to seek his fortune.

Twenty years! they were short years to him, full of life and interest and adventure but oh, how they must have dragged to that lonely mother.

I wonder if you realize in the faintest degree, you men who leave your mother alone for years and years, what the loneliness of those years is to her?

You have a thousand interests, a dozen friends, a score of new ideas every year; and she has, if she is like most women who are mothers, nothing on earth that she really cares the weight of a single hair for but you.

Who is there in the world that is worthwhile keeping you from your mother?

That friend you care so much for, why, he’d leave you in a minute for the first pair of laughing eyes that called him.

The woman you are so dead in love with? She’s in love with you, too, you say. Well, maybe she is. Has she given the best years of her life to you? Has she sat up with you night after night? Has she defended you against every hint of accusation, fought your fights as if they were her own? If she has, perhaps you ought to give up your mother for her; but if she is the right kind of a woman she won’t admire you for doing it.

Don’t bring your mother home to live with the woman you love; that isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to your wife, and it isn’t fair to your mother, but don’t let anybody in the world keep you twenty years away from the truest friend you ever had in the world.

Twenty years! I wonder how much the things that kept him away so long were worth to that man when he walked into the waiting room and saw his mother dead.

Dead of joy and the long agony of waiting.

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Wed Despite Opposition! Well, Of Course They Did

Annie Laurie

San Francisco Examiner/February 4, 1909

AND so they were married.

“Despite the opposition of parents,” the headlines tell us.

I hope it was “despite” the opposition and not because of it—that marriage.

If I wanted my daughter to marry a commonplace grocer with a big hank account, I would begin to “oppose” him with all the opposition I could muster.

I’d tell her he looked cold and cruel.

I’d say that he had secretive eyes and a deceitful nose. I’d swear I’d seen him somewhere In another country under another name. I’d hint that he was a Bluebeard. And that nobody could possibly find out how many times he’d been married. And some fine morning I’d wake up the proud mamma-in-law of a prosperous person who would let me run a bill for coffee and sugar for quite a while.

“In spite of opposition”—how many, many marriages have been made that would never have been even dreamed of if some one had not gone to work to try to prevent them!

AND the bride in this case, it appears, has $30 and the groom has but seven.

Well, what of it?

How many dollars did you have, Mr. Doting Parent, when you and the woman who’s worn your ring for so many years slipped down to the preacher’s and were married back there in the plain farming country?

You weren’t rolling in riches before you dared to fall in love, were you? And your sweetheart didn’t know and didn’t care whether you had $5 left, when you had paid the minister or not.

Your girl is no better than her mother and no worse, either.

She has just the same courage, and the same loving heart, and the same good sense that her mother had before her—and who are you to teach her to be mercenary and grasping, and self-seeking?.

EVERY once in a while, some one rises in public gathering and denounces the young people of today.

“The young men are selfish and the young women are mercenary,” declare the denouncers.

Fudge!

The young men and the young women are all right.

It’s the old men and the old women who are all wrong.

“My dear,” said a woman to me the other day, “you know how Genevieve was brought up petted, spoiled, indulged. Well, this man she’s married took her to Philadelphia on a business trip with him, and some one called on them and do you know that they had a back room at the hotel, and had worn the same dress to dinner three days in succession?”

And not all the arguments in the world would have convinced that poor old woman that Genevieve was so happy that she didn’t know whether she lived in a front room or a back one, and that she was too busy having fun to worry about her clothes.

MONEY—that’s about all you have when you’ve passed forty—money, and the poor substitutes for happiness that money buys—fine clothes, rich fare, soft living.

Let the poor old forties have the money, girls and boys; you take the real things of life, and take them gayly, with light hearts, as your mothers and fathers did before you.

There’s time enough for you to earn for the fol de rols and fil dols when you are so faded that can’t look neat in a myrtle gown and so jaded that a plain mutton chop and a stick of celery isn’t a good enough dinner for a king.

Walt till your own daughter is growing up before you let the little yellow money demon get you in his clutches. You’ll be past any particular harming by him by that time.

As for you, you newly married young people, a long life to you and not a day of regret in it.

You’ve set all the grumbling old fogeys a good example—an example of youth and courage and sincerity—and in my opinion the world is the better off for all such natural, simple, real people as you seem to be.

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