LV
HOW TO CATCH A WIFE
“You are always telling girls how to catch husbands,” says a young man. “Why don’t you give us chaps a few tips about how to get wives?”
Well, son, perhaps I unconsciously favor women because I belong to their lodge. Also, it is more difficult for a woman to catch a husband than it is for a man to get a wife, not only because women are more inclined to matrimony than men are, but because a woman’s pursuit of a man has to be stealthy and secret and under cover, with all of her tracks carefully hidden and her purposes veiled, whereas a man can go after a woman openly and aboveboard, with everybody looking on and applauding the chase. Therefore, the woman is more in need of any stray hints that may improve her technique than the man is. Still, far be it from me to withhold from my brothers any information I may have about the short cuts to the feminine heart. So to the really earnest seeker after knowledge on this subject I would say:
First. Study your girl. Catalogue her. Find out to what type she belongs and adapt your tactics to the situation, for all women no more rise to the same line of courtship than all fish bite at the same bait. There are some feminine hearts that can only be taken by assault and battery and others that surrender to patient siege. There are women whose love is for sale to the highest bidder and others who bestow it in pity. There are women who like a business proposition and women who fall only for the romantic wooing. So there you are, and your success will depend upon your ability to psychoanalyze the particular woman and upon the skill with which you suggest to her that you are the great unsatisfied need of her soul.
If the girl is of the clear-eyed, upstanding, competent business type, your best method of winning her is by the good, old, well-tried Platonic friendship method. She isn’t anxious to exchange a mahogany desk for a kitchen range nor to give up a good pay envelope and an easy job to toil for some man for nothing. Likewise, she has worked with men too long for her to see any rosy halo around the masculine brow, so she is pretty apt to shy off at any suggestion of marriage and balk at the thought of the altar. But life lacks savor to every woman without masculine society, and so this particular type of woman is especially allured by the idea of a beautiful and satisfying friendship with some man. And when a chap has got his toe that far into the door to a woman’s heart it is his own fault if he does not open it all the way.
Only there is this word of warning: Never pop the question to the business girl in the morning of a sunshiny day when she has on a new frock and a good hat and everything is going swimmingly at the office and she feels fit and fine and ready to buck the world. Instead, choose a rainy evening, when she is sitting alone at home, dejected and forlorn, when she is tired and the boss has been grumpy. Then the thing she wants most on earth is just a nice, strong masculine shoulder to cry on.
If the girl you want is a flapper, your best ally is your bankbook. All you need to look good to her is to be a good spender and a fast worker. Hold not your hand and count not the cost of jewelry and trinketry and candy and flowers and cabarets and eats and joy-rides, and remember that the man with the longest purse wins. Some day she will jazz with you to the preacher, and you will live scrappily ever afterward.
If the girl upon whom your affections are set is a demure little Puritan, make her your Mother Confessor. Confide to her all your sins, real and imaginary. Invent a dark past for her benefit. Make her believe that but for her Sacred Influence you would become an abandoned character and that she alone can lead you up to the higher life. All women have the reformation complex, and the better they are and the less they know of the world the harder they fall for the belief that a grown man’s character is like a piece of dough that they can mold into any shape they please. Once let a girl get the idea into her head that she is responsible for your soul, and she is yours for the taking.
If the girl you want is one that you made mud pies with in childhood and went to school with, and who refuses to see you in a sentimental light, don’t be discouraged by her telling you that she will be a sister to you. Just keep right on strutting your Rachel-and-Jacob stuff. Mighty few women can resist that. Make yourself a habit with the girl. Make yourself necessary to her happiness and comfort by always paying her the little attentions that women like. Fetch and carry for her. Be the one person in the world she can always depend upon to make life pleasant and agreeable for her.
Then suddenly drop her cold. Begin paying furious attentions to some woman she always accuses of being made up and older than she looks and an artful hussy, and it is a hundred-to-one bet that she will call you back and let you see that her feelings toward you were not at all what she had supposed they were. For when she thinks you are about to marry another woman she will wake up to the fact that life will be cinders, ashes and dust without you.
If the girl you desire is one of the morbid sort who hangs between “I will” and “I won’t,” who is always vivisecting her heart and taking her emotional temperature, what you need to use is caveman methods. She is just dying to have you drag her to the altar by the hair of her head, and if you are half a man you will do it. Don’t ever ask that kind of a woman to marry you. Tell her you are going to marry her and that you have the license and the ring in your pocket and are on the way to the chapel with her, and you will give her a thrill that will last a lifetime.
These are only a few of the many ways to win a wife. It is dead easy, and any man can do it who has gumption enough to work out a cross-word puzzle.