WILD HUSBANDS I HAVE MET.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 176, 26 July 1919, Page 17

WILD HUSBANDS I HAVE MET.

THE FIREBUG: LIFE WITH HIM IS AS TT-RILLING AND UNCERTAIX " ".' . __S. LtFE' -IN. pEI&be'RAD-

(By HELEK ROWLANTX)

Somehow, I have never been able te imagine any woman being happy with a husband who never smokes. You see, a man, like a baby, is always putting something in his mouth. And, if it isn't a cigar, or a cigarette, or a pipe—well— If he isn't smoking, or eating, or drinking, he'e swearing, or whistling, or kissing, or making love, or grouching, or bragging , , or criticising, or fibbing, or orating, or instructing—oh, yee, you have noticed it! And yet, most men who smoke are more equable and less voluble than ivomen. A pipe or a cigar is a "pacifier" which keeps him out of mischief and enables hhn to work off hie superfluous energy and to send his grouches up in smoke —bless its gentle heart! Therefore,' to My Lady Nicotine, let us kneel and bring burnt offeringf. ButIt is one .thing to be married to a normal smoker And quite another to put your fate in the hands of a firebug! He may be tender ac the flowers in May and" chivalrous as Sir Walter Raleigh. Yet life with him is as perilous, as exciting and as uncertain as life in Petrograd! You are continually teetering on the brink of Eternity—and you never know. when you go to bed at night, whether you will wake up At home—or in Heaven! Your house resembles an old curiosity shop or the Argonne Forest after the marines went through it. Hugs are turned this •way and that to "hide the burned places." Curtains are pinned in queer folds to conceal little round black holes. Scrap-baskets are camouflaged with ribbons on their charred sides. The marble ledge around the bathroom is covered with etrange brown spots Which mark the graves of defunct cigarettes whose little lives burned out unnoticed while you slept serenely. And ashes! The corners of the Tooms, the vases, the fern dishes, the window boxes, the bathtub, the umbrella stand, All—all bear witness to the secret work of the Firebug! You cannot extract a .pin from a pin tray without burrowing halfway to China through the ashes. Vesuvius is clean and dainty beside your little Home. In all the house, the only thing that remains undefiled, untarnished, bright, smiling, whole and guiltless of ashes, Is the ash receiver! He will nonchalantly fling live matches into the waste-paper basket. He will blithely toss lighted cigars on the awnings of the apartments beneath you. He will leave a hot pipe on a piece of priceless mahogany. He will thoughtlessly press a glowing cigarette against your back hair ac he elaepe you to his bosom— But he would as soon think of desecrating his grandmother's grave As of dropping his stubs and ashes into an ash receiver! And yet—life with the Firebug is never dull! It is as piquant and thrilling and exciting Aβ life with a Bolshevist with-a-bomb-and-β-griertnc*! And co -uncertain! > \.