EX-BACHELOR’S ADVICE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 3261, 31 January 1931, Page 7

EX-BACHELOR’S ADVICE.

Mr. H. L. Mencken, the man who prided himself on being America’s most hard-boiled bachelor, said on approaching the nuptial altar: “Getting married, like getting hanged, is probably a great deal less dreadful than it has been made out.” Fellow-bachelors of Henry L. Mencken, the man who gave voice to this philosophy of consolation, will say: “Maybe you are right—but marriage lasts longer.” For years Mr. Mencken, critic and satirist, scoffed at love, marriage and dogmatic religion. Nothing delighted him more than to hold up to public ridicule, through the agency of his brilliant pen, the foibles of matrimony and the inconsistencies of creeds. Then Mr. Mencken met Miss Sara Powell Haardt, a young Alabama writer, and, like other famous bachelors who boast their preference for the single state, he became a convert to the creed that it is not good for man to live alohe. Most of us believe the thing we want to believe at the time our happiness depends on our believing it.

And so this confirmed woman-hater, who tore into the babbitry of the married state with all the abandon of a bull pup engaged in demolishing his master’s bedroom slipper, has gone so far in his conversion as to promulgate rules for remaining happy though married. “The best rule for marriage,” he says, “is the best rule for all human relations —be polite.” Those of us who did not have Mr. Mencken’s resistance against matrimony will be glad to know he has turned polite toward it. A majority of his criticisms and witicisms made previous to hiß meeting with Miss Haardt, now Mrs. Mencken, were far from gracious.

Now that the critic has put the shoe on the other foot we shall be anxious to see how it fits; and whether Mr. Mencken finds marriage, like all other human relations, is pretty much what the contracting parties make it.