TRYING MEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11986, 7 June 1902, Page 3 (Supplement)

TRYING MEN.

.Smok angry ladies have written to . the ■-i \ ' Daily Mail, declaring that the reason' ser- / vants will not 'stay with them is that men,■ once married, become intolerably '• trying," are never satisfied with household arrangements, and worry their wives into a state -if hysteria, which the wives, very naturally, pass ou to the servants. lam afraid this "is sometimes true enough. -There an. a great* many trying men, going about. There is the man who will ask questions at meals of his wife, who has not cooked the dinner. " Why," lie says, plaintively, " why, Caroline, are these parsnips as "hard as brickbats?" or "Why does this cabinet pudding taste of onions?" -/.".."■ He might just as well ask why the earth is round. In the first stages of married life the housekeeper,' .still, perhaps, a little proud of presiding over an " establishment"—fleeting rapture!endeavours to find answers to these conundrums. She launches forth into' \, a history of the habits of parsnips, or brings her wild, feminine imagination to bear upon _ the thousand possibly contingencies which "' might lead a cabinet'pudding, however discreet, into a liaison, wit the vegetable of. tears. Hut time wears on and time wear? out, and tin' psychological moment inevitably arrives wbeu, to all such riddles, site ; snaps ; out. a "Because they are!" .or a "Because it does!" Then love, which has " been hovering, perhaps, hove the parsnips and the cabinet pudding, spreads bis wing*, and gives notice, like the cook. - There is the man who is particular about his boots. -With some men boots become a positive obsession. Kasy-going in a genera;, 7 way, and fond, kind-hearted, nice with children, and really tender to insects—for instance, they would not hurt a Hy—directly there arises any question of improper- treatment of their boots they become iierce, implacable tyrants. 1. am Mire many wives will bear me out when 1 say that boots have' broken up the happiness of thousands. Boy. after boy is dismissed, boy after boy en- , gaged, the wife grows thin with anxiety -i and feeble, with endeavour, but the brown boots are not " coloured" to the .man's liking, the black boots do not reflect bis indignant countenance with sufficient clearness. Every day (here is the same complaint, •"The boots are disgraceful," till the wife begins to yearn to be an old maid as the frog yearned to be an ox. Some men ate never satisfied with the way their beds are made. ' Either the housemaid has drawn up the bedclothes too high, so that the man. according to his own account, has to rest his chin during the night upon the summit of a Himalaya of fcr-rned-back blanket, or she has tucked so much in at the bottom that his poor, chest is left to the mercy of every wind that blows about the bedroom. One night the sheet, is " crinkled." owing to improper adjustment at the sides of the mattress : on, another some mysterious disease, brought- on, of course, by that microbe the housemaid, engaged by the wife, who . " ought to have seen at once." / etc., has attacked the bolster, giving it- / lumps, which have, of course, rendered sleepy' impossible. The poor wife, whose insomm/' has been solaced bv her husband's pertuy' ous snoring, at. length tups and rend/ microbe, who promptly gives warning ,' then the husband says, "It is yr Sophie, that you can never keep —Robert Hichens, in the ,QucX . ( / ' / \ r • i