EDITOR'S WALLET.

Otago Witness, Issue 2051, 15 June 1893, Page 50

EDITOR'S WALLET.

Ingenious Woman! Man is a creature of cast-iron methods ; woman adapts herself to circumstances. A man refuses to drive a nail unless he has a hammer. A woman does not hesitate to use a poker, or the heel of her shoe, or the back of a brush. Man thinks it absolutely necessary to have a corkscrew to draw a cork. Woman will gouge it out with her scissors, or knife, or button-hook. If it won't come up, it will go down, and after all the contents of the bottle is what is wanted. A man regards a razor as consecrated to shaving only. A woman has a higher opinion of its versatility, and uses it to sharpen pencils and to cut rope. These rude offices, surreptitiously performed, lead her husband to say malignant things about razor 3 and their makers. When a man writes for the papers he demands pomp and circumstance, and as wide an orbit as one of the planets. Pen, ink, and paper must be at hand, and he shuts up the whole family in the Tower of Silence, and nobody is allowed to think hard. When a woman writes she gathers up nondescript paper, stray copybook leaves, backs of old envelopes, sharpens her pencil with her scissors, and placing them on an old atlas, or a piece of cardboard, tucks one foot under her, rocks comfortably to and fro, sucks her pencil periodically, and produces " copy." She is oblivious to Tommy distractedly adding and subtracting in a high key ; to Molly beating French verb 3 into her brain by a succession of audible thumps and much, vibrant buzzing ; to Sally running the scales ; to the cook, who demands supplies every few moments. , , , She makes her lovers woo and quarrel and marry and the villains kill each other in the most circumscribed space. A man demands illimitable space and annexed territory for the like deeds. He fumes and frets if the blotting-paper is not at hand. Sac " blows" the ink dry or waves the paper in mid-air, and takes the chances for blots. He says things about ink which are enough to pale and curdle it. She jab 3 her pen in and about and around and at last gets a "flow"; whereas the things he has been known to affirm concerning pens this pen refuses to record.