WILD OATS

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 12, 1 June 1925, Page 33

WILD OATS

WHY MEN LIKE TO POSE AS VILLAINS

T HE faithfulness of men to their faithfulness of men to their A wives is, according to Mr. H. L. Mencken, the secret scandal of Christendom. And you will travel a long way, he declares, before you find a married man who will admit that he is faithful to the woman of his choice. Mr. Mencken is an American. In other words, a citizen of a nation which has popularised marriage by facilitating divorce. But humankind —more especially mankind the same the world over. The average man, in so far as his relations with women are concerned, would as lief he taken for a thief as mistaken for an honest man. The Proven JTol WHY this modesty? Why this masking of the supreme quality of loyalty? Is man so self-conscious a creature that he must be for ever playing a part? There are certain things about the other sex which every woman would like to know. One of them isthe reason for the reluctance of the

average married man to admit his fidelity to his partner. For on the face of it the unfaithful husband is the proven fool. What is his unfidelity but evidence of the fact that either he has been duped in the marriage market or else that he has had the bad taste and the poor judgment to pick the most cloying bloom in the place? Inconstancy, in fact, is an admission of failure. Ji'rom Hoy to Bachelor T he Benedict is not alone, however, in his predeliction for the villain’s role. It is a part beloved alike by the small boy and the elderly bachelor. A companion of my extreme youth was wont on occasion to lisp “cuss” words despite severe parental admonitions. After a peculiarly trying scene I remember asking him why he persisted in using words which incurred such awful penalties. His answer was illumining. “Because they’re bad,” said he in a

sepulchral whisper. “Do you like being bad?” I queried, innocently. He eyed me scornfully. “S’only girls that’s good.” I believed him then. I know better now. I know that the sexes cannot be labelled any more than nations, that the mentality of men and women alike comprises equally what the butcher terms “a streaky cut.” 'Posing as a Pgike 'J’HE impulse to pose as a rake still persists to-day. Where women preen themselves on their virtues, men proclaim their vices. Are men more conservative than women? Is their reluctance to advertise their good qualities a relic of the days when only the effeminate weakling was able to stand straight on his legs after dinner, leaving the stalwarts for the most part below the table? Or is it possible that the poor, deluded' darlings still treasure the obsolete belief that to be popular with the other sex a man must have the reputation of being somewhat of a

rake? Do they not know that “straight” is the one word stamped on the tape by which man is measured by modern woman? The truth is, the sowing of wild oats is about as out of date as the sewing of samplers. But men, for some strange reason of their own, are loath to admit it. Why? That is another of the things every woman would like to know. Seeing J^ife ,r JpHERE is a third. It has to do with that fine old phrase “seeing life.” Why do people talk of seeing life when they do not mean life at all, but, to put it plainly, the redlight district of the city? Let us put the phrase on its proper footing. Let us make a point of “seeing life”—real, honest, workaday life in its different phases. But let us be careful whom we select as guide. Let us bear in mind the “secret scandal of Christendom,” which is no scandal at all save in the inverted sense of the wcrd!