Certain Personal Matters | Page 7

years, is invariably, by some
mishap, a widow....
Avoid social charm. It was the capacity for entertaining visitors that
ruined Paradise. It grows upon a woman. An indiscriminating personal
magnetism is perhaps the most dreadful vice a wife can have. You
think you have married the one woman in the world, and you find you
have married a host--that is to say, a hostess. Instead of making a home
for you she makes you something between an ethnographical museum
and a casual ward. You find your rooms littered with people and
teacups and things, strange creatures that no one could possibly care for,
that seem scarcely to care for themselves. You go about the house
treading upon chance geniuses, and get tipped by inexperienced guests.
And even when she does not entertain, she is continually going out. I
do not deny that charming people are charming, that their company
should be sought, but seeking it in marriage is an altogether different
matter.
Then, I really must insist that young men do not understand the real
truth about accomplishments. There comes a day when the most
variegated wife comes to the end of her tunes, and another when she
ends them for the second time; Vita longa, ars brevis--at least, as
regards the art of the schoolgirl. It is only like marrying a slightly more
complicated barrel-organ. And, for another point, watch the young
person you would honour with your hand for the slightest inkling of
economy or tidiness. Young men are so full of poetry and emotion that
it does not occur to them how widely the sordid vices are distributed in
the other sex. If you are a hotel proprietor, or a school proprietor, or a
day labourer, such weaknesses become a strength, of course, but not
otherwise. For a literary person--if perchance you are a literary
person--it is altogether too dreadful. You are always getting swept and
garnished, straightened up and sent out to be shaved. And home--even

your study--becomes a glittering, spick-and-span mechanism. But you
know the parable of the seven devils?
To conclude, a summary. The woman you choose should be plain, as
plain as you can find, as old or older than yourself, devoid of social
gifts or accomplishments, poor--for your self-respect--and with a
certain amiable untidiness. Of course no young man will heed this, but
at least I have given my counsel, and very excellent reasons for that
counsel. And possibly I shall be able to remind him that I told him as
much, in the course of a few years' time. And, by the bye, I had almost
forgotten! Never by any chance marry a girl whose dresses do up at the
back, unless you can afford her a maid or so of her own.

THE HOUSE OF DI SORNO
A MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A BOX
And the box, Euphemia's. Brutally raided it was by an insensate
husband, eager for a tie and too unreasonably impatient to wait an hour
or so until she could get home and find it for him. There was, of course,
no tie at all in that box, for all his stirring--as anyone might have
known; but, if there was no tie, there were certain papers that at least
suggested a possibility of whiling away the time until the Chooser and
Distributer of Ties should return. And, after all, there is no reading like
your accidental reading come upon unawares.
It was a discovery, indeed, that Euphemia had papers. At the first
glance these close-written sheets suggested a treasonable Keynote, and
the husband gripped it with a certain apprehension mingling with his
relief at the opiate of reading. It was, so to speak, the privilege of police
he exercised, so he justified himself. He began to read. But what is this?
"She stood on the balcony outside the window, while the noblest-born
in the palace waited on her every capricious glance, and watched for an
unbending look to relieve her hauteur, but in vain." None of your
snippy-snappy Keynote there!

Then he turned over a page or so of the copy, doubting if the privilege
of police still held good. Standing out by virtue of a different ink, and
coming immediately after "bear her to her proud father," were the
words, "How many yards of carpet 3/4 yds. wide will cover room,
width 16 ft., length 27-1/2 ft.?" Then he knew he was in the presence of
the great romance that Euphemia wrote when she was sixteen. He had
heard something of it before. He held it doubtfully in his hands, for the
question of conscience still troubled him. "Bah!" he said abruptly, "not
to find it irresistible was to slight the authoress and her skill." And with
that he sat plump down among the things in the box