are."

"When he was with her he saw all her obstinacy, unreason, and
selfishness; but when he was away he only saw her good points."

Mitchell: "Pity such men don't stop away."

"He thought and thought, and brooded over it till his life was a
hell----"

Mitchell: "Jes-so: thanks to the problemaniacs."

"He thought of killing her and himself, and so taking her with him"

"Where?" asked Mitchell. "He must have loved her a lot.... Good Lord!
That shows the awful effects of the sex problem on the mind of a healthy
young man like you;" and Mitchell stood up.

"He lay awake by her side at nights thinking and fighting the thing
out."

"And you've been lying awake, thinking, with me and `the Oracle' by
your side. We'll have to plant the tommy-hawk, and watch you by turns at
night till you get over this."

"One night he rested on his elbow, and watched her sleeping, and tried
to reconstruct his ideal out of her, and, just when he was getting
into a happier frame of mind, her mouth fell open, and she snored.... I
didn't get any further than the snore," I said.

"No, of course you didn't," said Mitchell, "and none of the sex
problemers ever will--unless they get as far as `blanky.' You might have
made the snore cure him; did it?"

"No, it was making things worse in my idea of the yarn. He fell back and
lay staring at the ceiling in a hopeless kind of a way."

"Then he was a fit case for the lunatic asylum.... Now, look here,
Harry, you're a good-natured, soft old fool when you're in your right
mind; just you go on being a good-natured, soft old fool, and don't try
to make a problem out of yourself or anybody else, or you'll come to a
bad end. A pocket-book's to keep your accounts in, not to take notes
in (you take them in your head and use 'em in your arms), not to write
sex-problem rot in--that's spoilt many a good pocket-book, and many a
good man. You've got a girl you're talking about going back to as soon
as we've finished this contract. Don't you make a problem of her; make
a happy wife and mother of her.... I was very clever when I was
young"--and here Mitchell's voice took a tinge of bitterness, or
sadness. "I used to make problems out of things.... I ain't much to
boast of now.... Seems to me that a good many men want to make angels of
their wives without first taking trouble of making saints of themselves.
We want to make women's ways our ways--it would be just as fair to make
our ways theirs. Some men wan