a hundred dollars a week, just to
show that I haven't got a case of faith without works. I reckon the
extra twenty-five per will come in mighty handy now that you're within
a month of marrying Helen.

I'm still learning how to treat an old wife, and so I can't give you
many pointers about a young one. For while I've been married as long
as I've been in business, and while I know all the curves of the great
American hog, your ma's likely to spring a new one on me tomorrow. No
man really knows anything about women except a widower, and he forgets
it when he gets ready to marry again. And no woman really knows
anything about men except a widow, and she's got to forget it before
she's willing to marry again. The one thing you can know is that, as a
general proposition, a woman is a little better than the man for whom
she cares. For when a woman's bad, there's always a man at the bottom
of it; and when a man's good, there's always a woman at the bottom of
that, too.

The fact of the matter is, that while marriages may be made in heaven,
a lot of them are lived in hell and end in South Dakota. But when a
man has picked out a good woman he holds four hearts, and he needn't
be afraid to draw cards if he's got good nerve. If he hasn't, he's got
no business to be sitting in games of chance. The best woman in the
world will begin trying out a man before she's been married to him
twenty-four hours; and unless he can smile over the top of a
four-flush and raise the ante, she's going to rake in the breeches and
keep them.

The great thing is to begin right. Marriage is a close corporation,
and unless a fellow gets the controlling interest at the start he
can't pick it up later. The partner who owns fifty-one per cent. of
the stock in any business is the boss, even if the other is allowed to
call himself president. There's only two jobs for a man in his own
house--one's boss and the other's office-boy, and a fellow naturally
falls into the one for which he's fitted.

Of course, when I speak of a fellow's being boss in his own home, I
simply mean that, in a broad way, he's going to shape the policy of
the concern. When a man goes sticking his nose into the running of the
house, he's apt to get it tweaked, and while he's busy drawing _it_
back out of danger he's going to get his leg pulled, too. You let your
wife tend to the housekeeping and you focus on earning money with
which she can keep house. Of course, in one way, it's migh