s kept the bitterer it gets, and that your wife
is bound to have it anyway, you'll cut the rest of your quarrels so
short that she'll never find out just how much meanness there is in
you. Be the silent partner at home and the thinking one at the office.
Do your loose talking in your sleep.

Of course, if you get a woman who's really fond of quarreling there
isn't any special use in keeping still, because she'll holler if you
talk back and yell if you don't. The best that you can do is to
pretend that you've got a chronic case of ear-ache, and keep your ears
stuffed with cotton. Then, like as not, she'll buy you one of these
things that you hold in your mouth so that you can hear through your
teeth.

I don't believe you're going to draw anything of that sort with Helen,
but this is a mighty uncertain world, especially when you get to
betting on which way the kitten is going to jump--you can usually
guess right about the cat--and things don't always work out as
planned.

While there's no sure rule for keeping out of trouble in this world,
there's a whole set of them for getting into it.

I remember a mighty nice, careful mother who used to shudder when
slang was used in her presence. So she vowed she'd give _her_ son a
name that the boys couldn't twist into any low, vulgar nick-name. She
called him Algernon, but the kid had a pretty big nose, and the first
day he was sent to school with his long lace collar and his short
velvet pants the boys christened him Snooty, and now his parents are
the only people who know what his real name is.

After you've been married a little while you're going to find that
there are two kinds of happiness you can have--home happiness and
fashionable happiness. With the first kind you get a lot of children
and with the second a lot of dogs. While the dogs mind better and seem
more affectionate, because they kiss you with their whole face, I've
always preferred to associate with children. Then, for the first kind
of happiness you keep house for yourself, and for the second you keep
house for the neighbors.

You can buy a lot of home happiness with a mighty small salary, but
fashionable happiness always costs just a little more than you're
making. You can't keep down expenses when you've got to keep up
appearances--that is, the appearance of being something that you
ain't. You're in the fix of a dog chasing his tail--you can't make
ends meet, and if you do it'll give you such a crick in