are awfully
understandable if you only go at it right. Why, the only thing that
riles them in the whole wide world is the fear that the man they've
married ain't quite bright. Why, when I was first married I used to
think that my wife was awful snippety about other women. But, Lord!
when you point a girl out in the car and say, 'Well, ain't that girl
got the most gorgeous head of hair you ever saw in your life?' and
your wife says: 'Yes--Jordan is selling them puffs six for a dollar
seventy-five this winter,' she ain't intending to be snippety at all.
No!--It's only, I tell you, that it makes a woman feel just plain
silly to think that her husband don't even know as much as she does.
Why, Lord! she don't care how much you praise the grocer's daughter's
style, or your stenographer's spelling, as long as you'll only show
that you're _equally wise_ to the fact that the grocer's daughter sure
has a nasty temper, and that the stenographer's spelling is mighty
near the best thing about her.

"Why, a man will go out and pay every cent he's got for a good hunting
dog--and then snub his wife for being the finest untrained retriever
in the world. Yes, sir, that's what she is--a retriever; faithful,
clever, absolutely unscarable, with no other object in life except to
track down and fetch to her husband every possible interesting fact in
the world that he don't already know. And then she's so excited and
pleased with what she's got in her mouth that it 'most breaks her
heart if her man don't seem to care about it. Now, the secret of
training her lies in the fact that she won't never trouble to hunt out
and fetch you any news that she sees you already know. And just as
soon as a man once appreciates all this--then Joy is come to the Home!

"Now there's Ella, for instance," continued the Traveling Salesman
thoughtfully. "Ella's a traveling man, too. Sells shotguns up through
the Aroostook. Yes, shotguns! Funny, ain't it, and me selling
undervests? Ella's an awful smart girl. Good as gold. But cheeky? Oh,
my!--Well, once I would have brought her down to the house for Sunday,
and advertised her as a 'peach,' and a 'dandy good fellow,' and
praised her eyes, and bragged about her cleverness, and generally
done my best to smooth over all her little deficiencies with as much
palaver as I could. And that little retriever of mine would have gone
straight to work and ferreted out every single, solitary,
uncomplimentary thing about Ella tha