Clarence Day, Jr.

“ The fact that he was also an individual being, named Gerald, would be subordinate.
Very good, then. Let me remind you of this: As with polar bears, so with women. Most people—or, rather, I should have said, most women—do not realize it, but they are practically as alien a genus to mankind as bears. Fond of them as we may be, they are women to us first, and individuals to us afterward. It is shown by the very way one speaks of them. I say, "I know a girl named Hattie"; never, "I know Hattie, a girl." ”

“ If you are going to keep your eyes tight shut all your life, Niblo Sims, you had better stand just as still as you know how. Every step a man takes blindly—"
"What step have I taken blindly?" I demanded.
"Why, you've engaged yourself to a girl whose ways you object to."
"But that is no evidence of blindness," I quickly informed her. "Don't be so silly. These ways that I object to can be changed."
"How?" laughed Hattie.
"How?" shouted I. "How? Why, that is just what I came to see you about: that is exactly what I am asking you?"
She laughed again. Hattie does a good deal of laughing. ”

“ Between us in the center of this park was a reservoir which Angelica began to call the Hellespont, and across which she once told me I ought to swim. There was no earthly reason for swimming it, of course. It had an excellent path around its banks.
One afternoon in December, a little after sunset, I was walking along this path on my way to the Windmere, when I saw my fiancée some distance ahead of me, waving her arms and wildly calling me to hurry. I jogged along toward her.
"Oh, hurry, Niblo," she cried; "there's a woman here, drowning!" ”

“ I kept explaining. "One doesn't buy hero medals, Angelica; one must deserve them."
"How soon could you deserve one for me, then, Niblo?" she asked; and finding that I did not go out at once and attend to it, she cried, and said that of course I would have done it for Hilda, and that she always knew I did not love her. I contended that I did. She cried still more. And in conversation with Hattie, a few days later, I learned that Angelica had been putting her any quantity of questions—such as why I never matched her (Angelica's) frocks with my neckties or handkerchiefs ”

“ I want it for you, Niblo. You are my hero."
"I'll earn my own hero medals, thank you," said I. "Somebody else's certainly is no use to us. And I don't know what you mean by jealous, Angelica."
"I could keep it in my bureau drawer," she reflected.
The pawnbroker handed it over to her with a flourish. "Twenty dollars," he mumbled. He saw me glaring at him. "Twenty dollars," he continued, hurriedly, "is the price I'd ought to be getting for this beautiful object, but while business is dull this way, I could give it you for ten."
My fiancée was fingering the disk affectionately. ”

“ Much as I hate sentimentality and much as I commend the unemotional attitude, it is a pretty discouraging business to lose a fiancée. I postponed all further search for a helpmate, and, indeed, if it hadn't been for Hattie, I might have continued indefinitely a bachelor. ”

“ Common Sense and Life-Saving
BY CLARENCE DAY, JR.
I WISH to put to you a serious question: If you had a polar bear named Gerald, and if you were asking some friend to come home with you and see that bear, which way would you say it—would you say, "Come and see Gerald," or would it be, "Come and see my polar bear"?
The point may be rather a fine one, but the answer is obvious: you would think of him primarily as a polar bear, and only secondarily as Gerald. He would be first and foremost a member of a different species—namely, polar bears. ”

“ I know lots of things about Hattie, but I can't know all, because I am a man and she is something else. I know all I need to about her, you understand. The point simply is that as women are a different order of beings, there are limits to our knowledge. That is why we can find no way to correct some of their queer, impossible notions about how men should act. That is why, also, I cannot fully explain to you the part Hattie played, that time I became engaged to Angelica Perry.
When I was younger I was engaged to another girl, named Hilda, but that girl went to China. ”

“ Did you expect her to put off drowning while you was fetching me?"
"I was referring to my fiancée," I absently explained, still looking over the railing. I couldn't see the hat anywhere.
The policeman sat heavily down upon the bench and stared at me with a sort of admiring horror. "Well, you're a cool one," he said. "This was your feeonsay as was drowning, was it? That must be quite a inconvenience to you. But never mind; everything seems to go wrong some days. ”