Guy Wetmore Carryl

“ Sometimes, in the course of an uncommonly good dinner, you may have added to your enjoyment of its delicacies by an endeavour to realize how differently you would feel as a pauper, munching on a crust. ”

“ An automobile keeps up a continual clamour whenever you take it out: an automobile gets into the habit of blowing you up at regular intervals, and of running down your neighbours whenever opportunity offers: an automobile is forever in need of new and expensive trimmings and fittings — but then, you can always exchange an automobile for something useful. ”

“ The young person on the rock having, as I may say, thus driven in the spigot, I bled views on single blessedness unreservedly, confiding in her as I had confided in Uncle Ezra’s solicitor, in my architect, in the real estate agent — as I am confiding, gentle and tactful reader, in you! I said to her all that is hereinbefore set down, and, further, with broad and comprehensive sweeps of my walking-stick, I sketched “Sans Souci” for her, as I proposed to place it, upon the swell of ground. Meanwhile, I forgot that I was talking to a girl. ”

“ In short, I yearned to become a bachelor, and this was precisely what the benignant performance of my Uncle Ezra enabled me to do.
Perhaps it is necessary to explain that one cannot be a thoroughly authentic bachelor under five thousand a year. Short of that income, one may, of course, remain unmarried; but to remain unmarried means nothing more than to be a single man — a creature, that is, commonly supposed to be conditioned not so much by his inclinations as by material circumstance. Who, pray, is going to believe that he is single because he chooses to be, instead of because he must? ”

“ Distinctly, there was no time to be lost, now that Uncle Ezra’s means were mine, for so long as a bachelor is not fairly and firmly entrenched in his stronghold there is a peril as inimical to his security as is the soft-spoken songbird to the unwary worm’s. I refer, of course, to the matchmaker — an affliction against which there is no law, no protection, and no remedy. She — I think the species boasts no male — resents the unmarried man as if he were a personal insult. ”

“ Even the most skeptical must allow that he is the product of his inclinations, not of his restrictions. He is magnificent in his isolation, in his independence of that preposterous, corpulent little boy, with the wings and the bow and arrows, who sets half of the trouble in the world afoot. ”

“ He may have all the courage of his conviction, but he can never hope to impress others with the conviction of his courage. Possessing the keenest distaste for a life in the stocks or under the bonds of matrimony, he is yet as helpless to prove this aversion as would be a fresh egg to substantiate its very possible disinclination for becoming a chick. ”

“ Now a bachelor, like all superior beings, has his responsibilities. Your mere single man may be content with a furnished room and a continual round of the restaurants; but it is incumbent upon the bachelor to make a more conspicuous success of the life to which he thus stands pledged. He must justify himself in the eyes of society. ”

“ If the person at the other end of it is one whom you dislike, it is no more protection against his company than if it were a hundred-yard dash; if, on the contrary, you like him, and wish to see him at frequent intervals, that mile which separates you from him might as well be the diameter of the earth. It is only the most disagreeable persons who are always within reach. ”

“ I had always looked upon houses as something which one would be apt to build one at a time, like a cup challenger or a soldier’s monument, and, in consequence of this impression, I was prepared to find the architect in question highly gratified at the receipt of my order. ”

“ From the moment when he crosses her path he is marked for the slaughter, and she begins to shuffle her kinsfolk and acquaintances as one shuffles the cards in the intellectual game of Old Maid, desperately endeavouring to find him a mate. ”

“ Spring in the country, I said to myself, is a very different thing from spring in the city. It is the trees that leave, instead of the people; the birds’ eggs that are laid, instead of the evil-smelling asphalt pavements ”

“ The girl and I surveyed each other for an instant in silence. She was one of those girls who prove, if they prove anything, that clothes do not make the man. With the sole exception of her shortish walking-skirt, there was no visible article of her apparel which had not been plagiarised from something distinctly masculine. She wore a broad-brimmed felt hat, and a stock, and a man’s belt, and a Norfolk jacket, and dogskin walking-gloves turned back at the wrists, and heavy shoes with the soles protruding all around like little piazzas. ”

“ As I paused I felt that, perhaps, I had been too emphatic. A woman always takes general theories as immediately applicable to herself. Hers has none of that broad, liberal view of the abstract which distinguishes the masculine mind. ”

“ And, if he ever feels that it is necessary to his peace of mind to cumber himself with something which is, at once, exorbitantly costly and readily deranged, then I warrant you he will have the good sense to see that what he wants is an automobile, and not a wife. ”

“ I determined, as the initial specification of my house, that there should not be a place to hang so much as a single skirt, and that the bathing arrangements should be limited to a shower and a slatted floor. A woman would think twice, I reasoned, before setting her cap at a man with a domicile so curiously limited. ”

“ But, finally, the proper situation was discovered, and after the title had been searched — whether for smuggled goods or concealed weapons I have not the most remote idea — I found myself in a position to become proprietor of three acres of land, of which, to my thinking, the most dazzling attraction was the fact that the nearest neighbour was a mile away. However, I may make a note, in passing, of a paradox which I was very shortly to discover. It is this. A mile is the most elastic measurement in existence. ”

“ He must meet the boasted superiority of existence a deux on its own ground, and put it to rout with irrefutable demonstration. He must have a house, and equip and order this in such a fashion that the married couples for ten miles around will fall down with one accord and grovel. ”

“ Put a girl behind it, and a matchmaker standing close- hauled in the offing, and each and every one of them has an awful, a fatal significance. There are strings to the mandolin: wretched man, there will soon be one to you. What is the philopena but a symbol of matrimony? The girl never pays. ”

“ His peace and prosperity must be so evident and so eloquent as to cause the Green-eyed Monster to harry and lay waste that entire countryside. In short, he must preach with irresistible finality the fact that a man is happier without a wife than with one ”

“ One is commodious closet-room and the other is a bath-tub. A man can stow his apparel in the veriest cupboard, and a shower-bath will give him more solid satisfaction than all the tubs in Christendom; but a woman must have as many hooks as Argus had eyes, and as for a shower-bath, there is nothing in the world over which she makes a greater to-do than wetting her hair. ”