Sinclair Lewis

“ Conceive Una—if through the fumes of cheap cigarettes you can make out the low lights of her fading hair—sitting there, trying patiently to play a “good, canny fist of poker”—which, as her husband often and irritably assured her, she would never learn to do. He didn’t, he said, mind her losing his “good, hard-earned money,” but he “hated to see Eddie Schwirtz’s own wife more of a boob than Mrs. Jock Sanderson, who’s a regular guy; plays poker like a man.” ”

“ I tell you a fella gets too much of bad things in this world without reading about’em in books. Trouble with all these ‘realists’ as you call’em, is that they’re such dirty-minded hounds themselves that all they can see in life is the bad side.”
Una surmised that the writers of such novels might, perhaps, desire to show the bad side in the hope that life might be made more beautiful. ”

“ He gave to Una all he had over from his diversions; urged her to buy clothes and go to matinées while he was away, and told it as a good joke that he “blew himself” so extensively on their parties that he often had to take day-coaches instead of sleepers for a week after he left New York.... Una had no notion of how much money he made, but she knew that he never saved it. She would beg: “Why don’t you do like so many of the other traveling-men? Your Mr. Sanderson is saving money and buying real estate, even though he does have a good time. ”

“ Sanderson is a leet-le tight, like all them Scotch laddies. I’m going to start saving one of these days. But what can you do when the firm screws you down on expense allowances and don’t hardly allow you one red cent of bonus on new business? There’s no chance for a man to-day—these damn capitalists got everything lashed down. I tell you I’m getting to be a socialist.”
He did not seem to be a socialist of the same type as Mamie Magen, but he was interested in socialism to this extent—he always referred to it at length whenever Una mentioned saving money. ”

“ For two years—two years snatched out of her life and traded for somnambulatory peace, Una lived this spectral life of one room in a family hotel on a side street near Sixth Avenue. The only other dwelling-places she saw were the flats of friends of her husband.
He often said, with a sound of pride: “We don’t care a darn for all these would-be social climbers. The wife and I lead a regular Bohemian life. We know a swell little bunch of live ones, and we have some pretty nifty parties, lemme tell you, with plenty poker and hard liquor. ”

“ The children play in the corridors; they become bold and sophisticated; they expect attention from strangers. At fourteen the girls have long dresses and mature admirers, and the boys ape the manners of their shallow elders and discuss brands of cigarettes. The women sit and rock, empty-hearted and barren of hands. When they try to make individual homes out of their fixed molds of rooms—the hard walls, the brass bedsteads, the inevitable bureaus, the small rockers, and the transoms that always let in too much light from the hall at night—then they are only the more pathetic. ”

“ Good Gawd! sometimes a fella’d think, to see you scrooge up your nose when I’m shaving, that I’m common as dirt, but lemme tell you, right now, miss, I’m a darn sight too refined to read any of these nasty novels where they go to the trouble of describing homes that ain’t any better than pig-pens. Oh, and another thing! I heard you telling Mrs. Sanderson you thought all kids oughta have sex education. My Gawd! I don’t know where you get those rotten ideas! Certainly not from me. Lemme tell you, no kid of mine is going to be made nasty-minded by having a lot of stuff like that taught her. ”

“ Read pure authors like Howard Bancock Binch, where, whenever any lady gets seduced or anything like that, the author shows it’s because the villain is an atheist or something, and he treats all those things in a nice, fine, decent manner. ”

“ And one-two of the bunch have got their own cars—I tell you they make a whole lot more coin than a lot of these society-column guys, even if they don’t throw on the agony; and we all pile in and go up to some road-house, and sing, and play the piano, and have a real time. ”

“ A man’s a man, and the sooner a female gets on to that fact and doesn’t nag, nag, nag him, and let’s him go round being comfortable and natural, the kinder he’ll be to her, and the better it’ll be for all parties concerned. Every time! Don’t forget that, old lady. Why, there’s J. J. Vance at our shop. Married one of these up-dee-dee, poetry-reading, finicky women. ”