WILD HUSBANDS I HAVE MET.

Taihape Daily Times, 30 July 1919, Page 6

WILD HUSBANDS I HAVE MET.

(By Helen Rowland.) 5 Somehow I have never been able toi imagine any woman being happy with a husband who never smokes, You see, a man, like a baby, is at-» ways putting something in his mouth. I And if it isn’t a cigar, or a cigar—\ ette, or a pipe——Well I If he isn,’t smoking, or eating, or drinking he’s _,-wearing, or whistling,! or kissing, or making love, or grous-: ing, or bragging, or criticising, or fibbing, ‘or crating or instrueting——oh, yts you have noticed it! And yet, most men who smoke are more equablc and less voluble than WOIDCH. A pipe or a cigar is -.1 “pacifier,” which keeps him out of mischief and!‘ enables him to work off his superflous energy and to send his grouches up in smoke—bless its gentle heart! Therefore, to my Lady Nicotine, let! us kneel, and bring burnt offerings. But— ‘ I It is one thing to be married to a, normal smoker, ‘And quite another to put your fate’ in the hands of a firebug. 1 He may be tender as the flowers in‘ May, and as ehivalrous as Sir Walter Raleigh. ’ Yet life with him is as perilous, as exciting, and as uncertain as life in Pctrograd! ' You are constantly tottering on the brink of Eternity——and you never know when you go to bed at night, whether you will wake up! At home or in heaven! Your home resembles an old curiOsity shop or the Argonne Forest after‘ the American marines went thfough it ‘ Rugs are turned this way and that to “hide the burned places.” | Curtains arc pinned in queer folds: to conceal little round black holes_ 1 Scrap baskets are camouflaged with ribbons on their charred sides. r The marble ledge round the bathlromm is covered with strange brown spots. ‘ r Which mark the graves of defunct cigarettes, who'se lives burnt out out unnoticed while you slept serenely. Arid ashes! . The corners ‘of the rooms, the vases, the {fern dishes,’ ‘the, window‘ boxes, the ‘bathtub the ‘umbrella stand. ' All——all bear ‘witness to ‘the secret ~‘__ , .‘ ”_ A, M,

You cannot extract a pin from a pin tray without burrowing halfway to China thi-ugh the ashes. Vesuvius is clean and dainty beside your littc Home _ In all the house the only thing that remains undefiled, untarnished bright, smiling, whole and guiltless of ashes. Is the ash receiver b He} will nonchamtly fling live matches into the 'waste—paper basket. He will blithely‘ toss lighted cigars on the awningns of the apartments beneath "you. ‘ He will leave a hot pipe on a piece of priceless mahogany. He will thoughtlessly press a glowing cigarette against your back hair as he cji‘asps you in his arms——7 But he would as soon think of dosecrating his gralldmother’s grave As of dropping his stubs in the ash receiver! Andeyct life ‘With the Fire-bug is never dull. ' It is ‘as piquant and thrilling and exciting ' As life with a Bolshevist with a bomb and a grievance! And so uncertain! '-—-———-'.____.__.-_-:-..-