him to try to hold his wife on his lap.

There's nothing in this talk that two can live cheaper than one. A good
wife doubles a man's expenses and doubles his happiness, and that's a
pretty good investment if a fellow's got the money to invest. I have met
women who had cut their husband's expenses in half, but they needed the
money because they had doubled their own. I might add, too, that I've
met a good many husbands who had cut their wives' expenses in half, and
they fit naturally into any discussion of our business, because they
are hogs. There's a point where economy becomes a vice, and that's when
a man leaves its practice to his wife.

An unmarried man is a good deal like a piece of unimproved real
estate--he may be worth a whole lot of money, but he isn't of any
particular use except to build on. The great trouble with a lot of these
fellows is that they're "made land," and if you dig down a few feet you
strike ooze and booze under the layer of dollars that their daddies
dumped in on top. Of course, the only way to deal with a proposition of
that sort is to drive forty-foot piles clear down to solid rock and then
to lay railroad iron and cement till you've got something to build on.
But a lot of women will go right ahead without any preliminaries and
wonder what's the matter when the walls begin to crack and tumble about
their ears.

I never come across a case of this sort without thinking of Jack Carter,
whose father died about ten years ago and left Jack a million dollars,
and left me as trustee of both until Jack reached his twenty-fifth
birthday. I didn't relish the job particularly, because Jack was one of
these charlotte-russe boys, all whipped cream and sponge cake and
high-priced flavoring extracts, without any filling qualities. There
wasn't any special harm in him, but there wasn't any special good,
either, and I always feel that there's more hope for a fellow who's an
out and out cuss than for one who's simply made up of a lot of little
trifling meannesses. Jack wore mighty warm clothes and mighty hot vests,
and the girls all said that he was a perfect dream, but I've never been
one who could get a great deal of satisfaction out of dreams.

It's mighty seldom that I do an exhibition mile, but the winter after I
inherited Jack--he was twenty-three years old then--your Ma kept after
me so strong that I finally put on my fancy harness and let her trot me
around to a meet at the Ralstons one evening.