n afford to
marry. 'That vile phrase scarcely veils hidden depths of depravity,' he
continues. 'The right sort of man doesn't argue with himself at all on
these matters. He doesn't say, with selfish coldness: "I can't afford a
wife"; or "If I marry now I shall ruin my prospects." He feels and acts.
He mates like the birds, because he can't help himself.'

I must say that these young men who do not think, but merely feel and
act, scarcely seem of the highest type in my opinion, and if mating like
the birds were to be generally accepted as a sign of a noble
nature--well, nobility would be decidedly less rare than at present!

IV

WILD OATS FOR WIVES

'Nothing that is worth saying is proper.' --G. BERNARD SHAW.

'I don't believe in the existence of Puritan women. I don't think
there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered
if one made love to her. It is that which makes woman so
irresistibly adorable.' --OSCAR WILDE.

If there be any readers whose susceptibilities are shocked by this
headline, they are respectfully requested--nay, commanded--to read no
further. If there be any whose susceptibilities waver without as yet
experiencing any actual shock, they are affectionately asked--nay,
implored--to re-read several times the above quotation from Mr Shaw's
immortal _Candida_, to thereupon pull themselves together and take the
plunge. I can promise them it won't be anything like as terrible as they
half hope--in fact its essential propriety will probably disappoint them
bitterly!

Curiously enough, though women are more anxious to marry than men,
and do everything in their power to achieve what men often strive to
resist--after marriage it is generally the woman who is most
discontented. Of late years a spirit of strange unrest has come over
married women, and they frequently rebel against conditions which our
grandmothers would never have dreamed of murmuring at. There are a
variety of causes for this: one that marriage falls short of women's
expectations, as I said in the opening chapter, another that they have
had no _feminine_ wild oats. Please note the qualifying adjective, duly
italicised, and do not attempt to misunderstand me. I am no advocate of
the licence generally accorded to men being extended to women.

'Wild oats' of this nature, otherwise an ante-hymeneal 'fling,' was
certainly not a necessity of our grandmothers, but a certain (fairly
numerous) type of modern