r ale and discuss this matter?
It is still only the shank of the evening.

SOCRATES: It is well thought of.

AJAX: As I was saying, the quaint part of it was that before my wife
left I had secretly thought that a period of bachelorhood would be
an interesting change. I rather liked the idea of strolling about in
the evenings, observing the pageant of human nature in my quiet way,
dropping in at the club or the library, and mingling with my fellow
men in a fashion that the husband and father does not often have
opportunity to do.

SOCRATES: And when Cassandra went away you found yourself desolate?

AJAX: Even so. Of course matters were rather different in those
days, before the archons had taken away certain stimulants, but the
principle is still the same. You know, the inconsistency of man is
rather entertaining. I had often complained about having to help put
the children to bed when I got home from the office. I grudged the
time it took to get them all safely bestowed. And then, when the
children were away, I found myself spending infinitely more time and
trouble in getting some of my bachelor friends to bed.

SOCRATES: As that merry cartoonist Briggs observes in some of his
frescoes, Oh Man!

AJAX: I wonder if your experience is the same as mine was? I found
that about six o'clock in the evening, the hour when I would
normally have been hastening home to wife and babes, was the most
poignant time. I was horribly homesick. If I did go back to my
forlorn apartment, the mere sight of little Priam's crib was enough
to reduce me to tears. I seriously thought of writing a poem about
it.

SOCRATES: What is needed is a Club of Abandoned Husbands, for the
consolation of those whose families are out of town.

AJAX: I have never found a club of much assistance at such a time.
It is always full of rather elderly men who talk a great deal and in
a manner both doleful and ill-informed.

SOCRATES: But this would be a club of quite a different sort. It
would be devised to offer a truly domestic atmosphere to those who
have sent their wives and juveniles to the country for the benefit
of the fresh air, and have to stay in the city themselves to earn
what is vulgarly known as kale.

AJAX: How would you work out the plan?

SOCRATES: It would not be difficult. In the first place, there would
be a large nursery, with a number of rented children of various
ages. Each member of the club, hastening thither from his office at