essentially John-esque. I am as positive as if I had
called for a comparison of experience, that every wife who reads this
could furnish a parallel sketch from life. The average John is
impervious to glance or gesture. I know one who is a model husband in
most respects, who, when a danger-signal is hung out from the other
end of the table, draws general attention in diplomatic fashion thus--

"Halloo! I have no idea what I have done or said, now! but when Madame
gives her three-cornered frown, I know there are reefs ahead, on the
starboard or the larboard side, and I'd better take my soundings."

Women are experts in this sort of telegraphy. From one of them, such
an _expose_ would mean downright malice, or mischief, and be
understood as such. John's voiced bewilderment may be harmful, but it
is as guileless as a baby's. It may be true that men are deceivers
ever, in money or love affairs. In everyday home life, there is about
the most sophisticated, a simplicity of thought and word, a
transparency of motive, and, when vanity is played upon cunningly, a
naive gullibility--that move us to wondering admiration. It,
furthermore, I grieve to admit, furnishes manoeuvring wives with a
ready instrument for the accomplishment of their designs.

For another fixed fact in the natural history of John is that, however
kindly and intelligent and reasonable he may be--he needs, in double
harness, to be cleverly managed, to be coaxed and petted up to what
else would make him shy. If driven straight at it, the chances are
forty-eight out of fifty that he will balk or bolt.

A stock story of my girlish days was of a careless, happy-go-lucky
housewife, who, upon the arrival of unexpected guests, told her maid
"not to bother about changing the cloth, but to set plates and dishes
so as to humor the spots."

She is a thrifty, not a slovenly manager, who accommodates the trend
of daily affairs to humor her John's peculiarities and foibles; who
ploughs around stumps, and, instead of breaking the share in tough
roots, _eases up_, and goes over them until they decay of themselves.
In really good ground they leave the soil the richer for having
suffered natural decomposition. If John is prone to savagery when
hungry (and he usually is), our wise wife will wait until he has dined
before broaching matters that may ruffle his spirit.

It is more than likely that he has the masculine bias toward
wet-blanketism that tries sanguine women's soul