[88] "Takes—what?" "Takes her by surprise, Mr. Travers," explained the widow, "and doesn't give her time to think or to say no. The short cut to managing a woman is not argument or reason. It's action. She may like to be coaxed, but it's the man who orders her about whom she admires—and obeys. Eve has never forgotten that she is only a rib and when Adam forgets it, she——" "Makes him feel like a small part of the vertebræ," interpolated the bachelor tentatively.[89] [89] "Naturally," returned the widow, tying the sofa pillow fringe in a hard knot and then untying it again, "when a man comes to her on his knees she is clever enough to keep him there; but when he comes to her with a scepter in his hand and determination in his eye, she has a wholesome respect for him. It's not the man who begs but the one who demands that receives. It's not the man who asks a girl to marry him, but the one who tells her that she is going to marry him, who gets her. It's not the husband who requests the privilege of carrying a latch-key or staying down town at night who can do so without fear and trembling, but the one who calmly takes the latch-key and telephones his wife that he is going to stay down town and then[90] rings off as though the matter were settled. The question of who's going to have the whip hand in love or matrimony is decided the very first time a man looks at a woman and lets her know who's master." [90] The bachelor flicked the ashes off his cigar and regarded the widow curiously. "Are you talking Christian Science or Hypnotism?" he inquired patiently. "Neither," replied the widow, "I'm talking facts, Mr. Travers. Haven't you ever seen a little short-legged man with a snub nose married to a beautiful, queenly creature, whom he ordered about as if she were the original Greek slave and who obeyed him as if he were Nero himself, and adored him in proportion[91] to his overbearing qualities? And have you never seen a magnificent, six-foot-two specimen of masculine humanity, who was first in war and first everywhere but in his own home, where he was afraid to put his feet on a chair or light a pipe or make an original remark, because some little dried-up runt of a woman had him hypnotized into believing that he was the thirty-second vertebræ and she all the rest of the bones and sinew of the human race? A woman is like a darky, who
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