sort of thing day after day from youth to age, and we never even think of complaining, much less giving up the fight the way you did. Once a woman gets her eye on a bargain, my dear Mr. Idiot, and really wants it, it would take a hundred and fifty maelstroms such as you have described to keep her from getting it." "I don't doubt it," said the Idiot, "but you see, my dear Mrs. Pedagog," he added, "you women are brought up to that sort of thing. You are trained from infancy to tackle just such problems, while we poor men have no such advantages. The only practice in domestic rough-housing that we men ever get in our youth is possibly a season on the football team, or in those pleasing[Pg 53] little games of childhood like snap-the-whip, and mumbledypeg where we have to dig pegs out of the ground with our noses. Later in life, perhaps, there will come a war to teach us how to assault an entrenched enemy, and occasionally, perhaps around election time, we may find ourselves mixed up in some kind of a free fight on the streets, but all of these things are as child's play compared to an assault upon a bargain table by one who has never practiced the necessary maneuvers. To begin with we are absolutely unarmed." [Pg 53] "Unarmed?" echoed the Landlady. "What would you carry, a Gatling gun?" "Well, I never thought of that," said the Idiot, "but if I ever tackle the proposition again, which, believe me, is very doubtful, I'll bear the suggestion in mind. It sounds good. If I'd had a forty-two centimeter machine-gun[Pg 54] along with me yesterday afternoon I might have stood a better chance." [Pg 54] "O you know perfectly well what I mean," said Mrs. Pedagog. "You implied that women are armed when they go shopping, while men are not." "Well, aren't they?" asked the Idiot. "Every blessed daughter of Eve in that mêlée yesterday was armed, one might almost say, to the teeth. There wasn't one in the whole ninety-seven thousand of them that didn't have at least two hatpins thrust through the middle of her head with their sharp-pointed ends sticking out an inch and a half beyond her dear little ears; and every time a head was turned in any direction blood was shed automatically. All I had was the stiff rim of my derby hat, and even that fell off inside of three minutes, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of it since. Then what the hatpins failed to move out of their path other pins[Pg 55] variously and strategically placed would tackle;
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