Marriage -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"But that's just the trouble. A few years more and I'll be too late.
You've got to get there while you're young. And there's so little time.
You lose your looks. It's all very well for some women to talk about
ideas and things--and travel and--and children. I did, too, I talked a
lot--oh, how I wanted everything! But one has to narrow down. Thank
heaven, Ethel, you've years ahead. I've only got a few more left--I'm
already thirty-one. And my type ages fast in this town, if you do the
things you're expected to do. But you--oh, Ethel, I want you to marry
well! Not a millionaire--that's rather hard, and besides he'd probably
be too fat--but the kind who will be a millionaire, who has it written
all over his face and makes you feel it in his voice! Don't sell
yourself too cheap, my dear! Don't go running about with men who'll
keep you poor for the rest of your days. They talk so well--some of
them do; and it sounds so fine--ideas and books and pictures and--I knew
one who was an architect. And it's all very well for later on, but what
you've got to do right at the start--while you have the looks and
youth--is to find the man who can give you a house where all those other
people will be tumbling to get in--because you'll have the money--you'll
be able to entertain--and give them what they really want--in spite of
all their talking."
Once more, with a weary sigh, she dropped the religious intensity, and
smiled as she wistfully added:
"That's where some man can put you. They do, you know, they do it.
Some man does it every day. You can see his name in the papers. Dozens
of wives get to Newport each year. And what do they do it on? Money!
"That's romance enough for me, my dear. And if you want work and a
career, the most fascinating kind I know is to study the man you've
married--find what's holding him back and take it away--what's pushing
him on and help it grow! You've got to narrow, narrow down! You may
want a lot of children. They're loves, of course, to have around. But
you run a big risk in that. I could give you so many cases--mothers who
have just dropped out. If you want to really get on in this town,
you've got to stick to your husband and make your husband stick to you!
There are things about that you will learn soon enough. It comes so
naturally, once you are in it--married, I mean. And that's your hold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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