Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!tekecs!waltt From: waltt@tekecs.UUCP Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: Tips and Pointers from H.L Mencken Message-ID: <1341@tekecs.UUCP> Date: Tue, 7-Jun-83 13:06:06 EDT Article-I.D.: tekecs.1341 Posted: Tue Jun 7 13:06:06 1983 Date-Received: Thu, 9-Jun-83 19:27:51 EDT Lines: 63 Following are comments from H.L Mencken (circa 1924), a social commentarist of his time. Mencken speaks on mating and women from his broad observation as a bachelor (for over fifty years!). Many comments still ring true today: --------- If a man pays $25 to a minister in order to get married, afterward paying $2500 to a divorce lawyer for the purpose of getting unmarried -- how many times more precious is liberty than matrimony? The axioms into which they (women) have precipitated their wisdom are nearly all untrue. For example, the axiom that the way to capture a man is through his stomach -- which is to say, by feeding him lavishly. Nothing could be more absurd. The average man, at least in England and America, has such rudimentary tastes in victualry that he doesn't know good food from bad. He will eat anything set before him by a cook that he likes. The true way to fetch him is with drinks. A single bottle of drinkable wine will fill more men with passion than 10 sides of beef or a ton of potatoes...If women really knew their business, they would have abandoned cooking centuries ago, and devoted themselves to brewing, distilling and bartending. It is a rare man who will walk five blocks for a first-rate meal. But it is equally a rare man who, even in the old days of freedom, would *not* walk five blocks for a first-rate cocktail. Bachelors have consciences. Married men have wives. Women do not like timid men. Cats do not like prudent rats. Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; women that she was born so long ago. Rule No 1: Don't think that because a women smiles that she is necessarily pleased. The greatest of all human arts is being indiscreet discreetly. Adultery is the application of democracy to love. The resistance a women offers to being kissed may be proof of her virtue, but too often it is merely a proof of her experience. Temptation is a women's weapon and a man's excuse. Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a particular brand of beer exacly to his taste he should at once throw up his job and go to work in a brewery. A man may be a fool and not know it -- but not if he is married. --------------------------------------- Reprinted without permission from "The Mating Game - and how to play it" by H. L. Menckin. ---------------------------------------- Chauvinistically (not really), Walt Tucker Wilsonville, OR