BY WILLIAM J- LAT^PTOTM Class _JPS3jr^3_ GopightN" ..i.lQi2. COP^-RIGHT DEPOSIT. THE CONFESSIONS OF A HUSBAND t ■> 1 1 BY WILLIAM J. LAMPTON Author o! "Yawps," etc etc. Being a slight offset to " The Confessions of a Wife," by Mary Adams CAMERON, BLAKE & CO. PUBLISHERS 70 FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK lqo3 THE LiBhVRYOF "| CONGRESS, ' Two'Copies Receiver j JUN 22 1903 ' Copyright, 1903, BY CAMERON, BLAKE & CO. Published May, 1903. TO "MARY ADAMS," The Inspiration of it, this volume of Hectic Hallucinations is firmly but respect- fully Dedicated. PREFACE Precious articles are done up in small packages. Price fifty cents. Marry early and often. A new wife sweeps clean. Home is where the wife is. Kind wives can never die. Marriage is the spice of life. Money makes the married go. Marriage is the grand leveller. A widow's weeds blossom early. Make the best of a bad husband. There is no wife without a thorn. All is not matrimony that glitters. Husbands propose, wives dispose. It is not all of life to get married. A wise husban ^ has a good ory. Better bend a husband than break him. Reading maketh a full man. Get full. Some husbands are too good to be true. Marry in haste to repent in Da- kota. Be wives to-day; 'tis maidness to defer. The Lord loveth a cheerful hus- band. Preface* It takes two to make a happy mar- riage. Husbands always come home to roost. When the wife is in, the husband is out. Don't look a gift husband in the mouth. A guilty husband needs several ac- cusers. Husbands make the wives grow fonder. A husband confessed is half re- dressed. A husband's pockets are a wife's pickings. There are tricks in all husbands •but ours. It's a wise wife knoweth her own husband. When the cat's away, the husband will play. An idle husband is the devil's work-shop. It is easy to teach an old husband new tricks. If husbands were horses, wives would ride. A little husband husbandeth the whole lump. An honest husband is the noblest work of God. \'i Preface. Marriage comes high, but we must have it. Morbid communications corrupt good feelings. Every wife is the architect of her own husband. When you do not know what else to do — marry. A husband with a night-key is above suspicion. Husbands learn in suffering what they tell in song. A wife must be bitter that a smile T\dll not sweeten. When wives are ignorant, 'tis folly to make them wise. He, that reckons without his wife, must reckon again. A husband in the house is worth two in a highballery. Don't put off till to-morrow what you can marry to-day. Two heads are better than one, even if one is a husband's. Every wife is occasionally what she ought to be perpetually. If you would know the value of a husband, try to borrow one. The way to a husband's heart isn't through his pocketbook. Matrimony doth shape our ends rough hew them how we will. VJI Preface* The hand that smooths a husband is the hand that rules the roost. Take care of the husbands and the wives will take care of themselves. Look not upon the wine when it is red in the cup. Try a Scotch highball. If a husband and a half cost a for- tune and a half, what will one hus- band cost? It is a thousand times easier to marry a new wife than to get rid of an old one. The lives of some men remind us we can make our own sublime by being different. THE AUTHOR. THE CONFESSIONS OF A HUSBAND. CHAPTER I. The night is wild and wet. If it were tame and dry I do not think I would love it so. All my nights since I have been married have been tame and dry. They have the dignity that belongs to ugliness and character, but I think I would prefer less ugliness and less charac- ter. At least, for two or three nights during the year. I have never loved anything that was not beautiful. I have endured a good deal, but endurance is not love, although love may be endur- ance. I know a few instances that nothing on earth but love could stand. To-day I found something which pleased me„ It was a two-dollar bill 9 The Confessions in my pants pocket. I wonder how it escaped my wife when she went through my clothes last night. She never did that before. Can it be that her devotion to me is growing weak and wobbly? I know two things in this world that never, never tire me, and always rest me — I wonder if they always will. One is a highball, and the oth- er is the same. Oh, that wind! It roars like a fierce elemental creature that doesn't know what it wants. I am not like the wind. I know what I want and I want it badly. I want to be like this night is. It is not dry, as I am. I can't help feeling that if I opened the window and let myself out the storm would be kind to me and I, should be upborne and transported to a cosy little place around the corner where the highballs blossom all the year round. Mary is sure not to miss me. She thinks I will not dare. The next best thing to jumping out of the window is to sneak out of the front to Of a Husband. door. Mary is busy with the Sister- hood of Sociologic Progress meeting in our sitting room this evening. The storm is growing gloriously worse. So am I. I believe I'll go. Sic semper tyrannis. it The Confessions CHAPTER II. I WENT. I took a highball. Oh, I didn't care what anybody thought of me. What's the sense in being alive if you can't hurl away other people's thoughts and respect your own? I took another highball. The worst thing I ever did in my life I've done to-night. That is to say, Mary would think so. I'm glad that wo- man doesn't know it. But she will find out. I know she will. But what do I care? I took another highball. I believe the highball soul got me as the water soul took Undine when nobody ex- pected it. It stormed as if the skies were breaking up and coming to pieces on the earth and burying it under. You might think they were ashamed to see it. I took two more highballs. Who knows what I should have done with- i2 Of a Husband* out them? Six hours ago I had never done anything very special — anyway, since I've been married — that I wouldn't be willing to have my wife know. I wonder what she'd say now? But I don't see that there is any particular need of her know- ing. I hate to worry Mary. The wind had worked its temper to a hur- ricane, and, oh! but I loved it, I loved it. I took several more highballs. I loved them, too. And I began to sing. I sang opera and ballads and queer things — all the love songs I ever knew, and that one I like about the skipper's daughter and the mate. . . . ^^A man might sail To hell in your companie/' And pop! in the middle of them something happened. I don't know what it was. When I awoke I was at home again. The Lord knows how I got here. I don't. Does Mary? Oh, mamma! I wonder if this is the way people J3 The G)nfessions feel when they have done some dread- ful thing — ^Zike one person before the deed and another person after, and not able to convince anybody else that it isn't the same person at all. Mary is very peculiar. I feel very strangely and a little seasick, as if I had just got off a shipwreck. t4 Of a Husband* CHAPTER III. Since that evening when I went out into the storm without permis- sion — ^and heaven knows I could not have gone otherwise — Mary has not seen fit to speak to me at all. How did she ever learn of my duplicity? If I meet her at the door she looks at me stonily, and if I go into the sitting room, where she is reading, she lifts her eyes inquisitively, and their expression is positively exas- perating. I never denied that Mary was a handsome woman, and melancholy becomes her, I'm bound to admit. But she has that remote air, as if I had been caught stabbing her, and nobody knew it but herself and me, and she wouldn't tell of me lest I be held up to human execration. It is a manner quite characteristic of Mary. I don't pretend to know how the woman does it, but she contrives \5 The Confessions to make me feel as if I had commit- ted high treason; as if I had got entangled in a temperance move- ment against my own nature. I wish Mary were a man. I told her so yesterday, for I got a chance when we met in the hall, and I w^as going to my office. I spoke to her and she stopped to hear what I might have to say. She is quite a lady, even when I don't choose to be quite a gentleman, and I will own that no invariable gentleman should have come home in the shape I was that glorious night. There were oth- er places I could have gone. I should have had some respect for Mary's feelings. I hope I have not forgotten that a wife has some feelings a husband is bound to respect. Some husbands do forget, but marriage has not had its worst effect on me — ^yet. When I told Mary she laughed, laughed outright, as if I had amused her more than I could be expected to understand. But I did understand, and I walked out without kissing i6 Of a Husband. her goodby. I had not kissed her for a week or more and was becom- ing accustomed to it. So was she., •» « « * « Office of Dana Adams. My Dear Mrs. Adams: — I have spent several hours trying to decide whether to notice your treatment of me this morning or not. It is really unpleasant to be treated that way. You put one in such a brutal light. As if it were the man's fault because lack of practice had made him awkward in the use of high- balls. I don't wish to be ill-man- nered, I'd rather be barbarous, but you compel me to say, madam, that I disapprove of your methods. Pray, do you think I am the kind of hus- band who can be browbeaten into submission? Perhaps you take me for the other sort, that waits to be coaxed? Learn that I am neither, but believe me to be, sincerely yours, Dana Adams. P. S. — You refused to listen to me, and now you may wonder that J7 The Confessions I decline to approve your conduct. It seems to me that a woman ought to be satisfied with what she can get and not make such large de- mands that nobody can possibly meet them. If I were a woman and loved a man as much as all that, I would — well, I would do differently. D. A. Dear Mrs. Adams : — Certainly not. Why should I tell you what I would do if I were a woman? I cannot see that the circumstances call for it. Very truly, D. A. My Dear Madam : — Your last note is disagreeable to me. I must beg you to forego any correspondence with me on the subject. It is one on which it is, and will be forever, im- possible for us to agree. D. Adams. ts Of a Husband* CHAPTER IV. June the Thirteenth. If Mary loved me, of course she would not, in fact, I perceive that she could not, make me so miser- able. I think she is the handsomest woman when she is unhappy whom I ever knew in my life. Possibly that is why I do all I can to make her unhappy. I like to be quite just to people. She has the bewildering: beauty of a pagan goddess — M!rs. Bacchus, you might think I would say, though I shall not — but she has the exasperating sensitiveness of a modern woman. She has a kind of sublimated insolence such as I have never met in any other person, and when I scorn her for it, I find tha^ I admire her for it^ — which is des-' picable in me, of course, and I know it perfectly. She had the arrogance to tell me to-day in so many words 19 The Confessions that I didn^t understand myself. She said — but, I will not write what she said. 20 Of a Husband* CHAPTER V. June the Fifteenth, Where shall I find a name for the thing that has befallen me? It seems to me as if there were no name for it on earth or in heaven. Write it down, Dana Adams — fling it into black and white and let it stare you out of your senses. See ! How do you like the looks of it? You have promised your wife that you will not drink another highball. You have promised — your — WIFE — that you will not drink another highball. I have been trying to recall the exact language. Whether I didn't say beer, or gin rickeys, or horse- necks, or cocktails, or pousse caf^s, or whiskey straights, or toddies, or hot Scotches, or gin fizzes, or sar- saparillas, or ginger ales, or brandy smashes, or anything except that one dreadful thing. I am afraid I did 2X The G)nfessions * say ^^highballs.'* No; now I think of it, it was she who said that. All I said was "Yes." This seems to be a pitiable state of mind for a man to be in. I don't re- spect it — I really don't. There's a part of me that stands off and looks on at myself, and keeps quite col- lected and sane, and says, "What a lunatic that man is!" But the mar- iried man in me doesn't mUnd the other man a bit, and that is what mortifies me so. I am too much married. I don't think I will write any more to-day. I'm ashamed to. I don't know what I might say. I'll stop and go to work. An hour later, I can't do it. Now I come to think of it I must have been out of my mind. I shall have to write and tell her so. I wonder if it wasn't sun- stroke? I was out on the street rather long to-day. They say people do such queer things after sunstroke. iLofC. 22 Of a Husband. Seven hours later. It is well on toward evening. I wish I had been born of those people who sleep when things happen— ex- cept on the night of the storm; it was glorious to be awake then. I am writing on and on in this per- fectly preposterous way. I am like- ly to drown myself in tea and soft drinks because I am afraid to wade in and dare the highball. Plunge, Dana Adams. Well, if you've got to write, stop writing to yourself and write to her, then. I don't believe you could do a better thing. Come to think of it, she might rather like it, on the whole. De gustibus non disputan- dum. My Dear Mrs. Adams : — It occurs to me that a note from me, under the circumstances, might be agreeable to you ; but now that I am trying to write it, I am not sure that I have begun it just right. I will send this as it stands and try again. Faithfully yours, Dana Adams. 23 The Confessions The Second Note, Darling: — Will you mind two notes from me? I cannot seem to find any other way of telling you how glad I am that our separation is ended. I cannot understand my- self. I am quite perplexed. Thou strong and tender. Dear, I cannot tell you unless I write it, and I feel that I must tell you, for I owe it to your patience and gentleness to tell you what a foolish husband I was. I whisper you a secret. He will trouble you no more. He has floated out upon the tide of love, Beyond the utmost purple riniy And highballs note are not for him, I am, Dana, Your Husband. The Third Note. Oh, teach me how to make you happy. I have everything to learn, I know. You see I was never a hus- band before, and I wasn't a mem- ber of the Sisterhood of Sociologic 24 Of a Husband. Progress as you were. But believe me that I care for nothing else — for nothing in the world except your happiness. I will be the most docile and the gladdest husband you ever had. See, I have almost written this first separation away. I will con- fess; if I had not written I would have exploded. I will be home in half an hour. Don't be jealous, dear, but I have just taken a couple of highballs in celebration of our reunion. Waking and sleeping I dream, and all my dreams are of you. Your frown is my exile. Your smile is my Eden. Your arms are my heaven. I'll get a couple more highballs on the way home. Your Dana. P. S. — Don't keep dinne^ waiting for me. - D 25 JUN 22 1903 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 020 994 547 2