Judge — August 8, 1925 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

His Spouse—Percy, here’s the Smiths, you must do something—I don’t wish that woman to see me! How It Feels To Be the Husband of a Wife of a Humorist (Continued from page 17) magazine articles on how it feels to belong to a humorist’s family, and I—well, I ought to get from $500 to $1,000 for a good rebuttal, de- pending on how long-winded I can make it.” “Talk it over with me, anyway.” “To begin with, we humorists are tired of you humorists’ relatives telling the world that it is mistaken in its idea that it must be wonderful to live with us all the time. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.” “Don, you know I think it is won- derful to live with you. At least I am used to it.” “But you have all said so often that it is not wonderful to live with me that it has become a subtle, gnawing propaganda, an obsession, a necessity, almost, shall I say, an obligation not to be.” “Yes, I know. We have to tell about your other side, because that is what the public wants to hear. They know all about one side of you. Gosh, darling, we have to tell them about your other side.” “Whether I have one or not. That is what I am going to say about being the husband of a wife of a humorist —how we get another side thrust upon us—how we have to hear about our spells of depression, when you know well enough I never had one in my life for the first fourteen years of our married life until you began to tell about them in your magazinearti- cles—how we have to be well, almost sad men in the family circle. I’m hearing about it so much that I’m getting that way. “You dames seem to think it en- larges us to tell the public we are not what they think we are all the time. Do you remember how much brighter and jollier I was the first fourteen years before you sold that first article to License Magazine?” “T see Mrs. Dempsey is going to write some newspaper articles. Even the prize fighters’ families are at it— of all folks,” she observed. “There you are! No privacy even for Dempsey. My heart goes out to that boy, knowing his thirst for seclusion. And Mrs. Dempsey will probably say that Jack is not at all belligerent around home—just to bring out his other side—and the first thing he knows he will not be belligerent around home, and ‘the next thing he will not be belligerent anywhere. I tell you, it affects our work—this power of suggestion you writing wives exert over us. “Every moment I am around home I am sunk with the feeling that it is not wonderful to live with me. There is this great, growing sense of guilt that I do not keep you laughing all of the time. And I don’t—not since I became consciously the husband of a wife of a humorist. I used to. But do you realize that it has been a week since you have been to the humorists’ wives’ specialist to see about that old split in your side, and two weeks since Hildegarde has fallen out of her basti—her crib— with laughter? My dear, I am be- coming the sad man, the crab, the grouch that you and the children have pictured so imaginatively in your magazine articles. That is how it feels to be the husband of a wife of a humorist. What do you think of the idea?” “Tt sounds to me like a good line of patter. Go ahead and write the article. Write two. Write one about this preliminary conversation, and then write one on the subject itself, and that will make two.” “But, dear, honest, don’t you think I am a little funny in the home?” “You are a screath.” “Jock, will ye sup wi’ me tae-morrow nicht?” “Aye, Sandy, that I will, wi’ pleasure.” “Guid. Then eight o’clock at your hoose.” —Gaiety | ete me PUR tS Ga Mm. S2rgiyverpenyogu comicbooks.com