Say it with bricks/Say it with oil
Author: Nina Wilcox Putnam; Ring Lardner
Date: 2026-05-05T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Marriage -- Humor; Husbands -- Humor; Wives -- Humor

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Say it with bricks/Say it with oil

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Title: Say it with bricks/Say it with oil

A few remarks about husbands/A few remarks about wives

Author: Nina Wilcox Putnam

Ring Lardner

Release date: May 5, 2026 [eBook #78606]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78606

Credits: Richard Tonsing, Tim Miller, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAY IT WITH BRICKS/SAY IT WITH OIL ***

Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

SAY IT WITH BRICKS

BY NINA WILCOX PUTNAM

SAY IT WITH OIL

BY RING W. LARDNER

Say It With Bricks
A FEW REMARKS ABOUT HUSBANDS

BY

Nina Wilcox Putnam

Author of “Laughter Limited,” “West Broadway,” “Tomorrow We Diet,” etc.

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1923,

By George H. Doran Company

COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
SAY IT WITH BRICKS. II
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To

JOHN M. SIDDALL

Who suggested the idea, I dedicate
my half of this ½ portion book,
With best regards
N. W. P.

Say It with Bricks

My Publisher is a nice man, but he has got a way of asking a person that they should write him pieces about impossible things. And you say why, no, I can’t do that, and then he will pass some remarks such as oh, shucks or something, and the next thing a author knows why they are down in print to the effect he wants them to be.

That is how I come to refuse to write anything about husbands, because one day this Publisher says to me why not write what you think about husbands and I says because it couldn’t be printed. And he says well I will pay cash for the piece. And I says that is certainly an awful temptation to any woman, being asked not alone to tell what is on her mind about husbands, but offering to pay her for doing it, but no, I don’t think I had better, it wouldn’t be delicate.

And then I stopped talking so’s he could get a chance to urge me but he merely sat, and so after a while I thought, well, I had not ought to let the conversation drag like that, it is not polite, and so I says well, having had two husbands and been a widow in the meantime, I suppose I am unusually competent to tell about them. But all he says to that is, I don’t want I should urge you against your will. And then I seen my chance slipping, so I says well I might leave out that part about what I think of husbands and make a few remarks merely about what I know about them and he says, well try what you can do. And I says, oh dear, I don’t think I have anything to say about husbands, and he says all right, I’m sorry.

So I went home and I met my husband in the hall and he was looking through the bills that the postman had left, the old ones with the dust on them as well as the nice clean new ones; I suppose he was trying could he by luck find something readable. And I says hello George what do you think, I got a job to write a piece about husbands, and he says, well, if you do I will break your neck.

Well after that I guess you can figure out for yourself what I at once thought, and that I suddenly found I had several things to say about husbands, after all. Or, if a husband yourself, why undoubtedly you will know what was going on in what George calls his mind when he passed that remark. So I will merely proceed and tell you about the talk I and he had concerning why I should not write this story, and how I come to refuse to do it.

Well, when George says that about my neck, and so forth, I come back at him with, since when are you telling me what I am to write? And he says I should think some things was sacred, and I says, do you actually believe there is anything sacred about the things you are afraid I will tell on you? And he says well, husbands is a outrageous subject, and then I says yeh, you said a mouthful. And then he says well, I forbid you to write it, anyways.

And believe you me that is where George pulled a boner, because of course that decided me, and I made up my mind I wanted to write it, and that I would do so only for being fond of my neck and having already told my Publisher I would not. But I says to George how do you get that forbid stuff? and he says in the marriage ceremony, didn’t you promise to love, honor, and obey? And I says I did not, Gorgeous, not at my 2d marriage, which was to you, on account I had already been stung that way once. And George didn’t have any comeback to that because, come to think of it, that was the truth. Which only goes to prove how much clearer women remembers their marriages than men do.

Well, they generally have more cause to on account husbands go out in the morning and leave marriage behind them for the whole entire day, that is unless they are the kind comes home for lunch. But as a rule they usually outgrow home-lunches after about the 1st yr., and coming home to lunch is one of the few bad habits a wife can cure after marriage. Other bad habits such as gambling, drinking, and preferring toothpicks to any other form of dessert, why if he has these habits while still a man, it is likely they will not get better when he has become merely a husband, and you know the old saying about no man will reform after marriage if he won’t before and I always say, well why would he.

Well anyways I had it on George, see, because of me having been married 1 time before, and I knew enough to leave that obey stuff out the 2d time and other items as well. And what is further, a 1st husband is a great weapon and every married woman should have one, because no matter what he was like when living, if no longer so, you can always hold him up as a sample. No matter what George does, why I am in the position to say, well Joe never did. So my advice to young girls is always have a 1st husband somewhere in your past, even if you have to invent him, then you can pull the Tom-never-acted-like-that stuff, and even though your husband will say, no, thank heaven, I am not such a dumb-bell, or maybe let on like he thought you was exaggerating a good deal, why, you can at least have the comfort of kidding yourself that maybe life would of been sweeter with Tom if only I hadn’t made this terrible mistake, and ect.

Now there are quite a few things all husbands have in common and believe me common is just what I mean. I don’t know how they get that way unless it’s an infection, but going around the room with a shirt on and a neck band with one collar button fastened in front and one sticking out behind but as yet no collar to justify it, is common indeed to all of them, and in the mind of any wife living, should constitute grounds for divorce. I don’t know just what is wrong about a husband with no collar but a adams-apple working where a necktie ought to be, but something is. It ought to be stopped by law.

Another outrage that we wives have to endure is the license husbands get to tell the same story in our presence as many times as he can find a victim who has either never heard this story, see, or is too polite to admit that he has when he finds out how anxious George is to tell it. And not alone are we wives expected to listen for the thousandth time without protest, but we are actually expected to lead up to this story when in company, of our own free will, and give him the chance to tell it, and what is even stranger, we do.

We wives also suffer a lot from teethbrushing, and if somebody would only invent a silencer for husband’s tooth brushes they would confer a big favor on humanity. And to see the ideal of our girlhood days who we had only considered as perpetually wearing a dress suit, come wandering out of the bathroom in a undershirt, suspenders draped gracefully over both hips, a face like a soap-bubble-party gone wrong, waving a razor and passing some remark about hey listen, whatter you think I told that old cheese of a manager of ours to-day, well, a thing like that is a terrible blow to love’s young dream. In fact it is generally sufficient of a blow to knock said dream for a goal, and yet a person has to endure it year after year and smile and say nothing except maybe “What, dear?” or something.

Of course, if George was ever to stop doing it I would have a fit and commence to think there was another woman, and be as completely, comfortably miserable as only a wife can be when she has nothing else to do. But just the same it is grounds for complaint.

Then on the other hand I will admit that husbands is got their good points. For a sample, if you got to help them push their old jokes out of the garage in public, they will in turn back up any brag that their wife pulls about what rent we pay or the big salaried position that he turned down when it was almost offered to him, and ect., and even once in a while he will confirm something you say you done yourself, such as making the cake you bought at the woman’s exchange and brought it to the picnic, for any human wife will fall for a little white lie like that once in a while. The only trouble is, that a wife is never sure will he really back her up, or will he say, why, Nina Putnam, that dress ain’t imported, it’s the one you made me come across with the seventeen-fifty for, over on Forty-second Street, don’t you remember? And if it should happen to be one of them days with him, why there is no use pretending you can’t remember, because he will hound you until you do.

However, husbands are temperamental and the very next day they will back you up when you least expect it, even to the extent of speaking to the cook about the condition of the ice box, and it is these precious moments keeps us chained to them.

Husbands’ memories is notedly strong on things like the kind of a cook his mother was, what he went around the last nine holes in, the exact raise of salary he needs, and the only time you had one cocktail too many. But they have a blind spot in their minds when it comes to anniversaries, mailing letters, and promises to get around more in the evenings to shows and things like we used to when we was engaged. It’s no sooner promised than forgotten, with them, but they will hound you to death over a little thing like a button on a shirt, which you have overlooked a few times on account of having different things on your mind such as trying to match that difficult dress sample of Elephant Blue, or your regular Bridge Thursday.

Women have so many more things to think of than men do, what with the Eternal Question of what’ll we eat, and can I trust that new Maggie with the baby while I run downtown or must I take him over to Mommer’s, and numerous other details, that it’s a wonder we ever get around to holes in socks or bawling out the laundry because the only decent dress-shirt collar out of six—mind you, Nina, the only one that was really any good—has been chewed at the edges so’s it fits around the neck like a hack-saw.

Of course I realize that all the above type of beautiful domestic detail, which is part of every true woman’s sacred homelife, is extremely elevating. In fact I have frequently found it so elevating that I have went right up in the air about it. But programs of that sort are what any husband expects his wife will gratefully accept, and it’s the truth she is generally able to discount it, learn to get a little pleasure out of crabbing about it, and would not give it up for the world, because then she would have to commence and look around for some new thing to holler over. One good point about husbands is that they provide all the subjects for those w. k. female brand of talks commencing, well I don’t believe in discussing my private affairs with anybody, but I will say that George, and ect.

Other good things about husbands is that they are certainly useful for closing trunks and opening bottles. Also they are good practice for ladies intending to enter the diplomatic service, which some of us some day undoubtedly will, now that we have got the vote, and any woman who has put in a few years managing an average husband will be able to take a foreign diplomat’s job, and these astute Mike O’Valleys they got over in them foreign countries, why, they will be a mere child in our hands.

Well, if I was to write a story on husbands, one thing I would certainly do over George’s dead body if necessary is show up a few of the things husbands have been getting credit for these many years, when all the credit belonging to them in these respects could be written on a pl. remit notice. And the first of these false-fronts that they have been putting up is that a woman is never ready on time and a husband is always champing at the leash with his watch in one paw hollering out remarks about the first act or the last train or something, while his better half is making herself look as much better as she knows how and taking not alone her own time about it, but everybody else’s time as well.

Now where every husband I have had is concerned, it is enough to say, dinner is ready, dear, for him to beat it in the opposite direction from the dining-room to wash his hands and comb his hair and peer at his collar, and feel does he need a shave and this is especially true if we have a omelet or pea soup. Even then he will not take the blame, but try to hold the cook responsible for the fact that the omelet has fell and he was not there with the old field work, or that the pea soup is all right, only now being cold all it needs is a little wall paper and a brush to go with it. On time? The only thing a typical husband is ever on time for is his own funeral and that generally occurs too late to be of any good to his widow.

More husbands has caused the missing of a first act by forgetting the tickets than wives has caused the same thing through faults of her own. And if a wife is not dressed on time for the seven-forty-five car into town, it is usually because she has got a sudden hole in her silk ones, or she didn’t get time to curl her hair before dinner on account of that dreadful Mrs. Hoosis staying so late, or she was cutting out a new pair of rompers and forgot to stop in time, or some real, genuine reason like that.

And as for delaying auto rides, well, it’s a lucky thing I decided not to write any article telling about husbands, because of the mouthful I could say on this subject alone, or in company either! The times I have sat in the car and waited while George took up the hood and looked earnestly at the engine for a long time, until the engine stared him out of countenance and he put the hood down again without doing anything else, but with the eternal hope I would be impressed! Then again the sitting I have done while he filled the radiator and looked to see did we need any gas, and made me get up so’s he could get a screw driver out of the tool box under the seat, and then decide he didn’t need the screw driver after all, and make me get up again so’s he could put it back! I have waited while he give the oil gauge a good manicure and cursed when he discovered he done it with his handkerchief by mistake and gone back in the house for a clean one, and then decided maybe he would just run in and get a sweater in case it got cold before we come home.

And then, after all those brands of delay, George will get in the driver’s seat and say, well, we are going to be late, I don’t see why you couldn’t of been ready on time, and I will say nothing. That is, nothing except a few words about why don’t you take care of the car in advance, it is your province, or am I expected to do it as well as all the housekeeping, because if you say so, I will, and then there won’t be no delay, and it’s a man’s job, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Just merely a few things like that, because I don’t believe in starting out on a trip sore at each other.

As for the times I have sat outside of some office when George has said I want to run in here on business I won’t be a minute, well, I’ll tell the world he said a mouthful, because he never is a minute, he is an hour as a general thing. And another time I have waited for a husband is when he said he would be home early to-night, dear, but he had to work overtime at the office, after all.

Well, if I was to write this book I am telling you about, why, those are a few things I would mention right here, and another bluff about men which I would dynamite, is about how strong they are.

Somehow the idea has got around, probably circulated by men, that men are stronger than women. Well, some of them are strong all right, I personally myself know one man and he was so strong he captured a wild packing box on its native hearth, and sat on it to tame it while his wife took in washing on her native hearth and worked at it for twelve hours a day. I also know another strong husband who used to clerk in a drug store, and come home at night all wore out from wrapping up the big husky gumdrops they carried, to find his wife cheerful and refreshed from her nice homey day, where she hadn’t a thing to do except the housework and the marketing and the washing, and a few little things like that, when she was perfectly free to spend her evening sewing for the kids. In a coupla years this husband strained his imagination lifting a package of absorbent cotton and had to retire for life; but she, being a weak woman, merely took on a little stenography and they get along pretty good.

So I always claim you can’t tell a sturdy oak from a clinging vine until they start to grow, and then, on the other hand there is George and his threat about breaking my neck, and he is perfectly capable of doing it with one hand, as I know, on account I have seen him open a box of shoe polish with a single gesture, and after an exhibition of strength like that, why, I don’t care to take any chance, which is why I couldn’t very well write this book that he objected to.

But it does seem a pity, though, for me not to be free to write it because there are several good things I would like to be able to call attention to about husbands, and I would put them into the story, and one of them would be how a husband makes a person feel safe going out with him, nights, and how they are real handy when you need a little change. I mean both in the money sense and when you want to get away from where you are.

Husbands is also a great comfort in a lonely house at night, and the superstition about they will chase burglars has reached such a popular point that old maids frequently keep a male hat or two parked on the rack in the hall, hoping all burglars will enter by the front door, see the hats and be so scared they will beat it at once. But these old maids, why they do it in their innocence on account they have no real experience. And anyone on the inside knows that a genuine husband, if his attention is called to some noise, will merely pull the blanket further up over his head and say oh, nonsense, it is only that darn cat again, how many times have I got to get up at night and stalk that animal. Still, it is better to have a husband in the house than a mere hat, because then if the burglar does come, at least you can die together, or maybe it will be only the husband that will get injured.

Another thing I would love to discuss on the subject of husbands and why they are that way, is mothers-in-law of both sexes. Few people is lucky enough to marry orphans, and a mother-in-law on one side of the family is a element in almost any marriage. And believe you me, a husband’s mother has got it on a wife’s mother, and when she comes to visit she may be as nice as nature allows in such trying circumstances, but she has a far more eagle-eye on the way you run things for her boy than your mother ever has on friend husband and the way he is treating you. And this is because his mother always has a you-stole-him-from-me-hussy! feeling toward you, while your own mommer, no matter how she may pick on him as a provider and she usually does, though in a nice way, well, she always has a dash of thank-heaven-you-took-her-off-my-hands in her manner. Which naturally makes him more so than ever, if you get me.

Now I have give a lot of serious thought to marriage, and if I was ever to write a piece about it, I would admit that, honest, there is something funny about marriage. I mean funny in the most serious sense. There is something about marriage does funny things to people once they get into it. I mean funny things such as being nasty to each other, and cruel, sometimes, and even unfair. It takes a nice, snappy-dressed young chap that is crazy about going to the pictures and is a regular spendthrift with ice-cream sodas, after, and plants him in the back parlor with his vest unbuttoned, his face under a newspaper and his feet under the lamp. It likewise grows curl papers and dressing sacks on females that once took ’em off before he had a chance to see ’em. Marriage goes even further. It runs up bills for groceries instead of for taxis: it traps a person into having a bunch of kids that looked fine on magazine covers when we was engaged, but now look best when finally in bed and asleep. In fact, anybody who could write, could holler on about marriage and husbands and what is wrong with them, with all the violence of a Red Radical and with more truth by far, because pretty near any complaint you can make about husbands and marriage would be a true one. And only one thing about them has got me buffaloed. Would I be willing to do without them? And the answer to that is “No.”

Because for the life of me I can’t think of any better arrangement to take the place of marriage, and neither have I seen anybody else of who it was a true fact that they have found something just as good. These free-love-radicals that you read about in the papers, why as a rule their chief dread in life is that somebody will look up the marriage records in their home town and expose to the world the horrid fact that they are not living in sin after all, for somebody is always taking the bull out of life, and leaving us face to face with the truth. And in this case I guess we will have to reluctantly admit that marriage is the best way to get rid of a troublesome suitor, of which we know as yet.

Personally, I am for it, even after a coupla trys, and I got a feeling that there is in marriage, something that a person might justifiably call divine, and also a sneaking idea, which I naturally put out of my head as quick as possible whenever it comes to me, and that idea is that maybe there is nothing wrong with marriage itself, but that the trouble is with the ones that goes into it. I have, as I mentioned, tried it twice. Maybe it is like eating peanuts, you don’t know when to stop. But then again it may be because of some holy thing that a woman can find in a good husband. And if I was to write a book about husbands, I would tell you what this is. And if I did, why then George would break my neck, and I don’t know that I would be able to blame him!

Say It With Oil
A FEW REMARKS ABOUT WIVES

BY

Ring W. Lardner

Author of “You Know Me, Al,” “Gullible’s Travels,” “The Big Town,” etc.

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1923,

By George H. Doran Company

COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
SAY IT WITH OIL. II
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

My ½ of this book
is dedicated to
whoever likes it better
than the other ½
R. W. L.

Say It with Oil

My Publisher asked me would I write a book on my impressions in regards to wives.

“Well,” I says, “I have only got the one wife, and wile I admit she has made quite an impression, still and all it seems to me like you ought to get a hold of a husband with more experience.”

So he says:

“Yes, I know you have only got one yourself, but you must be acquainted with a whole lot of them.”

“I suppose I am,” I said, blushing furiously; “I guess I am personally acquainted with practally every A-No. 1 wife around N. Y. City except Nina Wilcox Putnam.”

The Publisher jumped as if stang by a bee.

“That is almost uncanny you mentioning her name,” he said. “She is the lady who has wrote up a story in regards to husbands, and what I am asking you to write is a kind of a reply to what she wrote. Because I would not be loyal to my sex was I to print her scatheing arrangement of the male gender and not give no space to our defense.”

“All right,” I said; “but I can’t conduct no defense without knowing what is the charges, so before I reply to her story I would better see it first.”

So he showed me the story, and I read it, and you can read it for yourselfs as it is printed elsewheres in this book under the dainty nom de plume of “Say It With Bricks,” only I suppose the proof-readers has kind of fixed it up since I seen it, as it struck me that the lady in question has studied husbands at the expense of grammar and spelling.

But before dealing with her story, and wile still cool, I would like to state the cold facts which the gen. public is well aware of same, but for one reason and another don’t care to confess it even to themselfs. One fact is that a man defending husbands vs. wives, or men vs. women has got about as much chance as a traffic policeman trying to stop a mad dog by blowing 2 whistles. Another fact is that, with all the recent jokeing about give us equal rights and etc. the wives has got the husbands licked to a pulp and has had them licked for hundreds of yrs., and same can be proved by consulting the works of any writer young or old that touches on the subject.

We will take for inst. the dictionary, and what does it say about a husband? The 1st. definition is a husbandman, which don’t mean nothing. The 2d. definition is a frugal person, an economist. The 3d. definition is a man who has a wife. In other wds. Mr. Webster realized that his book wouldn’t have no sale unless it tickled the women-folks, so before he dast come out and say that a husband is a man with a wife, he had to call him a tightwad.

Now what is the definition of a wife? Well, he says she is the lawful consort of a man, and it don’t require no Shylock Holmes to figure out that what he meant to say, but was scared to say, was, awful consort.

Back toward the end of the same book you will run across the wd. uxoricide which means the murder of a wife by her husband. But nowheres in the book will you find a wd. that means the murder of a husband by a wife. Unless it’s the wd. congratulations.

In this connection it might be well to point out the fine bunch of equal rights with which the happy pair embarks on the matrimonial seas. If either one of them ain’t satisfied with the other, why they have got equal rights to shoot. But if it’s the wife that gets bumped off, the husband has got exclusive rights to a seat in the electric chair, or strap hanging by his Adam’s apple, or spending the rest of his life in a bird cage. If, however, the husband was the target, why the worst that can happen to mother is that she will half to poll the jury with kisses, which can’t be such a hardship even granting that statistics is accurate and that 10 out of every 12 good men and true is kindly disposed toward eating-tobacco.

But to return to the writers, why you can’t find more than a couple of them great or small but what has came out in print or in speeches before the Rotary Club to the effect that their success and everybody else’s was due to their wives or sweethearts. They know a whole lot better, but don’t dast say so. The prominent exceptions to this rule is Francis Bacon and Rudyard Kipling. Mr. Bacon made the remark that “he that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.” And Mr. Kipling wrote one about a good man married being a good man marred, and another one to the effect that he travels the fastest who travels alone.

Some nerve these two babies had, but where did it land them? Mr. Bacon is quite dead and Mr. Kipling wasn’t even invited to Princess Mary’s wedding.

The writers of the present day has learnt better than take chances like that, and you can’t read a story or tend the theatre now days without getting a fresh sample of log rolling in favor of the squalling sex. Like for inst. take the play “To the Ladies” where Marc Connelly and Geo. Kaufman has their leading female character say a line something like “No man that wasn’t married ever made a name for himself.” Well they was a whole lot of us guys in the audience with our wives, and when the line was sprang why we just kind of giggled and smirked as much as to say “How true that is.” Where as if we had of dared to be nasty we would of rose up on our legs and said “What about H. L. Mencken and Tris Speaker and Geo. Ade?”

Even the authors of the marriage ceremony has woke up to the situation and agreed to rewrite same and fix themselfs right with the ladies by leaving out the wd. obey. This is just another public recognition of how bad we are licked. As a matter of fact the obey rule got obsolete along about the same time as 1st. bounce is out. And another thing the boys is going to eliminate is the giving of a woman in marriage, because the gals don’t like to have it even hinted that anybody has got the right to give them away like they was a cut glass gold fish bowl or a pen wipper. So instead of “Who giveth this dame to this guy,” why from now on they are going to can those lines and substitute a hymn or anthem which will probably be some song like Oh, what a gal was Mary.

So much for Man’s position in the Standing of the Clubs and the fat chance I or any other male has got to defend ourself vs. attacks by Mrs. Putnam or any other member of her lodge. But when I undertake to do a job why I am one of these here heblooded Americans that never quits till they are counted out which can’t possibly happen till I been in the arena 10 seconds. In this case however I expect to last longer than that for one little reason. The wife I have got don’t read my stuff. Incidentally that just about describes her. But any way the knowledge that she don’t read my stuff gives me courage to say a few wds. about wives and what they are that I wouldn’t dast say if I thought she was going to read it.

Well then here is some of my idears about wives as I have studied them at home and abroad.

Wives is people that thinks you ought to eat at 8 o’clock, one o’clock, and 7 o’clock. If you express yourself as having an appetite for turkey at midnight they think you are crazy.

Wives is people that always wants to go home when you don’t and vice versa.

Wives is people that ain’t never satisfied as they are always too fat or too thin. Of all the wives I ever talked to I never run acrost one yet that was just right.

Wives is people that thinks 2 ash trays should ought to be plenty for a 12 rm. house.

Wives is people that asks you what time the 12:55 train gets to New York. “At 1:37,” you tell them. “How do you know?” they ask.

Wives is people that sets on the right side of the front seat in their husband’s costly motor and when he turns down a street to the left they tell him he ought to of kept straight ahead.

They are people that you ask them to go to a ball game and they act tickled to death. So along about the 7th. innings you look at them and they are fast asleep and you remind them with a delicate punch in the ribs that they are supposed to be excited. “Oh, yes,” they say. “I love it.” So you ask them what is the score and they say “St. Louis is ahead, ain’t they?” “Well,” you say, “I don’t know if St. Louis is ahead or ain’t ahead, but the game you are watching is between Boston and New York.”

That reminds me of one time I took the little woman (I can’t always remember her first name) to a game in old Chi and it was Cleveland vs. the White Sox and it was a close game something like 2 to 1 in favor of somebody and along come the 8th. innings, and Mother, which is how I sometimes think of her, was sleeping pretty and all of a sudden they was a big jam down around 1st. base between a citizen named Tris Speaker, mentioned before in this article and now mentioned again, and Chick Gandil of blessed memory. As they was taking the shirtless remains of Chick off of the field I nudged Mamma in the jaw and said: “Did you see that? It looked to me like Graney took a wallop at him for good measure.” “Who is ahead?” says the little gal.

Wives is people who you make an outlay of $50, so as they can set somewheres in New Jersey during the so-called Dempsey-Carpentier fight and when it is over, you meet them and ask them how they liked it and they say Oh, they was thrilled. “Did you see that last punch?” you ask them. “No,” they say. “I was watching Irma Goldberg.” Who of course is worth watching even at $50.

They are people who you get invited out somewheres with them and you ask them if they think you ought to shave and they say no, you look all right. But when you get to wherever you are going they ask everybody to please forgive Lute as he didn’t have time to shave.

They are people that kid you because when the morning paper comes the first thing you look at is the sporting sheet. You leave the paper home and buy another one to read on the way downtown. When you get home that evening, in trying to make conversation you remark that it was kind of sad, the Kaiser’s wife dying in exile. “I didn’t know she was dead,” says Ma. “Well,” you tell her, “it was in the morning paper.” “I didn’t notice it,” she says. “It must of been on the front page.”

They are people that never have nothing that is fit to wear.

They are people that think when the telephone bell rings it is against the law to not answer it.

They are people whose watch is always a ¼ of a hr. off either one way or the other. But they wouldn’t have no idear what time it was any way as this daylight savings gets them all balled up.

The above observations is made without resentment as I have no complaint vs. wives in gen. or anybody’s wife in particular. Personly I get along fine with whatever her name is and am perfectly satisfied with my home, which I often call my castle. I also refer to it sometimes as jail, but only in a joking way.

But here I am in jail and supposed to be defending my sex vs. the opponents and as I said before what a fat chance. However I promised the old boy that I would answer Mrs. Putnam’s story, and a promise is a promise especially when you get paid for it.

So will point out in the beginning that Mrs. Putnam denies all through her story that it is a story and she certainly hit the nail on the hammer that time. What it reads like to me is pure fiction. Like for inst. she gives you the impression that whenever she seen her husbands before she married them, they always had on a dress suit. Well friends I think you will find the fact is that when a kid is 16 or 17 yrs. of age he gets a dress suit and by the time he is 19 yrs. of age he couldn’t get it on with a shoe horn, and from that age to when he gets married he don’t have no more dress suit than Robinson Crusoe and he wouldn’t never have no more dress suit as long as he lived if she didn’t insist on him joining the Rotarians.

The lady’s complaint is that after being used to him in nothing but dress suits wile he was doing the alleged courting, why it is a kind of a blow to see him walking around the rm. in his shaving uniform with his suspenders draped over his hips. In reply to that will say that the lady shouldn’t ought to of had no trouble picking out a husband with something on his hip besides suspenders.

Another complaint is how much noise a husband makes with his tooth brush. Well if a man is at all musical they’s no instrument he won’t attempt to play on and besides what good is brushing your teeth if you are going to keep it a secret.

And another complaint is that husbands prefers toothpicks to any other form of dessert. I don’t think this is entirely fair because they’s some desserts that you get in hotels and restaurants that a person would really relish more than a toothpick, whereas they’s desserts that is served in some private homes than whom a person would not only rather have toothpicks but sulphur matches if necessary.

The lady says it is husbands that is always delaying the game and when they are told that dinner is ready, dear, why it is then and then only that they start to wash their hands and brush their hair. Our reply to that is that when the little woman says dinner is ready you can generally always figure on anywheres from 10 minutes to a ½ hr. before they’s anything on the table but flies.

As for husbands causing the missing of the first act, judgeing from the most of the plays I seen lately she should ought to be grateful for that and if he is even slower and makes her miss the whole show she ought to kiss him.

Now then along toward the finish of her story the lady says something which I will half to quote as it is such a pretty sentiment namely, “Any complaint you can make about husbands and marriage would be a true one. And only one thing about them (meaning husbands) has got me buffaloed. Would I be willing to do without them? And the answer to that is ‘No.’”

Well friends it is hard to bear ill will toward a writer that kind of softens her tirade with such a neat little compliment as that and it looks to me like it would be no more than gentlemanly on my part to reply to same in kind. For inst.

“Pretty near any complaint you make about wives, why it is true though they will probably resent it. But I often ask myself the question could I get along without them? And the answer to that is that I got along without none for twenty-five yrs. and never felt better in my life. Believe you me.”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

- Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

- This is a novelty volume in which Say It with Bricks occupies one half, and when the book is flipped, Say It with Oil begins (or vice versa).
Accordingly, Say It with Oil appears midway through the uploaded material, complete with its own title page.
Bricks is written by a woman about men, while Oil is written by a man about women.

- The two covers were combined vertically for this edition.

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Table of Contents

- Say It With Bricks A FEW REMARKS ABOUT HUSBANDS

- Say It with Bricks
- Say It With Oil A FEW REMARKS ABOUT WIVES
- Say It with Oil
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE