Use of the Grunt.

There is, of course, the grunt which is almost exclusively the defensive weapon of the newspaper-reading husband and the business head pursued for a donation. The grunt is perhaps the most useful of all nature's gifts of self-preservation. It is non-committal yet discouraging; it enables the gruntee to play for time, to gather himself for a pounce if, and when, it becomes desirable. Watch the average husband at the average fireside reading the average paper with the average wife. After she has settled herself into a nest of newspaper with nerve-racking rippings, cracklings, rustlings, and paper-wavings, she clucks once or twice; her husband hunches himself up tortoise-wise, striving to drop his head into his chest in the pathetic hope that she'll forget he's there. Probably he's deep in the ancestral ramifications of a race-horse who has all the traditional qualifications of a winner except the speed; or perhaps he's immersed up to the ears in world affears. His wife gives her paper a stupendous shake, which makes it go off like a salvo of machine guns, and says, “Fancy that.” Then she says “Hm!” and “Tch, tch!” Her better half telescopes into himself until his boot tags tickle his Adam's apple. He says, “Grunt!” It's hardly a “let's get together” kind of remark. In fact it has a distinctly un-Rotary flavour. Not that she holds that against it. After twenty-five years she regards it as almost chatty. She says, “Did you see this dreadful thing in Prague?”

He says, “Wuf!” She proceeds to get all the pages of the paper out of order and to fold it in the usual wifely manner until it looks like a run-over pie. Then she really slips into conversational top gear. She reads aloud all the things he has already read in solemn silence. At intervals he remarks, “Huh,” “Grrr-wuf,” “Gah!” “Brrr,” and so on, while he struggles to keep the blood from turning his brain red. So long as he sticks to the connubial grunt he is reasonably safe. The instinct of self-preservation grows in husbands with the years, and the young benedict who learns early to grunt during the evening newspaper session has a reasonable hope of getting through without having his license endorsed.