The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 1 (May 1, 1932.)
Adam's Evesdropper
Adam's Evesdropper.
From ribstone pippins we naturally turn to the apple of Adam's eye, his rib-bone counter, or his Evesdropper. “Woman!” What a word to wangle! “Woo man,” “Whoa man,” likewise, “fee male,” “fie male,” and generally speaking, the last word in dictation.
But when everything is said and done—which of course it never is—what is the loss of a rib compared with the gain of a whole wife?
History has not done woman justice, mainly because historians are usually male-factors.
Certainly Helen of Troy got a write-up. If Helen were not Irish she should have been, for if I am not mistaken (which is improbable) it was Helen who rode a wooden horse through Cork, or a cork horse through the wood, singing:—
“If at first you don't succeed, Troy, troy again.”
There is also the Queen of Sheba, who is the only woman who has ever admitted the wisdom of Soloman; Lady Godiva who condemned the “barberous” bustercut, and invented the slogan, “wear more hair,” and Annie Laurie, for love of whom even Scotsmen were prepared to risk the expense of a funeral. Then we know of Little Miss Muffet and Nellie Bly in their famous recitation, “The Spider and the Fly;” also the Maid of Athens who invented the part-time kiss, and Bertha, The Sewing-machine Girl, who pedalled her own canoes and popularised the silent singer. Again, there are King Henry's eight wives who lost their heads over him, with the exception of the last, who trumped his ace with a queen.
No doubt there are many others who should have been in history if the fair sex had had a fair deal.
What we men owe on account of woman it is impossible to compute without a ready-reckoner. Woman's has always been the hand that locks the stable and “socks” the fable. She is the power behind the groan and the little thing that counts—our cash.
When a man marries he leads a double life—and both of them are his wife's. Truly, many a wife makes the billets that her husband gets shot into. But woman never boasts of her achievements; she realises more than man that speech was invented as a wind-screen to think behind.
The ladies, God bless ‘em,
We labour to dress ‘em,
We work for their glory,
(Or that is the story),
We think we are Galahads
Daring and bold,
When all that we do
Is to do as we're told.
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“Some things are too utter to utter.”
If the truth about Noah were known, it was his wife who pushed him into the boat-building business; Caesar's* wife, no doubt, was behind his seizures. The fact is that no married man is the captain of his soul. His wife lets him do the speaking while she wields the spokes of the wheel. We know it, and they know we know it, but they never let us know that they know that we know that they know it.
What would the world be without woman? There would be a conspiracy of silence; we would have no homes to stay away from, no wives to tell bed-time stories to, no shirts for us to sew buttons on, no household jobs to dodge, no woman's hand to take our pay envelope, no pay envelope to take; in fact, no nothing nowhere. Consequently we reiterate the toast:—
“Oh Hades, the ladies,
We doubt ‘em,
Know about ‘em,
But—oh Hades! THE LADIES! ! !”