While there’s no sure rule for keeping out of trouble in this world, there’s a whole set of them for getting into it.

I remember a mighty nice, careful mother who used to shudder when slang was used in her presence.  So she vowed she’d give her son a name that the boys couldn’t twist into any low, vulgar nick-name.  She called him Algernon, but the kid had a pretty big nose, and the first day he was sent to school with his long lace collar and his short velvet pants the boys christened him Snooty, and now his parents are the only people who know what his real name is.

After you’ve been married a little while you’re going to find that there are two kinds of happiness you can have—­home happiness and fashionable happiness.  With the first kind you get a lot of children and with the second a lot of dogs.  While the dogs mind better and seem more affectionate, because they kiss you with their whole face, I’ve always preferred to associate with children.  Then, for the first kind of happiness you keep house for yourself, and for the second you keep house for the neighbors.

You can buy a lot of home happiness with a mighty small salary, but fashionable happiness always costs just a little more than you’re making.  You can’t keep down expenses when you’ve got to keep up appearances—­that is, the appearance of being something that you ain’t.  You’re in the fix of a dog chasing his tail—­you can’t make ends meet, and if you do it’ll give you such a crick in your neck that you won’t get any real satisfaction out of your gymnastics.  You’ve got to live on a rump-steak basis when you’re alone, so that you can appear to be on a quail-on-toast basis when you have company.  And while they’re eating your quail and betting that they’re cold-storage birds, they’ll be whispering to each other that the butcher told their cook that you lived all last week on a soup-bone and two pounds of Hamburger steak.  Your wife must hog it around the house in an old wrapper, because she’s got to have two or three of those dresses that come high on the bills and low on the shoulders, and when she wears ’em the neighbors are going to wonder how much you’re short in your accounts.  And if you’ve been raised a shouting Methodist and been used to hollering your satisfaction in a good hearty Glory! or a Hallelujah! you’ve got to quit it and go to one of those churches where the right answer to the question, “What is the chief end of man?” is “Dividend,” and where they think you’re throwing a fit and sick the sexton on to you if you forget yourself and whoop it up a little when your religion gets to working.

Then, if you do have any children, you can’t send them to a plain public school to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, because they’ve got to go to a fashionable private one to learn hog-Latin, hog-wash, and how much the neighbors are worth.  Of course, the rich children are going to say that they’re pushing little kids, but they’ve got to learn to push and to shove and to butt right in where they’re not wanted if they intend to herd with the real angora billy-goats.  They’ve got to learn how to bow low to every one in front of them and to kick out at every one behind them.  It’s been my experience that it takes a good four-year course in snubbing before you can graduate a first-class snob.