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THE CLUB OF ABANDONED HUSBANDS

AJAX:  Hullo, Socrates, what are you doing patrolling the streets at this late hour?  Surely it would be more seemly to be at home?

SOCRATES:  You speak sooth, Ajax, but I have no home to repair to.

AJAX:  What do you mean by that?

SOCRATES:  In the sense of a place of habitation, a dormitory, of course I still have a home; but it is merely an abandoned shell, a dark and silent place devoid of allure.  I have sent my family to the seashore, good Ajax, and the lonely apartment, with all the blinds pulled down and nothing in the icebox, is a dismal haunt.  That is why I wander upon the highway.

AJAX:  I, too, have known that condition, Socrates.  Two years ago Cassandra took the children to the mountains for July and August; and upon my word I had a doleful time of it.  What do you say, shall we have recourse to a beaker of ginger ale and discuss this matter?  It is still only the shank of the evening.

SOCRATES:  It is well thought of.

AJAX:  As I was saying, the quaint part of it was that before my wife left I had secretly thought that a period of bachelorhood would be an interesting change.  I rather liked the idea of strolling about in the evenings, observing the pageant of human nature in my quiet way, dropping in at the club or the library, and mingling with my fellow men in a fashion that the husband and father does not often have opportunity to do.

SOCRATES:  And when Cassandra went away you found yourself desolate?

AJAX:  Even so.  Of course matters were rather different in those days, before the archons had taken away certain stimulants, but the principle is still the same.  You know, the inconsistency of man is rather entertaining.  I had often complained about having to help put the children to bed when I got home from the office.  I grudged the time it took to get them all safely bestowed.  And then, when the children were away, I found myself spending infinitely more time and trouble in getting some of my bachelor friends to bed.

SOCRATES:  As that merry cartoonist Briggs observes in some of his frescoes, Oh Man!

AJAX:  I wonder if your experience is the same as mine was?  I found that about six o’clock in the evening, the hour when I would normally have been hastening home to wife and babes, was the most poignant time.  I was horribly homesick.  If I did go back to my forlorn apartment, the mere sight of little Priam’s crib was enough to reduce me to tears.  I seriously thought of writing a poem about it.

SOCRATES:  What is needed is a Club of Abandoned Husbands, for the consolation of those whose families are out of town.

AJAX:  I have never found a club of much assistance at such a time.  It is always full of rather elderly men who talk a great deal and in a manner both doleful and ill-informed.