The next day a council of war was held by the two husbands and it was unanimously agreed that something must be done.

“I have it!” exclaimed Mr. Fivedollars.  “Now, listen.  I will take you in as a partner in business.  I will give you twenty years to pay your share, and we will dress our wives exactly alike.”  The plan was adopted, and the result was phenomenal.  Mr. Onedollar had at last multiplied his insignificant unit by five and had a concrete accumulation.  The two ladies dressed themselves alike extravagantly, and all rivalry ceased.  They became great friends again and lived happily ever after.  And all this disturbance and discord of human hearts was over a miserable bundle of inanimate drapery.

Of the Ruse That Failed

Once upon a time in Ashcroft there lived a lady who had the wool pulled over her husband’s eyes to such an extent that he had optical illusions favorable to the “darling” who deceived him.  His most alluring illusion was a booby idea that his “pet” was an invalid, and she kept pouring oil on the joke to keep it burning, and pulled the wool down further and further so that hubby could not see the combustible fluid she was pouring into the flames.  Her illness was one of those “to be continued” story kinds—­better to-day, worse to-morrow—­and she “took” to the blankets at the most annoying and inopportune moments; and every time she “took” an indisposition she expected hubby to pull down the window curtains and go into mourning.  But he, the hardhearted man, would continue to eat and smoke and sleep as though no volcanic lava were threatening to submerge the old homestead.  His sympathy was not enough; he should stop eating, stop sleeping, and stop smoking—­he should be in direct communication with the undertaker and negotiating about the price of caskets.

His wife had the misleading conviction that when she was ill her case was more serious than that of anyone else.  In fact, no one else had ever suffered as she suffered; their ailments were summer excursions to the antipodes compared with hers, and when hubby argued that all flesh was subject to ills and disorders, that almost every unit of the human species had toothaches and rheumatics, the argument was voted down unanimously by the suffragette majority as illegitimate argument.

Gradually hubby became convinced that his wife was an invalid, and he went into mourning as much as a man could mourn the loss of a joy that he had grasped for, and just missed in the grasping.  He enjoyed the situation as much as a man could who had discovered that he had amalgamated himself with an hospital which was mortgaged for all it was worth to the family physician.  Out of his salary of seventy-five dollars per month sixty-five was devoted towards the financing of the doctor’s time payments on his automobile; the balance paid for food, clothing, water, light, and fuel, and supplied the wolf with sufficient allowance to keep him from entering the parlor in the concrete.  But the philosopher, as all men must ultimately become, concluded to make the best of his bad real estate investment.  He resigned himself to a life of perpetual, unaffected martyrdom.  After all, it was his personal diplomacy that was at fault—­he should not have bought a pig in an Ashcroft potato sack.