Most husbands reach the place in a marital relationship at which they must either swear out loud, go to Joe's Bar and Grill, or retreat ostrich-fashion into a love nest. In the case of Addison Stubbs, none of these outlets was feasible. He had a shockingly poor memory for swear words; he would have felt as diffident as a giraffe at Joe's Bar and Grill; and Hilaria, his wife, had the run of his only love nest, a work bench in the cellar. For these reasons, perhaps it was inevitable that he should have crawled under the porch to hide.

-- from The Husband Who Ran Away (1948)

He looked even smaller in my living room than he had in the hallway. He wasn't quite as tall as I am in flat heels-- five feet four-- and he wore a cream-colored jacket that was too wide and too long for him, chocolate gabardine slacks, and brown-and-white buckskin shoes. He was perhaps twenty-five, and his face and head were too pointed for his stubbly crew cut, but his brown eyes were round and friendly. On his upper lip there was a faint little mustache-- the sort you'd draw with a burnt natch-- and it gave him a look of hopeful innocence.

-- from "Give a Sharp Leap" (1959)

Forty-niners who'd passed through the gold rush and now swaggered to Oil Creek expecting a rather panty-waist operation with effete Easterners and rubes, complained that conditions here crazier than anything they'd ever seen. One miner said that if a new well brought up huge gold nuggets, the owner would throw them back and go on drilling -- for oil. This may have been a slight exaggeration.

--- from The Great oildorado (1959)

A radiant new capitalist, I commuted to New Jersey six days a week from Greenwich Village and shared an office with Freda Kordhauser. She was a tall woman, deliberate in movement, with big breasts, big hips, and unexpectedly slim legs. Her hair was Indian-black and long. When it was coiled into a glossy knot, and when she wore powder and lipstick, she had a kind of ugly-woman attractiveness. On her bad days, her hair and clothes seemed to be all loose ends, and the sallow skin on her large face, always faintly mottled, would flame with red markings. On my first day at work I thought she was rather repellent. She must have thought the same thing about me. Taking me around to introduce me to my colleagues, she was wearily polite, but once, when I acknowledged an introduction by bobbing and smiling, she said, "Out here, it isn't really necessary to curtsy."

--from "Proletariat with Duncan Phyfe Legs" (1951)

If you read this collection of first-person pieces straight through in one sitting, you may end up wanting to shoot the author between the I's. So let's not be too hasty. The great advantage of a book of this sort is that you can put it down at any time, even in the bathtub, or read it in dribbles between War and Peace, or lend it to a ten-month-old baby who likes something soft to chew on.

At the time I knew Lolly best, she was in her late thirties. I first met her when she was illustrating a story of mine for a ladies' magazine that specialized in recipes with happy endings. She phoned to ask if she might come to see me and get my ideas, which surprised me because usually illustrators seem to prefer not even to read the story aloud, for fear their imaginations might get mucked up by the facts.

-- from A Growing Wonder (1957)

On the blossoming May day the wagonload pulled up before the Drakes' little rented house (they had long since moved out of the hotel), Drake was too ill to take Smith to the well, but he sat up in bed talking feverishly to the solid-as-a-barrel blacksmith. Later he said thankfully, "I could not have suited myself better if I could have had a man made to order." They must have made a strange twosome; Smith, called "Uncle Billy," was a short, broad, hefty, laconic man who might have posed for Longfellow under a spreading chestnut burr. Whether or not he really believed in the [project at first, he soon felt a protective devotion to Drake. When he was offered a smithy job in Franklin at $4 a day, he told his son, "I can't quit Drake now."

from The Great Oildorado (1959)

In all the excitement after his well came in, poor Edwin Drake got shoved aside and nearly lost in the rush. He was the hero, all right, but one of those heroes who seems to have been chosen in a game of blindfold, like Pin the Tail on the Donkey. To tell you the truth, if this were fiction, I'd invent a new hero, more in the style to which we're accustomed in glossy biographical novels, with large, firm sins and virtues.

-- from The Great Oildorado (1959)

Lolly Ellender had a real talent for being taken advantage of, but if you think of her as a door mat, it's all wrong-- too flattened and inert. Instead, she was more like foam rubber, with a cheery, bouncy consistency, so that often people who walked on her found themselves springing up and down, up and down, until they were either dizzy or cold sober and rather tired, ready to surrender to her buoyant goodness.

--from A Growing Wonder (1957)

What kind of husband are you hoping to capture, by the way? Women who've set their hearts on a millionaire play-boy may end up with no man at all. Never try to aim far beyond your own limitations, mentally or socially. And don't let some glamorous, movie-bred notion of the ideal romance blind you to a prospective husband at close hand. Remember that perfection is at a premium, and that you probably don't deserve perfection, anyway.

There are some women who feel they'd rather be old maids than acept a man with the normal set of masculine failings. Most of them regret that, before they die. And women who fall deeply in love are even more at fault, if they lose a man because of their own stubborn intolerance.

Never be taken in by that line about "marriages are made in Heaven." They're made right here on earth. And they're well worth the labor, both for you and your man.

--from How About a Man (1938)

If you do decide after a gradual approach that you want to have an affair, walk into it with both eyes open. It gives you a much better balance than being swept in overnight. No matter how deeply you care for a man, try hard to preserve some balance during the affair. Don't let him feel that he owns you completely, or that you want to keep him tied hand and foot. Don't act too desperately intense, and pull that line of "I've given you everything, and I hope you appreciate my sacrifice." In the first place, men hate having that thrown up to them. In the second place, sex isn't a human sacrifice. Women would be better off if they tinged its spiritual content with a dash of earthy humor. An affair should be an important, exciting experience for both of you. Then why should a woman pull this martyr stuff. Nobody knocked her over the head and forced her into it. If she took enough time to decide for herself, she should have made up her mind it was worth it. Unless you're a half-wit, you know you'll have some unhappiness to swallow. You'll get your share in any emotional tie-up, whether it's an affair or marriage. A lot of nice women are treated shabbily, but some of them bring it on themselves.

-- from How About a Man (1938)

On the way home, he wondered if New York was full of women who had three brandies and then wanted to go to bed. The idea should have been exhilarating; six hours ago he'd been hoping to find even one female open to suggestion. The trouble was that Miss Jepley was too open, to the point of suggesting everything herself. And yet she wasn't a floozy. He thought it was too bad she couldn't get married. Then he thought gloomily that marriage was no solution.

-- from The Form Divine (1951)