As much as people talk about how much and how quickly the world has changed in the past 75 years or so, I am always surprised and amused by how little human beings change. The world wasn't so very different when it was in black-and-white.

I just ran across a delightful little self-help book from 1936, republished with a new preface and billed as "The Classic Guide for the Single Woman," called "Live Alone and Like It." Apparently, not everyone got married at 17 before World War II.

The author, Marjorie Hillis, who died in 1971 in her 80s, worked for Vogue magazine for decades and was an editor there when she responded to the whimpering of her fellow unmarried ladies with an elegant, funny, archly cautionary motivational manifesto. And while aspects of it are dated (I ring for the maid, but she never appears), the sensible guidance about attitude and priorities holds up -- and it's still better to live alone than with someone you're plotting to strangle.

Hillis is dead-on about the effort involved in constructing and maintaining a network of friends and hobbies in a new city or after a divorce, and her candor about men and "affairs" ("the Woman Pays") is breathtaking -- and discreet enough to read aloud over tea with a nun.

In a chapter called "Who Do You Think You Are?", Hillis asserts "it is the lady who expects orchids who gets them, while you and I are pinning on a single gardenia." You can update this by substituting "roses" for "orchids" and "accepting a promotional koozie they were giving away at the gas station" for "pinning on a single gardenia." Cheap is cheap.

I've never been convinced that you can make things real by believing in them, but there's no doubt that a spiral of lowered expectations does not lead anywhere with nice furniture.

Love was elusive and mysterious even in the '30s, so why waste time trying to figure it out? Hillis suggests more pleasurable activities, including developing interests that make you more interesting, using good cosmetics and pampering yourself with a glass of sherry now and then. She's also a fan of negligees (even if nobody sees them) and smart clothes, noting "It takes a genius to make an impression in run-down heels and an unbecoming hat."

Your home should be as chic as your wardrobe, and Victorian clutter had long since gone out. "Clutter is now as out-of-date as modesty," Hillis warns, "and for just as good reasons."

There's a chapter on time management ("Your Leisure, If Any"), one on sex ("Will You Or Won't You?") and an amusingly quaint guide to cocktails ("A Lady and Her Liquor"). Not a lot of rye drinkers out there any more, but martinis are forever.

The chapter "Pleasures of a Single Bed" is not what you may suspect. It's about ritual and luxury, bed-jackets (huh?) and breakfast trays. Hillis doesn't understand the woman who springs from bed eager to start the day; she has much more affinity for the libertine in satin who does her hair and makeup and then reclines grandly on exquisite pillows.

Isn't that much more civilized than a 5:30 a.m. jog? Or any jog?

As the book was written during the Depression, there is some eerily resonant financial advice in the chapter called "You'd Better Skip This One," "about Saving, that drab and old-fashioned virtue that has never been really enjoyed by anyone except the very penurious and Mr. Coolidge."

The "cases" (fictional examples of women who do and don't behave sensibly, and what befalls them) would be at home in the current issue of any women's magazine. Especially the foolish woman who won't live within her means, "who will try anything that looks like a bargain, can think of a reason why every day is a special occasion for celebrating, and always believes she's going to win the next sweepstakes."

In contrast, the wise woman knows that "the greatest single economy is good taste." Settling for inferior quality and hoping to win the Powerball has always been wasteful, or so I keep telling my maid.

Where is she? And what's she done with my bed-jacket?