The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1875-03-25

| COlOr anu Une winning morse as ii lie naQ
private Nostrodamus at his elbow, and
could read the future as other men could
read the past.
l dare say many of my readers will
laugh at me for the confession, but had
never seen race until Jack Langhorne
took me down to the Derby on his drag.
1t was q day both of great enjoyment
and great excitement to me, for under
his auspices 1 netted fifty pounds, and L
felt millionaire. was wild with plea
sure: perhaps, too, the champagne
counted for something in my hilarity,
as took home to Edith sixth of my
yearly income, made in fewer hours than
it took me to earn my paltry diurnal
guinea. Visions of fortune, golden and
bright, passed before my eyes, and al
ready L saw Edith queening it i'll the
park with her housekeeping bays and
faultless turnout. She should have
everything money could command.
Whatever else my visions showed me
she was always foremost in my thoughts
and highest in my hopes.
But when L gave her the money she
turned from me coldly, and minute
after had buried her face in the pillow
of the sofa where she was lying and was
sobbing. was good deal surprised,
a little shocked, and greatly hurt-I had
better use the harsher word and say vex-
ed-at this outburst. 1 did not see the
good of it, and did not understand it.
Besides, it chills man so painfully to
be received with coldness and tears after
such day as l had spent ! 1t makes the
contrast between life inside and outside
the home too sharp, and only sends him
! further off instead of drawing him near
er. However, tears were too scarce yet
! for me to disregard or withstand them,
SO L kissed my wife and did my best to
soothe her, and by degrees brought her
round so far that she left off crying and
began to kiss the baby as if it was some
thing quite new and she had never kiss
! ed it before.
Though was sorry to see her cry this
vexed me again. She had not seen me
all the day, and she had had the boy. /
thought she might have paid little at
tention to the one who had been absent,
to put it ON no other ground.
| But when demonstrated she only an
swered "I know, George, you do not
care for baby. You never have cared for
him, and if it were not for me he might
die of neglect"
/ began to laugh at this. 1t struck
me as too comical that wife should re-
/ proach her husband for not taking care
, of the baby; for surely if there is such
thing as woman's work" in the
world, they are not meant by nature and
| the eternal fitness of things to be soldiers
and sailors and lawyers and doctors and
| the Lord knows what besides, that work
is to be found in the home and
the nursery. But she was angry when 1
laughed, and raising herself on her elbow
drew a picture of the infamy, ruin, de-
gradation that was to follow on my tax
/ ing to bad courses, founded on my not
caring for baby and my having won fifty
pounds at the Derby, that seemed to
! be listening to maniac, not the Edith
had left in the morning and ha d loved
for so long. Perhaps L was too i'm
patient, and ought to have remembered
that if found my life dull hers was not
too gay; ought to have made allowance
| for the morbid nervousness and brood
ing fancies of woman left alone for the
whole day; but L was younger then than
1 am now, and the thing ended by our
| having our first grave quarrel, wherein
we were both silly, both unjust, and
neither of us would give way.
The bad blood made between lis to-
night grew worse as time went on, and
the circle we were in was vicious one.
[ kept away more and more from home,
because my wife made it too miserable
for me by her GOODNESS, her tears, her
complaints, her ill-humor; and the more
L kept away the more she resented it.
| She took an almost insane hatred and
suspicion of my friends and my actions,
and did not scruple to accuse me and
them of vices and crimes because / was
| often late, from no worse cause than
playing pool and billiards. Herreproach-
es first wearied and then hardened me; /;
and by degrees kind of fierce feeling
! took possession of me-a kind of revenge
full determination that l would be what
she imagined me to be, and give her
cause to denounce me as she did.
! Harmless amusement became amuse-
ment not SO harmless, petty little stakes
of half-a-crown and a shilling grew to
gold; the glass of beer became the glass
of brandy-and more than one; and the
faciis descenSuS had one more self
directed victim on its slippery way.
Work was intolerable to me. What 1
did / did badly, and l shirked all l
| could. 1 was often late, I rs often left
too early; and my employers were really
| good and lenient. AS it was, however, L
wearied out their patience, and they re-
monstrated with me firmly but kindly.
This sobered me for moment; but L
had gone too far to retreat; until L came
out at the other side must go on.
The fortune which had so long be-
friended ia TX Langhorne deserted him
now, and with his fortune his nerve.
Where he had staked with judgment he
now backed wildly, recklessly, and the
more he lost the more recklessly he
staked. His fortune seemed to influence
mine. Hitherto had been immensely
successful; now the luck ran dead against
me, and / lost more than 1 could afford,
and soon more than 1 could pay, and SO
came face to face with ruin.
During all this time the estrangement
between Edith and myself grew daily
wider. She took the wrong method with
me, and being a woman she kept to it.
She thought to dragoon me back to the
quiet of my former life, and made my
private actions personal to herself; seek
ing to force me into rendering an account
of all my doings, and of every item of
expenditure, then taking it as an affront
when 1 refused to answer questions.
But now there was no hope for it. l
must perforce confess. With that writ
ont against me it was useless to attempt
concealment, and if marriage is not femi-
! ,,;na o,,rarioritv vat II is MARIN erShiO