Morning journal and courier., 1882-04-06
Price Four Cents.

whin the drink is in him its the
very devil that's in him, your honor" This
is the wife's plea for man who has s'the
drink" in him nearly half of his days, and
who is consequently possessed of devil THAT
transforms him into torturer and a savage
AS women are not usually supposed to be
moved by pure reason, it is useless to ac-
count for this their natural propensity to
defend and forgive the brutality of their hus-
bands. Of course, there are women who will
finally break down under i'll treatment, and
will forsake the man whom they have sworn
to love, cherish and obey. But these cases
are rare. They prove nothing. There are
women who hate their own offspring, but
there are not many such. The vast majority
of women will conceal, if possible, the i'll
usage that they suffer at the hands of their
husbands, and will seem to love them more
tenderly for the treatment visited upon
themselves by-a most unnatural man. As
women are said to be guided by instinct
rather than by reason, one would sup
pose that the instinct of self-preservation
would urge them to flee from him who daily
threatens life and limb. A woman's intu-
itions are VIGOROUSLY worth far more than
mans absolute knowledge. What a man
must arrive at by long investigation and by
laborious processes of ratiocination a woman
exultingly swoops down upon, across lots, as it
were, by the mere exercise of a spirit of diyi-
ture. When a woman of fine intuition is
asked why she believes in a certain alleged
statement of fact, she simply replies, BE
cause know it. :" This is the end of all argu-
ment. That man is fool who attempts to
get beyond this conclusion of the whole mat
ter. What becomes of & woman's subtle in
buttons when she promises the police magis-
trste that Teddy will beat her no more if his
honor will be easy on him just this once !?
Does she deceive herself or does she pur-
posely deceive his honor?
If this perverted idea of love and duty
were shared by both sexes, the wonder of It
would cease. If it were peculiar to the low
er walks of life, it would be less of puzzle.
But men shake off their wives and flee away.
usually, at the slightest proyocatIon. And .
the high bred and delicately reared wife will
wear the martyrs crown forced upon her, in
upper circles of society, without a murmur
and without giving sign of the secret horror
of her home. The universal rule of woman's
devotion to an unworthy object need not be
proved by husbands who use corporal vio-
lence to assert lordship over their wives
The roofs taken from handsome and costly
homes would sometimes show a barbarous
state of things within Disgusting intemper-
ance, unfaithfulness to marriage vows the
cruelty of stlDginess, and refinement of DO
lite il-usage may take the place of blows and
kicks. And when the roof does come of, +
ana there Is no longer the dread OF pub
shame and scandal to silence the abused
she still excuses and defends the ruffiay<
will never, never forsake her hateful NJ
Der, although he may be a nuisance and q
object of aversion to everybody else. She
will forsake everybody and everything else
and will cling to him alone until death do
them part. And it has come to pass
that when this bad husband has sunk into
his grave, to the relief of all others, his dis
consulate widow constructs from the few re-
deeming qualities of the departed one an
ideal husband, whose shade she vorships as
long as she lives. There are bad women, in
constant women, heartless women but. so
long as it is true that most wives DO unrea-
sonably love and cling to their husbands,
even when respect has vanished and even
when others suffer on account of their devo-
ton, it must be confessed that the average
woman is far better than the average man;
and it must be admitted that woman can I'M
derstand woman's heroic consistency.