The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-03-07
ANOTHER MANS WIFE.

were not writing of myself, just as If, God help me, it was not possible could have been at any time of my career so weak, so desperate and so despicable villain.
 So weak-because the woman was pretty and romantic, and thought she loved me until it was too late to love any body else. So desperate-because mine was name looked up to; was one in whom people believed, and 1 was clever enough in my way to have made my mark, to be talked of, to be fattered. What was does not matter to the pur- does, and in its proper place will be re- lated here. So despicable-because the woman's husband was good man, and hardened him to stone happy, trustful man, and l wrecked his happiness and trust; father, and took away the mother of his children.
 That is why said just now, God help me. have said of late days, God forgive me, too only of late days this is and say it with all the heart and soul and strength left in me.
 could preach of "extenuating circum- stances" if l was sure of sympathetic audience, but should shriek at my own excuses afterward, shriek with mocking horror as the fiends shriek. Twas sem timentalist and fool; if have enc ex- cuse that is worth recording, it is that l loved the woman-that l believed her life would be brighter with me than with him, and that l'resolyed all my life to try and make it so: There was no thought of feeting passion, of setting her aside, of lower depth for her, of the old story of the streets l; it was the sacrifice of my life and honor to her life and shame, and in its early days it was set down to romance, to the affinities," to a something which two misguided souls, proceeding rashly their own way, could afford to call their fate.
 All delusion, all very commonplace and miserable and cruel, and, my God 1! the waking to the fact that it was SO !- the stern truth that name and fame and good mems thoughts of us had wholly passed from our sphere, and we were, even in our own hearts, accursed things.
 If could have been if she could have been-as callous as are some folk; if we ceuid have forgotten the past wherein people thought so well of us; if the present could have been everything with out thought of what had been, or of what might come to us, of the horror and the disgrace to grow upon us when the glamour of the sin had vanished and we were simply everyday sinners, without a single excuse! To me the life has been ever unbearable, and yet have borne it. To her it has been a reproach which she has been unable to hide from me, sting which has struck into her heart and poisoned its life current, and turned her brain at times. And we each disguised from the other for while wha c mock cry our lives together were, what an or deal of mental anguish, what damnable and awful failure
 If she had been heartless, if she could have become so by degrees if the days and months and years passing by with us could have been rendered as callous as sin can make people, we could have borne life with greater patience, and almost with light heart. But this is not the story of our lives together, Or why let the daylight in upon it now.
 There was no romance left between us ; we had chosen our lot, but we despised 1t. We were verify ashamed, but there was no return to goodness. The great gates were shut, and we did not pray for them to open and let us back to our old lives, our old homes, our old self'respect, and the loves of those whom we still loved and dare not say word concerning. We were silent tortures to ourselves.
 We had sacrificed our lives, but there was no confidence in the new estate; on the contrary, there was complete restraint 3 The curse of strong imagination was always upon us, and made us worse. We did not believe in each other we wou- dered at each others thoughts, and what regrets, repining, remorse, were com mingled with them. Sometimes found her in tears, in an utter prostration of grief and she would not tell me why she wept, and why it was beyond my power to console her. have been always left to wonder what it was that would suddenly crush and abase her, and yet to know that 1t was Traford she was thinking of, and of Trafford's children-not hers, for she had abandoned them-who rose up like mimic angels in the sunlight, and looked toward her, and even talked of her as "dear mamma who was dead, !" and whom she could never take again to her heart.
 And IF Ihad repented long ago. My life was one curse of helplessness. There was vague sense of duty to this victim, a feeling that l must atone for wrecking her life by trying to make it endurable to her, and the awful consciousness that l was not succeeding, that could not rem der it anything but one proftless series of reproaches, which were not spoken to me, but which ever action and every lock betrayed.
 could not have reproached her had l had the cruel courage to do it, but in all our life together did not say word. | could have told her of her own folly, of her great and little vanities, her reckless ness, her resentments, her futile reason ings with the clear-headed, strong hearted surgeon who had married her five years ago, and would have had her as good, and staid, and homelike as were other wives about his sphere. could have scoffsd at her desire for absolute admiration and power, her foolish resist