The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1891-08-29

you want to kill it give it fresh air
and sunshine if you would have it
bloom. Now there's that fellow,
Trevor, l felt to-day as if I would
like to thrash him.
Surely Mr.. Trevor has nothing to
do with my going out exclaimed
Mrs. Chanter, in surprise.
But he has with his wife's. The
Trevors are asked to the Sillimans
But this lazy fellow of husband
says he didn't intend to let Mrs.
Trevor go It's time to put stop
to the thing, he told me.
Why, he doesn't work half as
bard as you do I've always heard
his business was very easy one.
So it is. He's richer, too, than l
am, and can afford to take life differ
emily. But he was always selfish and
tyrannical, as Helen will find out to
her cost. Pity she hadn't found 1t
out long ago.
Alas she had already begun to
find it out, and as the years went by
she found it out more and more.
She soon sank to a household
| drudge. Her husband did not de-
sert her of evenings, as many hus-
bands do desert their wives he
went neither to tavern, nor to club !;
we will say that in his favor ; but he
betook himself to his newspaper and
cigar, varied with an occasional doze.
As he hardly exchanged word with
poor Helen, he might as we'll have
been thousand miles away. She
sat in the same room with him,
stitching, stitching, till her eyes
ached with the monotony and weari-
ness of it all.
In the first year or two of their
married life, he had continued the
subscriptions to the two or three
magazines and newspapers which had
been her favorltes before she left her
fathers house. What does married
woman want with love stories? he
said imperiously, forgetting that the
magazine was as much to his wife as
his newspaper was to him Often
and often poor Helen thought if she
could only have few books, a good
novel, new poem, or a periodical of
some kind she could have borne
things better.
Her life was so dry and hard that
even the least glimpse of the world
of imagination would have been to
her what the cool spring in the
desert is to the weary, thirsty trav-
eler. But her husband said, in his
dogmatic way, when once or twice,
she ventured to borrow book, and
he found her reading, Pshaw A
novel again how can you waste
your time with such nonsense
pretty example you are setting to
your daughter?
Mrs. Trevor had been pretty, as
we have said, when she married.
But in ten years, she was faded,
shrunken woman, whose nerves
were all awry, and who was fast
sinking into confirmed invalid. Be-
fore she had been married twenty
years, before he eldest daughter was
a grown sirl, she quietly slipped into
her coffin, and had done with this
life forever. Her husband put on
black, and the deepest Grape on his
hat, and then, after a year, married
again.
Meantime, what of the other pair?
To- day, at forty, Mrs. Chanter is as
handsome as ever. people say, and,
when she goes out with her daugh-
ter, passes, with strangers, for an
elder sister. Her mind has not been
starved, nor her soul dwarfed. A
little judicious amusement is as nee
essary to woman, her husband al
ways said, as food or air, or affec-
ton. On this principle he acted.
The result was that his wife always
kept her spirits, her health, and her
good looks, and from being thor
oughly happy herself, was able to
make him all the happier.
You may starve human soul, he
declared. just as easily as the body
And some do it.
Perhaps he was thinking OF Trevor
as he spoke. Whether he was or
not the recording angel was. and
when the accounts come to be made
up in the great chancery of heaven,
there will be little doubt as to which
of the two husbands will win the
verdict.
DECEPTION IN DEALERS.