The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1893-02-12


that woman can carry for the sake Of
the man Who not only placed il on her
shoulder, bat refused to lift il in answer
to an appeal that ought to have melted
the heart Of an erring man who had
spark of . gentleman left in his nature. But
1t did not move Mr.. Hayes to give up his
mistress and give back to his wife the love
that belonged to her; il only moved him
to send this pathetic cry, wrung from her
deepest heart, which anybody but dog
would have held sacred from other eyes.
to his mistress, and to make hertWice
again . mother.
This injured wife knows all this today,
and yet she has never asked for divorce
she stands shoulder 30 shoulder by her
husband in his trial for perjury and shakes
hands with him warmly every morning,
trusting that he did not find the Tombs
cold. 'Oh, no. my dear" replied tho fat
defendant, jovially. ''The Tombs was
plenty warm enough. had . small cell
that was tight and trim. They gave me
plenty Of bedclothing, too. and I had .
good dinner and breakfast" And it il for
this fat. unprincipled, thick-skinned
Adonis. who knows no suffering % long
- he has plenty Of creature comforts.
thdt this slender, delicate woman has
borne I'll this suffering and humiliation
for many years, hoping to win back the
love Of . worthless husband whom she
had never wronged, and whose wrongs to
her she had forgiven in her passionate de-
sire to live again in his wretched, shallow
heart.
If there is anything in poetry or ro-
nance that bears any more eloquent testi-
mony to what . woman's heart will endure
when bruised under the heel of the base
man to whom she has given it We do not
know it. Reverse the situation. Suppose
it was the wife who had found . lover
and made him the father of her child, and
Mr.. Hayes had found out that his wife,
after their marriage, had become mother
by lover, what would Mr.. Hayes have
donef Would he have offered to adopt his
wife's child, of which he Was not the father,
in the hope that his nobility Of spirit;
his magnanimous forgiveness of his wife's
conjugal infdelity would bring her love
back to him and keep her feet henceforth
in the path Of repentance and virt7ef
Oh, mol No poet, no novelist who has
any reputation as an artist to lose ever
drew the picture Of husband forgiving
wife and trying to win her back by such
magnanimous treatment a. that lavished
in vain ON her incon slant and heartless
husband by good and gentle Mrs. Hayes.
And yet Mr.. Hayes would not be alto
gether to blame if he did not rise to the
level of his wife's heroic mood OF forgive:
ness, because public opinion has never
treated men and women as standing on
the same plane Of equally severe respon.
sibility for acts Of conjugal infidelity. A
wife not seldom forgives her husband his
acts of conjugal infidelity: but q wife sell
dom expects mercy from q wronged hus-
band and never gets it'll Why this differ.
ence Of public opinion which women early
learn to recognized The explanation
given by the great Doctor Samuel
johnson, . devout Christian, and in .
loose ago faithful to his marriage vows,
was that this public opinion had its origin
in the fact that while masculine coniugal
infidelity was a. gross . moral and senti.
mental wrong - feminine. its practical
consequences to society were not - per-
nicious. johnson said that q married
woman knows who 10 the father Of her
children, while . man knows who IL the
mother of his children % long as he has q
faithful wife. Questions Of the transmits
sion of property and support of offspring
are involved in the conjugal fidelity Of
conjugal infdelity of man. A wife
by her infdelity might impose upon
her husband for support. education
and right Of inheritance a child that
was not his, while the unfaithful
husband could not impose by his in
fidelity any children upon his wife
for her care and cherishment that
were not her children. To this fact DR..
johnson ascribed the origin of that public
opinion which views masculine conjugal
infidelity with more lenient and forgiv-
ing eye than it does feminine violations of
the marriage compact. The fraud on the
part of the man is . moral fraud gross
enough to justify severe denunciation. but
the fraud on the part of the wife is all this
and something more; it may impose upon
the husband the fraudulent necessity of
not only feeding his own chickens but of
counting among those chickens the cuckoo
brood Of false wife. This 10 the logic of
Dr.. Johnson's explanation without at
tempting to reproduce his language, and
We do not know that anybody has ever
given a more plausible explanation of
startling social fact.
THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.
One Of Mr.. Laughton's pet schemes was
the geological survey, of which he was the
official head. Fortunately this lob" was