Year: 1867

is inevitable. If he was 70 fond Of her, wh,
did he treat her so cruelty :


Any explanation of the matter can only


be of the conjccturcd kind. 1t is possible


that the wife, unknown to herself, had il
some way offended reused the jealousy o


her husband. though he never afterward


thought it worth while TO own as much, anC


that with the view of Furnishing by frghten


ing her, he first schemed to absent himsc
| for a short time from his home. The plaT
IN it's inception easy enough, but how tC


bring it to n satisfactory conclusion was an
other and more difficult matter to manage
because his return, while his absence wa.
still a cause of uneasiness and surprise, must
necessarily involve explanation or justifica
tion more or less explicit and complete II,
| kept on postpOnng, therefore, his return
until the exhaustion of his resources made
postpon ement no longer possible. After his
seventeen years absence he must have seemed
to his wife very much in the light of a
| stranger, OF whom it was not easy to demand
an explanation, simply as matter of course
He was not the same to her AS a husband
from whom she had recently been parted.
She had become resigncd and recoucilcd in a
great measure to his Disappearance. and the
extent of her surprise at his return would
for time, at any rate, absorb any other
feeling. Yet, be sure, that afterwards, and
to the end of her days, Mrs. lIowc,-lf she
shrunk from questioning him, never
thcless always wondering within herself why
her husband had quilted her.


He was not in debt, as we have seen : and


it is not probable that he was involved in
any trouble of Il political kind, or he would
surely have quilted the country or hidden
himself far moro completely from the eyes
of his fellows. Indeed. day after day he
J.
erct hcing discovered. He was forever
haunting the neighbnrhood in which his
wife resided as though curious to know
how she bore his absence how she support
ed her widowed condition whether, bv her
own conduct under her afflictOn, she gave
proof of her worthineSs to bear his name, of
her title to the love he had once felt, or pro-
fessed to feel for her. Yet. for long years,
Mrs. Howe endured this inspection, pa
tienty as Penelope ; her Ulysses coutcmpla
ting her the whic.-with this difference
that although disguised he had never wan
dered. He had been absent most inglorious-
ly,-hiding himself, for no known reason,
but few streets off If she had beaten him
well on his return, who could have blamed
her Who Except. perhaps, her husband)
would not have forgiven her Z? lie had been
guilty Of wanton cruelty, and deserved pun
ishmcnt of cOndign kind


Hawthorne imagines the man 10 be pos
scsscd of n curious selfshness, rusting in his
inactive mipd,-of "A peculiar sort of vanity,
of a disposition to craft, which up to the
time of his going away, had seldom produced
more positive effects than the keeping of
petty secrets hardly worth revealing. Tn
doubtedly there are many people much en-
amOred of mystery for its own sake
prone to set value upon a secret simply be
cause it is secret, and without any regard
to its intrinsic worth Just the thievIng
magpie in the old story hid the silver spoons,
not because the spoons could be of the
slightest use To it, but because Its mschicv-
Gus Iropensitics found pleasure in hiding
away all sorts Of things Mr. Howe may
have been man of this kind /; it may have
been source Of pleasure to him to reflect
that he had securely hidden himself away
from his wife and his friends.


1t may be that the man slightly mad.
Oyer-indulgence in crotchet may land
many a man in an absolute craze And
those who are addicted to sowing whims
should be counsellcd to take heed lest. rs
consequence, they reap manias. Yet if
Howe was mad, there was certainly method
in his madness, and 1t endured for seventeen
years.