Year: 1875

The fact is, we We're both too young TO
marry. She was eighteen, / was barely
in my majority but she was a poor,
desolate little orphan, sent out into the
cold world to do the best she could for
herself as governess / was madly in
love with her, and / was my own mas
ter we had no wiser heads to advise us
and no more experienced hands TO guide
us-so we took our own way, as was but
natural, and married on my clerkship OF
three hundred year. l need scarcely
say we were happy. For the first two
years indeed it seemed to me as If / had
really never lived until now. Our pretty
little home at Kilburn was bright and
cheerful. Edith was always sffectionate,
always good tempered, and, like Anna
bel Lee, seemed to live with no other
thought than to love and be loved by
me-. Ny work sat on me easily and,
being young people of moderate tastes,
we had money enough for all we wanted.
There was not a flaw anywhere, and
the days were scarcely long enough for
the joys that filled them with sunshine
from beginning to end.


All this continued for two years, and
then my wife became mother.


This was the first break in our man
ner of life, the first shadow cast over the
brightness of our happy love. 1t
changed the whole order of things, and
the changes told heavily against me.
Edith was no longer my companion as
she had been. The baby was delicate,
and her health also gave way. She was
obliged TO go to her own room quite
early in the evening, sometimes at seven
o'clock or so, and even when she was
well, she was up in the morning with the
child, and the evenings hung on me
heavy and long. / was no student in
those days. 1 was social, and if not in
ordinately yet undoubtedly fond of
amusement hence, sitting alone for all
these hours after my solitary dinner-for
Edith dined early by the doctors orders
was dreary work for me, and 1 grew
daily more fretted, by the dullness of my
once sunshiny home.


j tell the story just as it was not to
excuse myself. but to explain.


Also, too, the desire for more expert
ence natural to my age began to make
itself felt, and more than once l found
myself confessing eve married too
young" Yet 1 did not wish for dissi-
patton / was not conscious of a re-
serve of wild oats that was longing TO
SOW but did want little change from
the dead monotony of my spoiled home.
/ was yearning for the society of men of
nv own age and standing, and naturally
the boy, though 1 loved him well enough
for all that l thought him the ugliest
and oldest little imp had ever seen
was not to me what he was to his
mother. To her indeed he was every
thing. The mother had superseded the
wife, and the husband was nowhere in
comparison with the child. Edith was
angry, too, that did not, as she phrased
il, stake to him more, " and was angry
that she took to him so much. May be
that was jealous. On looking back j
should say that / was.


Just when Bertie was three months
old fellow in our Office introduced me
TO Jack Langhorne. Handsome, we'll
hammered, rich, gay, good-tempered,
generous Jack was just the man to fasci-
nate a comparatively raw lad, as i still
was. He knew everything, being one OF
the kind who start at seventeen as men,
and see life Systematically from that
time. There was not an accomplishment
in which he was not proficient not a
game he could not play, giving long odds
and winning. He was lavish of his
money, and gambler by inbred In
stinct. He was always stalking his fate
ON chance. and hitherto chance had been
Iis friend. He used often to say that