On my way back--at what dissipated hour I firmly decline to state--I passed a home with an interesting history tacked thereto.
The leading events were brought me by one of those active, inquisitive little birds that find out all sorts of things, and often fetch from great distances.
The couple who live there, though Americans, once lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and it was in that place that the husband fell to drinking. The little bird above alluded to--the bird that acts as a kind of domestic ferret--told me that, in the early years of their married life, the wife was of an excitable, hysterical temperament, and given to making scenes. Just here let me digress a moment to erect a warning signboard. I have a friend who is busy mixing and administering a deadly draught to her domestic happiness, and yet does not know it. She has only been married a year, and she uses tears and scenes, in general, as instruments to pull from her husband the attention, affection, and devotion she craves. The tug waxes increasingly hard, but she has not, as yet, sense enough to see that, and desist. She cannot realize that the success attained by such methods is but the temporary and external beauty, which, in reality, covers a failure of the most hopeless type, just as the flush on the consumptive's cheek is but a pitiable counterfeit, and covers a fatal disease.
Whether in this particular story, the report of the wife's early blunders be true or false, there seems to be no doubt that presently the husband grew careless and indifferent; that scene followed scene between them, until at last he went to drinking. Then the little wife waxed sober, thoughtful, and studied much within herself. This awful sorrow, following so closely upon the heels of her wedding-day joy, matured her judgment--her womanhood, and she began to use every skillful device to call back her husband from the dark paths he had chosen, to the light. All in vain, however; and when she realized this, after several years of heroic effort, she made one last scene, and told him she was going to leave him. Then his old-time tenderness returned--if you can compare a tenderness which was blurred and cringing, with that which was clear and manly. He begged and promised in vain, however, for she had lost faith, and a lost faith is not found again for many a day.
So she went off, and she covered all traces and signs so carefully that no anxious, heartbroken effort of his could find her. Meanwhile she wrote him frequently and regularly, and although he knew not where to send reply, it is quite likely she had word of him from some one to whom she had given her confidence in this dreary time.