n years ago; the old people's gone, and the young
scattered God knows where or how. The Webbs (the girl's people) are away
up in new country, an' the girls (they was mostly all girls) are married
an' settled down by this time. We kept the secret, an' the Webbs kept
the secret--even when the dirty yarns was goin' round--so's not to
spoil the chances of the other girls. What about the chances of their
husbands? Some on 'em might be in the same hell as Brassington for all
I know. The Brassingtons kept the secret because I suppose they reckoned
it didn't matter much. Nothing matters much in this world--"

But I was thinking of another young couple who had married long ago,
whose married life was twenty long years of shameful quarrels, of
useless brutal recrimination--not because either was bad, but because
their natures were too much alike; of the house that was built, of the
family that was reared, of the sons and daughters who "went wrong," of
the father and mother separated after twenty years, of the mother dead
of a broken heart, of the father (in a lunatic asylum), whose mania was
not to build houses, but to obtain and secrete matches for the purpose
of burning houses down.

"BARNEY, TAKE ME HOME AGAIN"

This is a sketch of one of the many ways in which a young married woman,
who is naturally thick-skinned and selfish--as most women are--and who
thinks she loves her husband, can spoil his life because he happens to
be good-natured, generous, sensitive, weak or soft, whichever you like
to call it.

Johnson went out to Australia a good many years ago with his young wife
and two children, as assisted emigrants. He should have left his wife
and children with her mother, in a street off City Road, N., and gone
out by himself and got settled down comfortably and strengthened in
the glorious climate and democratic atmosphere of Australia, and in the
knowledge that he could worry along a while without his wife, before
sending for her. That bit of knowledge would have done her good also,
and it would have been better for both of them. But no man knows the
future, and few can prescribe for their own wives. If we saw our married
lives as others see them, half of us would get divorced. But Johnson was
sentimental, he could not bear to part from his wife for a little while.
Moreover, man is instinctively against leaving his wife behind; it may
be either a natural or a cowardly instinct-but we won't argue that. I
don't bel