e bedside, all in a
tremble from head to foot.

"This was how I first found out that I was the wife of a drunken man."

4.

"I have omitted to say any thing about my husband's family.

"While we were keeping company together he told me he was an
orphan--with an uncle and aunt in Canada, and an only brother settled in
Scotland. Before we were married he gave me a letter from this brother.
It was to say that he was sorry he was not able to come to England, and
be present at my marriage, and to wish me joy and the rest of it. Good
Mr. Bapchild (to whom, in my distress, I wrote word privately of what
had happened) wrote back in return, telling me to wait a little, and see
whether my husband did it again.

"I had not long to wait. He was in liquor again the next day, and the
next. Hearing this, Mr. Bapchild instructed me to send him the letter
from my husband's brother. He reminded me of some of the stories about
my husband which I had refused to believe in the time before I was
married; and he said it might be well to make inquiries.

"The end of the inquiries was this. The brother, at that very time,
was placed privately (by his own request) under a doctor's care to get
broken of habits of drinking. The craving for strong liquor (the doctor
wrote) was in the family. They would be sober sometimes for months
together, drinking nothing stronger than tea. Then the fit would seize
them; and they would drink, drink, drink, for days together, like the
mad and miserable wretches that they were.

"This was the husband I was married to. And I had offended all my
relations, and estranged them from me, for his sake. Here was surely a
sad prospect for a woman after only a few months of wedded life!

"In a year's time the money in the bank was gone; and my husband was out
of employment. He always got work--being a first-rate hand when he was
sober--and always lost it again when the drinking-fit seized him. I was
loth to leave our nice little house, and part with my pretty furniture;
and I proposed to him to let me try for employment, by the day, as cook,
and so keep things going while he was looking out again for work. He was
sober and penitent at the time; and he agreed to what I proposed. And,
more than that, he took the Total Abstinence Pledge, and promised to
turn over a new leaf. Matters, as I thought, began to look fairly again.
We had nobody but our two selves to think of. I had borne no child,
and had no prospect of bea