ard as nails. They don't know how to be nothing
else. They never know what it is to be quite helpless and dependent,
so what do they care. They just glory and triumph over women bein'
under them, because they know there's nothing to bring them down, and
you want to set your wits to get some hold on a man,--he has plenty on
you by law and everything else,--get some property or something in
your name so that he can't make a dishcloth of you altogether. Bein'
rich you'll have a somewhat easier time, but it's when you've got
mountains of work, when you ain't feelin' as strong as Sandow for it,
an' have one child at your skirts an' another in your arms, an' your
husband to think women ain't intended for nothink better,--that this
is God's design for 'em, like most men do,--it's then that married
life ain't the heaven some young girls think it's goin' to be. This
ain't a description of no uncommon case but among them all around you,
and supposed to be the fortunate ones. I think girls want warnin', so
they ain't goin' into it with their eyes shut."

The picture painted by this lady was duplicated by sadder pictures of
the small worn type, and some weeks of this brought us to advanced
spring and a bride-to-be so worried and unhappy that she had lost her
appetite and the roses from her cheeks, and grew visibly thinner.

Ernest, who managed to snatch a little time from worshipping his
bride-elect wherein to superintend the furnishing of his house, was
exceedingly sensitive that his affianced should look so perceptibly
miserable.

"Do you think she doesn't care for me, and would like to be released?
I'd rather die than marry her if she doesn't want me," he would say,
sometimes with haughtiness and more often with anger. "Good gracious!
I don't know why she thinks I'm going to belong to the criminal class.
Goodness knows, if I were to judge her the same way there are plenty
wives would scare even a Hottentot from matrimony, and if I were to
express to Dawn any fears of her being similar, I bet you'd hear of
our engagement coming to a sudden death. You seem to understand her
better than I do, so say a good word for me if you can."

My opinion of him being so high, saying a word in his favour gave me
delight, and I took the first opportunity of saying a good many. At
the end of one day, after Dawn had been subjected to a particularly
gruesome account of what she might expect, I found her face downwards
on her bed, weeping bitter