ole night through, from ten
o'clock in the evening until five the next morning. I would try mild
persuasion and comfort, I would urge every conceivable argument softly
and loudly, violently and gently, wildly and tenderly. My wife's mother,
too, did not understand me. My wife was disillusioned, her mother was
disillusioned. She saw nothing but craziness in my avoiding a great
career. Then there was this--I don't know whether it occurs in all young
marriages--each time before the child was born, we quarrelled over all
the minutiae of its education, from infancy to its twentieth year. We
quarrelled over whether the boy should be educated in the house, as I
wished, or in the public schools, as my wife wished. I said, 'The girl
shall receive instruction in gymnastics.' My wife said, 'She shall not
receive instruction in gymnastics.' And the girl was not yet born. We
quarrelled so violently, that we threatened each other with divorce and
suicide. My wife would lock herself into a room and I would beat against
the door, because I was frightened and dreaded the worst. Then there
were reconciliations, the consequences of which were only to increase
the miserable nervous tension in our home. One day I had to put my
mother-in-law out of the house as a way of securing peace. Even my wife
realised that it was necessary to do it. We loved each other, and in
spite of all that happened, we both had the best intentions. We have
three children, Albrecht, Bernhard and Annemarie. They came inside of
three years, one very soon after the other, you see. My wife had a
nervous tendency which these births brought to a crisis. After the very
first child was born, she had an attack of profound melancholia. Her
mother had to admit that Angele had been subject to similar attacks from
childhood up. After the last child was born, I took her on a two months'
trip in Italy. It was a lovely time, and her spirits actually seemed to
brighten under the happy sky of Italy. But her sickness progressed below
the surface. I am thirty-one years old and have been married eight years.
My oldest boy is seven years old. It is now"--Frederick reflected a few
moments--"it is now the beginning of February. It was about the middle of
October last fall when I found my wife in her room slashing to tiny bits
a piece of not exactly inexpensive silk which we had bought in Zuerich and
which had been lying in her drawer more than four years. I can still see
the costly red stuf