se. At present I continued to talk nothing that was beyond the scope of
the newspapers.

Thus some months passed. It was near the close of summer, and the
gorgeous autumnal season was at hand. I designed to attempt something
which would create a change in my wife's nature,--her acquired nature,
to substitute some healthful exuberance for the weary listlessness which
had become habitual to her. The physical is the foundation of all other
departments of humanity. With a physical system of glowing health,
mental or emotional or moral disease is impossible; and the converse is
true, that when these exist, the physical system must deteriorate. I
must then give a filip to my wife's physical vigor,--dissipate her
desperateness and her love in the same manner in which a good game of
billiards drives from a man the blues. I must remove all her morbidness.
Where could I go but to the great mother Nature? If physical enjoyment,
in connection with an appreciative view of the beauties and glories
everywhere spread before humanity, on the mountains, the plains, the
valleys, and the oceans, does not revive and restore, the case is
hopeless. My wife was an excellent equestrian. Her theatrical experience
had familiarized her with firearms. She had a cultivated taste for
scenery, and some degree of skill in delineating it. Far off, then, into
the prairies and the western mountains, into scenes away from the beaten
track, where everything should be as dissimilar as possible from all
previous life, I determined to lead her.

My arrangements were quickly and quietly made,--my equipments secretly
completed. On pretense of visiting business acquaintances, I requested
my wife to accompany me on a journey to St. Louis. With her usual
passiveness, she consented. In a few days we were on our way. After our
arrival, we made trips into the interior. Gradually, I diverged from
civilization. Professing to find an unexpected charm in the novelty of
this, I led the way still onward. We traveled on horseback,--often amid
solitudes. I first astonished my wife by occasionally displaying on the
game my precision with the rifle. (I had spent scores of hours at a
shooting gallery in St. Louis.) I persuaded her to try a few shots. (I
had provided a beautiful light rifle for her use.) Ambition to shoot
well soon possessed her. By degrees, our open-air life gave her blood a
bound which no secret grief could counteract. The excitement of the
chase on our fleet