ed him closely, and found him perfect in every respect--good
family, good morals, good financial position, good looking. Helen was in
love with him. She had a big wedding and lots of new clothes and dozens
of embroidered towels. Everything looked propitious.

But as they began to get acquainted, they didn't like the same books
or jokes or people or amusements. He was expansive and social and
hilarious, and she wasn't. First they bored, and then they irritated,
each other. Her orderliness made him impatient, and his disorderliness
drove her wild. She would spend a day getting closets and bureau drawers
in order, and in five minutes he would stir them into chaos. He would
leave his clothes about for her to pick up, and his towels in a messy
heap on the bathroom floor, and he never scrubbed out the tub. And she,
on her side, was awfully unresponsive and irritating,--she realized it
fully,--she got to the point where she wouldn't laugh at his jokes.

I suppose most old-fashioned, orthodox people would think it awful to
break up a marriage on such innocent grounds. It seemed so to me at
first; but as she went on piling up detail on detail each trivial in
itself, but making a mountainous total, I agreed with Helen that it was
awful to keep it going. It wasn't really a marriage; it was a mistake.

So one morning at breakfast, when the subject of what they should do for
the summer came up, she said quite casually that she thought she would
go West and get a residence in some State where you could get a divorce
for a respectable cause; and for the first time in months he agreed with
her.

You can imagine the outraged feelings of her Victorian family. In all
the seven generations of their sojourn in America they have never had
anything like this to record in the family Bible. It all comes from
sending her to college and letting her read such dreadful modern people
as Ellen Key and Bernard Shaw.

"If he had only got drunk and dragged me about by the hair," Helen
wailed, "it would have been legitimate; but because we didn't actually
throw things at each other, no one could see any reason for a divorce."

The pathetic part of the whole business is that both she and Henry were
admirably fitted to make some one else happy. They just simply didn't
match each other; and when two people don't match, all the ceremonies in
the world can't marry them.

Saturday morning.

I meant to get this letter off two days ago; and here I am w