y.

October 22nd.--Have spent the day with Mrs. Frere. She is evidently
eager to leave the place--as eager as I am. Frere rejoices in his
murderous power, and laughs at her expostulations. I suppose men get
tired of their wives. In my present frame of mind I am at a loss to
understand how a man could refuse a wife anything.

I do not think she can possibly care for him. I am not a selfish
sentimentalist, as are the majority of seducers. I would take no woman
away from a husband for mere liking. Yet I think there are cases in
which a man who loved would be justified in making a woman happy at the
risk of his own--soul, I suppose.

Making her happy! Ay, that's the point. Would she be happy? There are
few men who can endure to be "cut", slighted, pointed at, and women
suffer more than men in these regards. I, a grizzled man of forty, am
not such an arrant ass as to suppose that a year of guilty delirium
can compensate to a gently-nurtured woman for the loss of that social
dignity which constitutes her best happiness. I am not such an idiot as
to forget that there may come a time when the woman I love may cease to
love me, and having no tie of self-respect, social position, or family
duty, to bind her, may inflict upon her seducer that agony which he has
taught her to inflict upon her husband. Apart from the question of the
sin of breaking the seventh commandment, I doubt if the worst husband
and the most unhappy home are not better, in this social condition
of ours, than the most devoted lover. A strange subject this for a
clergyman to speculate upon! If this diary should ever fall into the
hands of a real God-fearing, honest booby, who never was tempted to sin
by finding that at middle-age he loved the wife of another, how he would
condemn me! And rightly, of course.

November 4th.--In one of the turnkey's rooms in the new gaol is to be
seen an article of harness, which at first creates surprise to the mind
of the beholder, who considers what animal of the brute creation exists
of so diminutive a size as to admit of its use. On inquiry, it will be
found to be a bridle, perfect in head-band, throat-lash, etc., for a
human being. There is attached to this bridle a round piece of cross
wood, of almost four inches in length, and one and a half in diameter.
This again, is secured to a broad strap of leather to cross the mouth.
In the wood there is a small hole, and, when used, the wood is inserted
in the mouth, the