ere to Skinny Chubb. Nice
quiet chap, he is. His wife _is_ gone."

"Well, didn't 'ee know that?"

[Sidenote: _SELF-RESTRAINT_]

Then I heard a wonderful tale of self-restraint. Chubb is a good
workman, a man of about fifty with grown up boys and girls. His wife
has been no good to him. She used to have men in the house when he was
away. She provided them with grog and food, but there was never
anything for Chubb to eat, except abuse. She won the daughters over to
her side. Sometimes she would go away to London, taking perhaps one of
the girls with her. Only the eldest son, who was not at home, sided
with his father. Neighbours used to hear the couple quarrelling half
the night, but during the whole of their married life he never once
struck or beat her. All he used to tell other people was:--"'Tis a
wonder how a man can stand all her du say to me, day an' night, early
an' late."

Just before Michaelmas, she decided to leave her husband: to go to
London with a German flunkey. They broke up the home. Chubb packed up
for her the best of the furniture. He wrote out her labels, said
_Good-bye_, paid her cab fare to the station. Now he is living in
lodgings. Rumour has it that the German has left her. In answer to
inquiries, Chubb merely says: "Well, I tell 'ee, _I_ be glad to be out
o'it all at last. _I_'ll never hae her back."

It is a sound old piece of psychology which distinguishes a man's bark
from his bite. The poor man's bark is appalling; I often used to think
there was murder in the air when I heard some quite ordinary
discussion; there would have been murder in the air had I myself been
worked up to speak so furiously. But, comparatively speaking, he seldom
bites; hardly ever without warning; and he can as a rule stay himself
in the very act. The educated man, on the other hand, does not bark
much; one of the most important parts of his education has been the
teaching him not to do so; but when he does bite, it is blindly, and he
makes his teeth meet if he can. We hear, of course, much more of the
poor man in the police courts, and we imagine (spite of Herbert
Spencer's warning) that education is to diminish his crimes. How very
simple and fallacious! In the first place, the poor, the uneducated or
but slightly educated, greatly out-number the educated. Suppose by
means of complete and trustworthy criminal statistics, we could work
out the _percentage criminality_ of the different classes. I fancy
that the p