rs after this seemingly ill-suited marriage, which,
strange to say, seems to have been a not unhappy one, Mrs. Howard died.
Immediately Mr. Howard, then twenty-eight or nine years of age, again
left England for a second extended tour. This being the year of the
great earthquake of Lisbon, he naturally turned his steps thitherward.

Setting sail from England for Spain, he was captured on the high seas by
a French privateer, and for two months suffered the hardships and
indignities of prison life in those times. Upon his release he used all
his influence to secure the exchange of the remainder of his vessel's
company, and was successful. This prison experience he never forgot.

Three years later (1758) he married Henrietta Leeds, a lady of fine
character, and one to whom he was sincerely attached. Indeed, so fearful
was he that their married life might not be entirely without jars, that
he made a bargain with her, in advance of their marriage, that on all
disputed points the adjustment should be according to his judgment. One
is at a loss which member of a couple the most to admire, the man who
could make such a proposition, or the woman who would bind herself with
such bonds! But, like his first marriage, his strange contract with his
second wife seems to have led only to happy results.

They settled in Cardington, upon the Howard estate, and for the next
seven years led the uneventful life of landed gentry of the times. The
husband and wife were united in their efforts to improve the morals and
general condition of their tenantry. Rightly believing that the
beginning of all reform was to improve the physical condition, Howard
spared no expense in rearing new cottages upon new and improved plans,
held his tenants removable at will, and through their improved
conditions ruled over them with an almost despotic sway, tempered and
made bearable in that all his restrictions and requirements were on the
line of their temporal and spiritual advancement.

How strange is the making of history! Had the gentle, loving,
well-governed, dependent Mrs. Howard lived on, this would no doubt have
been the continuation, the aim, and the end of John Howard's life--to
constantly advance and improve the interests and condition of his
tenantry, and to wisely govern and administer his estate. But it was not
so to be. The happy home must be broken up, and the man whom God needed
must, through the sting of his own sorrow, be sent out again upon