again.

And afterwards there was a divorce obtained on the grounds of incompatibility, and the deserted wife told her friends of the terrible language this bad husband had used to her, and of his brutal conduct.

II

The second bad husband was none too good, perhaps, in the beginning. But he had grown thoroughly tired of the life he lived at clubs and hotels, and from the very depths of his heart he longed for HOME.

He had experienced every type of flirtation which women make possible for an attractive man from his freshman college days to old age. He had come to a state of mind where he questioned if there were any really sensible girls and trustworthy wives, when he met his fate and ceased to question, and simply believed.

He believed he had met the perfect woman. He told her how he longed for a home, and he asked her to be his wife.

When she accepted him he was so happy that he simply cast all his old ideas of women to the winds, and with these ideas he cast all the wisdom which he had accumulated through his bachelorhood.

Ofttimes in the past he had said that women needed to be governed; needed a master; that they became petty tyrants if given too much respectful consideration, or when their wishes were consulted on matters of any import to the husband.

Yet in face of all the bad things this man had said about the sex, he began his married life by asking the girl he married to choose the way she preferred to live, instead of telling her how he wished to live.

Of course he had told her from the beginning of his love-making, that he was tired of having no home; that a club or a hotel, with all the comforts money could purchase, meant only four walls, and that a home with a wife and love and peace and order and system, represented his idea of heaven.

Nevertheless, when he said the wife could choose her way of living, she promptly chose a suite in an expensive hotel, and, after a year, she expressed a desire to go to Europe and stay through the London and Paris seasons.

It was with reluctance that she came home finally, for she was a beautiful girl, and she had been much admired abroad.

After their return the husband asserted his wish again for a home, and, again reluctantly, the wife consented. She spoiled it all, however, by continually talking of the distaste she had for domestic obligations.

'I hate the sight of a kitchen,' she said, 'and I detest thinking about what I must order for meals three times a day. And servants are such hopeless problems; and one is so tied down by housekeeping.'

Of course, with such an attitude of mind, housekeeping became a burden; servants proved inefficient; and the good wife of this bad man found nothing to talk about when her husband came home in the evening but the trouble she had had in the domestic realms.

A new retinue of servants appeared regularly each week, and finally, after a year, the home was given up and the hotel became the retreat of the unfortunate man and wife. She convinced him that she was breaking down under the strain of housekeeping.

A second attempt was made the next year, with the same result, and after the breaking up of that home the wife wanted to go and travel in Europe with another unsatisfied wife whose husband was too busy to accompany her.

So she went away for three months and her husband lived at the club.

When she returned she found the bad man very dissatisfied and inclined to find fault.

He said he wanted a home; he wanted a domestic wife, and he wanted children.

Then the woman who bore his name fell to weeping, and she sobbed out that she was sorry she came home, if he only wanted to scold her and find fault with her; and she declared she was not physically strong enough to become the mother of children. She gravely hinted that she was a victim of some serious malady which would cause her death if she attempted to be a mother—her physician had told her so.

The bad man gave vent to an audible sneer at this juncture. He said he knew all about the doctors who told selfish and unwomanly wives such stories, just to please them and to keep them as his patients. But, he declared, he understood God's laws and the nature of normal human beings well enough to know that not one woman in five hundred, who was able to journey about the world by land and sea, and go sight-seeing and to attend receptions, would in any way endanger her life by becoming a mother if she took any care of herself and desired the child.

Then the wife became very hysterical and went home to her mother, and said her husband had called her all kinds of names; that he had made her homecoming unhappy, and that she could never live with him again. She said he was a coarse brute, who lived wholly in the senses and did not understand a delicate woman.

She grew so ill that her sympathetic physician ordered an ocean voyage for her, and she went abroad again. While she was away her brute of a husband became entangled in a love affair with another woman. When she came home the matter was public gossip! and everybody said what a heartless creature he was to carry on so, when his poor wife was ill, and away for her health.

And so, after due season, there was another divorce of an unhappy wife from a bad husband.

III

The third bad husband fell violently in love with a very handsome girl, and he was like a man in a fever until he gained her consent to be his wife.

He had been an only son of his mother, and the girl was an only daughter of typical, doting American parents.

She was a belle in a small way; admired in her circle for her beauty, dancing, and music, and generally considered an amiable and virtuous young woman, who would be a prize worth the winning of any man.

The young man was equally popular, and his success in the business world, together with his education and social standing, made him seem a very suitable husband for the pretty belle. The husband was popular in his club, and he was proud of his athletic prowess and his good fellowship with manly men.

When his fiancée asked him to bring her a chair or a fan or to get her shawl, and kept him busy waiting on her he laughed with delight at the novel tasks assigned to him, and felt that he was a royal courtier in the kingdom of beauty.

The engagement was a brief one; and the wedding was a brilliant affair.

Everybody declared that it was an ideal union, and all the outlook was toward perfect happiness.

They did not possess wealth; a simple competence only, which enabled them to begin housekeeping with one maid. The maid did not stay long, and the first cloud on the happiness of the home was in the difficulty the young wife found in keeping any maid more than a few months.

Soon after the honeymoon the young husband realised that his position of courtier in the kingdom of beauty was growing rather difficult.

He was obliged to go to his office at nine o'clock in the morning, but the frequent intervals between the departure of one maid and the arrival of another, made a similar frequency of a breakfast at the club or restaurant, and, before his departure from the house, he was often