re-sistance,_ INTERFERENCE and _immoderation_.



CHAPTER V.

SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR.

"Help me to make things go forward instead of backward. I want to be
neat and attractive, with a good head of hair, a good complexion and
good health. I want to help my husband so he will fall in love with me
to make home beautiful, attractive and comfortable. I want bright eyes
and freedom from that careworn look. Oh, I want to draw my husband
nearer to me." (From a Taurus woman, aged twenty-seven.)

Isn't that pitiful? And heaven knows--or ought to--how many poor women,
_and men, too_, live with that same dumb longing to get nearer and be
chums with somebody. That cry touches my heart, for I lived years in the
same state.

And, oh, how I struggled to draw others nearer to me. How I agonized
and cried and prayed over it. How I worked to make home attractive. How
I cooked and washed and scrubbed, sewed and patched and darned to
please! How I quickly brushed my hair and hustled into a clean dress so
as to be neat and ready when my husband came in! And how I ached and
despaired inwardly because he frowned and found fault! How I studied
books of advice to young wives! How their advice failed! How I _tried_
and TRIED to get him to confide in me and make a chum of me! And how the
more I tried the more he had business downtown! Oh, the growing despair
of it all! And the growing illnesses, too! Oh, the gulf that widened and