take her place.

Up to this time mother had left me to settle my troubles, but now, she
told me I must turn and demand justice; that generosity was more than
thrown away; that I never could live with my husband and bear his
neglect and unkindness and that of his family. I must leave him, defend
myself, or die. That I should have been expected to gather apples and
dig potatoes, filled her with indignation. She advised me to stay with
her and refuse to see him, but I shuddered to think it had come to this
in one short year, and felt that all would yet be well. So I went to
live in the house he provided for me, his mother furnished my supplies,
and he came once a week to see me.

Here let me say, that in my twenty years of married life, my conflicts
were all spiritual; that there never was a time when my husband's strong
right arm would not be tempered to infantile gentleness to tend me in
illness, or when he hesitated to throw himself between me and danger.
Over streams and other places impassible to me, he carried me, but could
not understand how so frail a thing could be so obstinate.



CHAPTER VIII.


FITTING MYSELF INTO MY SPHERE.--AGE, 22, 23.

During all my girlhood I saw no pictures, no art gallery, no studio, but
had learned to feel great contempt for my own efforts at picture-making.
A traveling artist stopped in Wilkinsburg and painted some portraits; we