deeply--better than anything else in the world--except drink.
Nevertheless, he promised to overcome even this passion for her sake.
During the month immediately preceding their marriage, he came twice
into her presence intoxicated. In vain did her family plead and
protest. Her only answer was:

"Harry cannot keep straight without some one to help him. I must marry
him now. He needs me!"

Two years after her marriage she died of a broken heart, whispering at
the last to a dear friend that she "was not sorry to go, but would be
thankful life was over if she were only sure that her year-old baby
would not be left to Harry's care."

Yet he was in most respects tender and considerate. The trouble was
that his devotion to her remained at the point at which it stood when
he became her husband. The habit of intemperance grew.

Suppose that, added to this great fault, had been others still more
vicious. Had his been a coarse brutal nature, would not the idea of
reformation have been still more hopeless?

A woman, in tying herself for life to an unprincipled man who has
yielded to the dictates of sin year after year, forgets that he has
lost to a great extent his better nature and is now hardly responsible
for his actions. The spirit may indeed be willing, but the flesh is
lamentably weak. The appetites that have been long indulged do not
relinquish their claims after only a few months' restraint, and when
the girl for whose sake they have been repressed is won, they will
return to the swept and garnished room, and the last end of their