veritable comrade for man at his best, not so much prized for the vain
and evanescent charm of her beauty as for the steadfastness and the
incorruptible purity of her soul.




XLI.

TAKE TO DRINK, OF COURSE!

What would a man do, I yonder, if things went so irretrievably wrong
with him as they do with some of us women? Why, take to drink, of
course. That is a sovereign consolation I am told for many ills. A
woman has no equivalent for whisky. She must needs clench her hands
and set her teeth and bear her lot. And yet you tell us a man is the
stronger. I tell you, my dear, I know a dozen women who could discount
any soldier that ever fought in the Crimean wars, for downright heroism
and pluck. Where do you find the man who is willing to wear shabby
clothes and old boots and a seedy hat that his boys may go fine as
fiddles? Where do you find a man who will get up cold mornings and
make the fire, tramp to work through snow, pick his way through
flooding rain, weather northeast blasts and go hungry and cold that he
may keep the children together which a bad and wayward mother has
deserted? First thing a man would do in such a case would be to board
the children out with convenient relatives while he looked around for a
divorce and another wife! How long would a man brace up under the
servant question? How long would he endure the insolence and the
flings of cruel and covert enemies because the children needed all he
could give them, and, only along the thorny road of continual