suicide has left the receipt for that poison, among his other precious
legacies, to his 'friend Doctor ----.'

"Why do I trouble you with these nauseous details? Because they are in no
small degree answerable for my debts. My husband devotes all his leisure
hours to continuing the detestable experiments begun by the Hungarian;
and my yearly dress-money for myself and my child has been reduced one
half, to pay the chemical expenses.

"Ought I, in this hard case, to have diminished my expenditure to the
level of my reduced income?

"If you say Yes, I answer that human endurance has its limits. I can
support the martyrdom of my life; the loss of my dearest illusions and
hopes; the mean enmity of our neighbors; the foul-mouthed jealousy of the
women; and, more than all, the exasperating patience of a husband who
never resents the hardest things I can say to him, and who persists in
loving and admiring me as if we were only married last week. But I cannot
see my child in a stuff frock, on promenade days in the Palace Gardens,
when other people's children are wearing silk. And plain as my own dress
may be, I must and will have the best material that is made. When the
wife of the military commandant (a woman sprung from the people) goes out
in an Indian shawl with Brussels lace in her bonnet, am I to meet her and
return her bow, in a camelot cloak and a beaver hat? No! When I lose my
self-respect let me lose my life too. My husband may sink as low as he
pleases. I always have stood above him, and I always will!

"And so I am in debt, and my creditors threaten me. What does it matter?
I have pacified them, for the time, with some small installments of
money, and a large expenditure of smiles.