Mrs. Barbara Uhler was a wife and a mother. She was also a woman;
and her consciousness of this last named fact was never indistinct,
nor ever unmingled with a belligerent appreciation of the rights
appertaining to her sex and position.

As for Mr. Herman Uhler, he was looked upon, abroad, as a mild,
reasonable, good sort of a man. At home, however, he was held in a
very different estimation. The "wife of his bosom" regarded him as
an exacting domestic tyrant; and, in opposing his will, she only
fell back, as she conceived, upon the first and most sacred law of
her nature. As to "obeying" him, she had scouted that idea from the
beginning. The words, "honor and obey," in the marriage service, she
had always declared, would have to be omitted when she stood at the
altar. But as she had, in her maidenhood, a very strong liking for
the handsome young Mr. Uhler, and, as she could not obtain so
material a change in the church ritual, as the one needed to meet
her case, she wisely made a virtue of necessity, and went to the
altar with her lover. The difficulty was reconciled to her own
conscience by a mental reservation.

It is worthy of remark that above all other of the obligations here
solemnly entered into, this one, _not_ to honor and obey her
husband, ever after remained prominent in the mind of Mrs. Barbara
Uhler. And it was no fruitless sentiment, as Mr. Herman Uhler could
feelingly testify.

From the beginning it was clearly apparent to Mrs. Uhler that her
husband expected too much from her; that he regarded her as a kind
of upper servant in his household, and that he considered himself as