not attempt to deny it: he ventured only to EXPLAIN it.) According to
his version of the affair, the trouble began long before he took to
wine and women. It began with his wife's propensity for nagging. Being
a high-spirited, intelligent person with a mind of his own, Mr. Hooper
didn't like being nagged, and as he rather harshly attempted to put a
stop to it just as soon as it dawned upon him that he was being hen-
pecked, his wife, not to be outdone, went at it harder than ever. And
that is how it all began, and that is why I say that he was not wholly
to blame. She was very pretty and very peevish, and they lived a cat
and dog life for ten years after the birth of the last child.

Mr. Hooper took to drink and then took to staying away from home for
days at a time. It was at this stage of the affair that the children
began to see him through their mother's eyes. Certain disclosures were
inevitable. In a word, Mrs. Hooper hired detectives, and finding
herself in a splendid position to secure all she wanted in the way of
alimony, heralded Mr. Hooper's shortcomings to the world. The only
good that ever came out of the unfortunate transaction, so far as Mr.
Hooper was concerned, was to be found in the blessed realisation that
she had actually deprived herself of the right to nag him, and that
was something he knew would prove to be a constant source of
irritation to her.

But when his children turned against him, he faltered. He had not
counted on that. They not only went off to live with their mother, but
they virtually wiped him out of their lives, quite as if he had passed
away and no longer existed in the flesh. The three of them stood by
the mother--as they should have done, we submit, considering Mr.
Hooper's habits--and shuddered quite as profoundly as she when the
name of the erring parent was mentioned in their presence. Mr. Hooper