one else--that if his wife hadn't driven him to distraction with her
nagging he would have avoided the happy though disastrous pitfalls
into which he stumbled in his desperate efforts to find appreciation.
He would have remained an honourable, faithful spouse to her, and an
abstainer--as such things go. He would have shared with her the love
and respect of their three children, and he would have staved off
bankruptcy with the very hundred thousand dollars that she exacted as
spite money. But she was a nagger, and he was no Job. There was a
modicum of joy in the heart of him, however: having been cleaned out
to the last penny, he was in no position to come up monthly with the
thousand dollars charged against him by the court for the support and
maintenance of two of his children until they reached their majority.
He took a savage delight in contemplating the rage of his late wife
when she realised that the children would have to be provided for out
of the income from the one hundred thousand she had received in a lump
sum, and he even thanked God that she was without means beyond this
hateful amount. It tickled him to think of her anguish in not being
able to spend the income from her alimony on furs and feathers with
which to bedeck herself. Instead of spending the five thousand on
herself she would be obliged to put it on the backs and into the
stomachs of her three brats! He chuckled vastly over this bit of good
fortune! It was really a splendid joke on her, this smash of his. No
doubt the children also hated him the more because of his failure to
remain on his feet down in Wall Street, but he consoled himself with
the thought that they would sometimes long for the old days when
father did the providing, and wish that things hadn't turned out so
badly.

In his hour of disgrace--and we may add degeneration--he possessed but
one blood relation who stood by him and pitied him in spite of his