A young woman with one baby said that her husband had got drunk and threatened her with a knife.  They quarreled and he went to relatives in another city.  Neighbors testified how devoted the couple had been to each other, describing the young man as handy about the house though “lazy about finding work.”  He was visited by the family social agency in the city to which he had gone, and wrote a penitent letter asking to come home.  The wife agreed; the man immediately returned, got work, and succeeded in overcoming his incipient bad habits.  The death of the baby soon after his return seemed only to draw the couple more closely together.  The case was soon after closed; nothing has been heard in the three years since to indicate that any further trouble has developed.

A study recently made under the auspices of the Philadelphia Court of Domestic Relations seems to show somewhat better results from court reconciliations than might have been expected.  One thousand and two couples who were reconciled in court during the year 1916 were visited from six to eighteen months later.  Three hundred and ten had separated or had had further differences which brought them to court; 87 could not be found, and 605, or about 60 per cent, were found to be still living together, though with a varying degree of marital happiness, as the report somewhat drily states.[37]

It should be said that many of these families were probably under the supervision of a probation officer for a longer or shorter period after the reconciliation took place.  There is no statement as to the number of repeated deserters among the men, and we cannot estimate how many of the 605 fell within the group which might chance to have the proper basis for reconciliation.

The practice of the Desertion Bureau maintained by the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor is as a rule not to advise reconciliations without a definite preliminary period during which the man shall contribute regularly and show that he means business.  “The kind of reconciliation that lasts is the one that is effected with some difficulty to the man,” its secretary remarked.  The same probation department which furnished the stories of hasty and unsuccessful reconciliations,[38] contributes this remarkable account of the restoration of a family through slow and careful character rebuilding: 

George Latham had shamefully neglected his wife and children for several years.  He drank to excess, gambled considerably, and associated with women of loose character.  He came from good stock, however, and his early training had been excellent.  The differences between man and wife seemed impossible to adjust.  After the man’s release on probation, the co-operation of relatives was secured and through the aid of his new found employer efforts were made toward a reconciliation.  The man was gradually led away from his old harmful pursuits and tendencies, these being replaced by