“This was the husband I was married to.  And I had offended all my relations, and estranged them from me, for his sake.  Here was surely a sad prospect for a woman after only a few months of wedded life!

“In a year’s time the money in the bank was gone; and my husband was out of employment.  He always got work—­being a first-rate hand when he was sober—­and always lost it again when the drinking-fit seized him.  I was loth to leave our nice little house, and part with my pretty furniture; and I proposed to him to let me try for employment, by the day, as cook, and so keep things going while he was looking out again for work.  He was sober and penitent at the time; and he agreed to what I proposed.  And, more than that, he took the Total Abstinence Pledge, and promised to turn over a new leaf.  Matters, as I thought, began to look fairly again.  We had nobody but our two selves to think of.  I had borne no child, and had no prospect of bearing one.  Unlike most women, I thought this a mercy instead of a misfortune.  In my situation (as I soon grew to know) my becoming a mother would only have proved to be an aggravation of my hard lot.

“The sort of employment I wanted was not to be got in a day.  Good Mr. Bapchild gave me a character; and our landlord, a worthy man (belonging, I am sorry to say, to the Popish Church), spoke for me to the steward of a club.  Still, it took time to persuade people that I was the thorough good cook I claimed to be.  Nigh on a fortnight had passed before I got the chance I had been looking out for.  I went home in good spirits (for me) to report what had happened, and found the brokers in the house carrying off the furniture which I had bought with my own money for sale by auction.  I asked them how they dared touch it without my leave.  They answered, civilly enough I must own, that they were acting under my husband’s orders; and they went on removing it before my own eyes, to the cart outside.  I ran up stairs, and found my husband on the landing.  He was in liquor again.  It is useless to say what passed between us.  I shall only mention that this was the first occasion on which he lifted his fist, and struck me.”

5.

“Having a spirit of my own, I was resolved not to endure it.  I ran out to the Police Court, hard by.

“My money had not only bought the furniture—­it had kept the house going as well; paying the taxes which the Queen and the Parliament asked for among other things.  I now went to the magistrate to see what the Queen and the Parliament, in return for the taxes, would do for me.

“‘Is your furniture settled on yourself?’ he says, when I told him what had happened.

“I didn’t understand what he meant.  He turned to some person who was sitting on the bench with him.  ‘This is a hard case,’ he says.  ’Poor people in this condition of life don’t even know what a marriage settlement means.  And, if they did, how many of them could afford to pay the lawyer’s charges?’ Upon that he turned to me.  ’Yours is a common case,’ he said.  ’In the present state of the law I can do nothing for you.’