An evil life so blunts the conscience that the wife of an unreformed man need hardly expect him to be faithful to her.  If a man will sin against common decency, morality and social codes, he will sin against his wife.

There is another aspect of the case to be considered.  The American girl of to-day seldom takes the possibility of offspring into her matrimonial plans.  They are not only a possibility, but a probability, and it behooves every woman to cast aside false modesty, and with a pure heart and honest soul seriously consider if she is not doing irreparable wrong to unborn children in giving them an unprincipled father.  Is she willing to see her children’s blood tainted by his vices, their lives wrecked by evil temptations inherited from him?  She must, indeed, be a reckless woman and a soulless, who, with this thought uppermost can still say, “I will marry this man—­let the consequences be what they may!”

That a man has some redeeming qualities does not make him a life-companion to be desired above all others.  Said a poor Irish woman: 

“Pat is always a good husband, savin’ the toimes he’s in liquor!”

“When is he sober?” asked a bystander.

“Sure an’ his money gin’rally gives out by Friday mornin’, and from that on to Saturday night, he can’t git a dhrop.  Faith, but he’s koind and consid’rate at sich a time!”

Did the loyal soul find that marriage paid?

One great mistake that many silly women make is to think that a dash of wickedness makes a man more attractive.  Years ago I heard a girl say: 

“I want to know Jack S. He has been very wild, and a man is so much more interesting for being a little naughty, you know.”

I did not “know,” nor do I now understand why pearls should plead to be thrown before swine, or fresh-blown roses upon the dung-hill.

CHAPTER XVI.

“JOHN’S” MOTHER.

One of the oldest problems among the many seemingly contradictory “examples” set for the student of human nature has to do with the different positions assigned to mother and mother-in-law.

Painters, poets, divines, sages,—­the inspired Word itself,—­rank the mother’s office as the noblest assigned to creatures of mortal mould.  Mother-love and the love of the dear Father of us all are compared, the one with the other.  Of all human affections, this, the first that takes root in the infant’s heart, is the last to die out under the blighting influence of vice, the deadening blows of time.  “My Mother” is spoken by the world-hardened citizen with a gentler inflection,—­a reverential cadence, as if the inner man stood with uncovered head before a shrine.

Mother-in-law!  The words call a smile that is too often a sneer to lips in which dwells habitually the law of kindness, while lampoon, caricature, jest and song find in them theme and catchword for mockery and insult.