“But how could you go away under such circumstances, and trust all to a clerk?” said Mrs. Uhler warmly, and with reproof in her voice.

“How could I!” was the quick response.  “And do you suppose I am going to tie myself down to the store like a slave!  You are mistaken if you do; that is all I have to say!  I hire clerks to attend to my business.”

“But suppose they are incompetent?  What then?” Mrs. Uhler was very earnest.

“That doesn’t in the least alter my character and position.”  Mr. Uhler looked his wife fixedly in the face for some moments after saying this, and then retired from the house without further remark.

The change in her husband, which Mrs. Uhler at first tried to make herself believe was mere assumption or caprice, proved, unhappily, a permanent state.  He neglected his business and his home for social companions; and whenever asked by his wife for supplies of cash, invariably gave as a reason why he could not supply her want, the fact of some new loss of custom, or money, in consequence of neglect, carelessness, or incompetency of clerks or workmen, when he was away, enjoying himself.

For a long time, Mrs. Uhler’s independent spirit struggled against the humiliating necessity that daily twined its coils closer and closer around her.  More and more clearly did she see, in her husband’s wrong conduct, a reflection of her own wrong deeds in the beginning.  It was hard for her to acknowledge that she had been in error—­even to herself.  But conviction lifted before her mind, daily, its rebuking finger, and she could not shut the vision out.

Neglect of business brought its disastrous consequences.  In the end there was a failure; and yet, to the end, Mr. Uhler excused his conduct on the ground that he wasn’t going to tie himself down like a galley slave to the oar—­wasn’t going to stoop to the drudgery he had employed clerks to perform.  This was all his wife could gain from him in reply to her frequent remonstrances.

Up to this time, Mr. Uhler had resisted the better suggestions which, in lucid intervals, if we may so call them, were thrown into her mind.  Pride would not let her give to her household duties that personal care which their rightful performance demanded; the more particularly, as, in much of her husband’s conduct, she plainly saw rebuke.

At last, poverty, that stern oppressor, drove the Uhlers out from their pleasant home, and they shrunk away into obscurity, privation, and want.  In the last interview held by Mrs. Uhler with the “strong minded” friends, whose society had so long thrown its fascinations around her, and whose views and opinions had so long exercised a baleful influence over her home, she was urgently advised to abandon her husband, whom one of the number did not hesitate to denounce in language so coarse and disgusting, that the latent instincts of the wife were shocked beyond measure.  Her husband was not the brutal, sensual tyrant this refined lady, in her intemperate zeal, represented him.  None knew the picture to be so false as Mrs. Uhler, and all that was good and true in her rose up in indignant rebellion.