Three years later (1758) he married Henrietta Leeds, a lady of fine character, and one to whom he was sincerely attached. Indeed, so fearful was he that their married life might not be entirely without jars, that he made a bargain with her, in advance of their marriage, that on all disputed points the adjustment should be according to his judgment. One is at a loss which member of a couple the most to admire, the man who could make such a proposition, or the woman who would bind herself with such bonds! But, like his first marriage, his strange contract with his second wife seems to have led only to happy results. They settled in Cardington, upon the Howard estate, and for the next seven years led the uneventful life of landed gentry of the times. The husband and wife were united in their efforts to improve the morals and general condition of their tenantry. Rightly believing that the beginning of all reform was to improve the physical condition, Howard spared no expense in rearing new cottages upon new and improved plans, held his tenants removable at will, and through their improved conditions ruled over them with an almost despotic sway, tempered and made bearable in that all his restrictions and requirements were on the line of their temporal and spiritual advancement. How strange is the making of history! Had the gentle, loving, well-governed, dependent Mrs. Howard lived on, this would no doubt have been the continuation, the aim, and the end of John Howard's life--to constantly advance and improve the interests and condition of his tenantry, and to wisely govern and administer his estate. But it was not so to be. The happy home must be broken up, and the man whom God needed must, through the sting of his own sorrow, be sent out again upon his wanderings to do the work reserved for him in the broad field not of his own choosing. The birth of the only child, a son, preceded the death of its mother by but a few days, and Howard was again alone. To the end of his life he remained a sincere and constant mourner for the wife to whom he owed the happiest, if not the most useful, seven years of his life. It is said by some of his biographers that he always kept the anniversary of her death as a solemn day of fasting and prayer. Come we now to the point in his career where, all unknown to himself, Howard took up the work which was to startle the whole civilized world, and place his name in the roll of those whose memories die not. But first let us remember the son whose life began where his mother's ended, and ended where it was well his mother had not lived to see it.