There are homes where poverty has never left its pinch nor sickness paid its visit; homes where there is plenty on the board, and health in the circle, and yet where a skeleton more grim than death haunts the cupboard, and an ache harsher than consumption's tooth gnaws sharply at the heart. Why do those shoulders stoop so early ere life's noon has passed? Why is it that the sigh which follows the closing of the door after the husband has gone off to business is a sigh of relief, and that which greets his coming footstep is a sigh of dread? What means that nervous pressing of the hand against the heart, the gulping back of the lump that rises in the throat, the forced smile, and the pressed-back tear? If we could but speak to the husbands who haunt these homes, we would tell them that some such soliloquy as the following is ever passing like a laboured breath through the distracted minds of their wives: "Is this the Canaan, this the land of promise, this the milk and honey that were pictured to my fancy; when the walks among the lanes, and fields, and flowers were all too short, and the whispers were so loving, and the pressure was so fond, and the heart-beat was so passionate? For what have I surrendered home, youth, beauty, freedom, love--all that a woman has to give in all her wealth of confidence? Harsh tones, cold looks, stern words, short answers, sullen reserve." "What," says the cheery neighbour, "is that all?" All! What more is needed to make home dark, to poison hope, to turn life into a funeral, the marriage-robe into a shroud, and the grave into a refuge? It does not want drunkenness, blows, bruises, clenched fists, oaths, to work sacrilege in the temple of the home; only a little ice where the fire should glow; only a cold look where the love should burn; only a sneer where there ought to be a smile. Husband! that wife of yours is wretched because you are a liar; because you perjured yourself when you vowed to love and cherish. You are too great a coward to beat her brains out with a poker lest the gallows claim you; but you are so little of a man that you poison her soul with the slow cruelty of an oath daily foresworn and brutally ignored. If the ducking-stool was a punishment of old for a scolding wife, a fiercer baptism should await the husband who has ceased to cherish his wife.