I have taken much knowledge of these women, and have come to the opinion that drunkenness is often but a symptom of some deeper cause. At one time I had persuaded some half-dozen of such to agree to separate from their husbands, who every week sent to me the sum agreed on for their maintenance. I used to call on these women, give them their week’s money, find them a little work, and do them any kindness I possibly could. I am not likely to repeat that experiment, for I confess myself beaten; they were too much for me, and so far as I know I was powerless to influence them for good. I never could find out whether their peculiar mental condition was due to drink, or their drinking was due to their mental condition, and either way I was helpless. But I have met with some magnificent devotion on the part of husbands, and a love passing even the love of women. I will give but one instance of this, and although it had a sad ending, yet it illustrates my statement. ‘A SCENE IN A POLICE COURT--A PAINFUL CASE.’ These words headed a paragraph of police news in the daily papers one morning in June. But the few commonplace words that told the story gave no idea of the intense suffering. Four weeks before an old sorrowful-faced man had tremblingly stood in the dock charged with a violent assault upon his wife. Four times he had been assisted back to the cells. Four times in the cupboard of the prison van had he been conveyed to the house of detention, for his wife lay hovering between life and death in the infirmary. ‘Erysipelas had set in,’ said the doctor. On the fifth occasion she was just well enough to come, and was carried into court, her head bandaged all over, one arm in a sling, and her face all covered with cuts and bruises. A chair was placed for her before the magistrate, and she was called on for evidence. ‘I don’t know much about it,’ she said. ‘I don’t want him punished; he has been a good husband to me; I suppose he did it; if he did, it was my fault, for I was drunk at the time.’