His father had made him work from earliest boyhood and he had turned over his wages to his parents until the day and the night he was twenty-one. That following year he had married—married Anna Farman. She had clerked in the same store where Johnathan had been a sort of all-around handy man and shipping clerk. He had been very much in love with her, or thought he was. Yet almost from the first night he had discovered that between his mother and his wife a gulf existed as wide as China. His father’s life had been happy because his mother was a conscientious Christian woman. She knew how to keep her place. His father had been absolute lord and Czar of the Forge family fortunes. No one ever presumed to question that such was not his right. His mother had never scoffed at St. Paul’s injunction anent wives submitting themselves unto their husbands as unto the law of God. Mrs. Forge, his mother, had taken note of St. Paul and rather approved of him, following his domestic admonitions without question. The result had been peace and happiness; at least there had never been any disgraceful quarreling or contention between wife and husband in the home of his father. The husband had laid down the law and the wife had obeyed. It was simple. Was he not the husband and father? Why shouldn’t she obey? Happy? What greater happiness could a woman desire than obeying her husband, submitting to him as unto the law of God? At least, when women did that sort of thing, domestic peace and connubial bliss resulted. Anna Farman had not done that sort of thing and showed she had not the least intent in the world of doing that sort of thing. She had married and then promptly declared she intended to preserve her own individuality and do as she pleased. It was plain therefore what chaos and misery ensued when any one—especially woman—flouted the decrees of the Almighty, His seers, His prophets and His saints. Not only had Anna refused to obey her husband but she had early shown herself extravagant and impractical. At first she had wanted shoes, clothes, hats for every season of the year. Think of a woman with four hats! Or four pairs of shoes! Why, his own mother had worn one hat three years, done it cheerfully, thought nothing of it! Anna had quarreled with Johnathan over the subject of clothing so bitterly that the young husband might have left her the first year, if a baby had not been coming. After that he was in for it. There was no hope, no escape. And for twenty-five years he had endured it. Twenty-five years! A quarter-century! To think of it! What a fool he had been! What a fool!