Inasmuch as this is a hurried sketch of my life, I will mention as a single example of how we lived, and which might be multiplied by any figure below a thousand, that if I complained that we seldom had fish on the table, we had fish regularly thereafter until I complained that we had nothing else, whereupon she said I was a grumbler, and hard to please, and from that time fish was banished from the house. No matter how much I longed for fish after that, I was afraid to ask for it, for we would then get nothing else. I think I never sat down at the table with her that she did not bring out a depraved private dish for herself which I abhorred and despised. Tripe boiled in vinegar was one of these; roasted cheese was another, and the fumes from either made me so sick that I was compelled to get up and go out. She persisted in bringing these dishes to the table to “show her spirit,” although many times she did not want them, I am thoroughly convinced. In addition to the disagreeable qualities I have hastily mentioned, she was always complaining; if not of me, of her health; if not of her health, of the trouble the child was, or of the house in which we lived, which I am certain was the best she had ever seen; but she never complained of my long voyages, and I think she enjoyed my absence as much as I did hers. In short, although by this time I realized the fitness of a suitable marriage, I knew mine was the most unsuitable in the world; that we had nothing in common; that we should grow gradually worse instead of better, and that I should surely become, by reason of it, a dissatisfied, incapable and worthless man. Therefore, I began to weigh the consequences of running away. This brought to mind the love I bore the child, which had grown steadily during the eight years since she was born, and I came to the conclusion that if I remained as I was I should become a man so gross and selfish as to shrink under her increasing intelligence and refinement, for she was as pure and good as an angel, and I concluded it would be better for her to think of me as a good man dead than as a bad man alive, therefore after I had lived in the manner I have described for nearly nine years, making my voyages as long as possible, I went away, and determined never to return. The more I thought of it, once I was away, the stronger my determination became never to enter the presence of my wife again, and after thinking of it night and day for several weeks, I accepted the disgrace. Public opinion is always against a man in matters of this kind, no difference what his wrongs may be, and men who are contemplating running away from family difficulties themselves regard the offence the greatest of which some one else can be guilty, but I accepted the consequences, and felt relief when I knew I was finally rid of her.