dove-eyed, modest little daughter of his landlady
had somehow reached a stray corner of his
jovial heart, and, stooping from his lordly
height of social superiority, Bloxham took the
gentle creature to himself and married her. Be
sure there was a chorus of surprise and indignation
and pity from a vast number of people
who thought so fine a fellow should have done
better. " Thrown up the sponge!" " Married
the girl at the lodging-house, and gone to the
bad!" " Didn't think he'd been such a fool!"
"Thought Bloxham was wider awake!" These
and other genial commentaries were passed
behind the bridegroom's back by his bosom
friends; while on the poor little wife's side
one or two hard relations, who had, as they said,
"made their own way," shook their heads
ominously, and hoped marrying above her
wouldn't turn Lucy's head, nor make her sinful.
But Bloxham had done a generous thing,
and he knew it. Indeed, however unassuming
his own nature might have been, and it cannot
be said to have erred in that particular, he
would have been more than mortal to have
ignored this fact. He read admiration for his
disinterested chivalry in the silent worship of
his trustful bride, in the terms of the
congratulatory speeches of his companions, and
in the value of the imaginary "good things"
he had thrown away. Viewed, however, by the
stern cold light of arithmetic, and excluding
all fanciful social belongings, the match was not
such a very bad thing for Bloxham after all.
Lucy's father had been a shopkeeper, it is true,
and Bloxham's father was a small country squire.
But she had an annuity of seventy pounds a
year, whereas, when Bloxham, senior, died, a
few months after his son's marriage, his affairs
were in such a condition that Letters of
administration were taken out by a creditor, and
the entire proceeds were angrily squabbled over
by that creditor's companions in misfortune.
All Bloxham's professional advantages were, in
a pecuniary sense, prospective. His showy
abilities made him popular, but were not
remunerative; and though well fitted by nature
for the profession of his choice, all the rest
depended upon the self-denial he should practise
and the application he should display. He was
much too dashing a personage to possess either
of those useful qualities, and, to cut his story
short, has been maintained, first by Lucy's
nimble fingers, and subsequently by her natty
little milliner's shop, any time these dozen
years.

It was during her husband's first attack of
delirium tremens, and after every available
article of clothing and knick-knackery had been
pawned or sold, that Mrs. Bloxham turned
bread-winner; and from that time until now she
has provided her husband with the means of
indulging in his favourite recreation, besides
nursing him through the fits of temporary insanity
which that recreation has superinduced.
He is at this time a pimply, bloated, watery-eyed,
tremulous-handed, dishonest, maudlin,
odious drunkard. She is an active, winning,
cheerful little body, who, to judge from her
bearing in public, might never have known a
care, and who still nourishes amid bitter secret
tears her pride at having married a gentleman.
If Bloxham would but fuddle and bemuse
himself without indulging in extraneous vices,
his wife would be, strange as it may sound,
comparatively happy. That he should get
habitually drunk has come to be recognised
as part of his nature, and as no more to be
guarded against or complained of than if he
were cursed with a blighted limb or a deformed
frame. This " is poor William's way;" and
his cleverness, the delight great people have
taken in his society, and his lofty spirited
pride, are told over tearfully, as if they were
condonations of his offence. But, unhappily,
another of poor William's ways is to be generous
when in his cups, and, he will lend his
jolly name to a boon-companion's bill, or will
sign one of those useful instruments himself
with a frequency which is ruinous to his wife.
But for her husband's amiable weaknesses, and
but for his money-borrowing for sustained fits of
debauchery, she might long since have retired
from business: while, as it is, a weary bitter
fight with bankruptcy, a hard struggle to repair
the breaches made in her commercial fortress, and
a constant dread and anxiety as to the nature
of the next assault upon it, are the rewards
of as patient and heroic a fight with fortune on
her part as was ever celebrated in song. The
law of England handed the poor woman over
to Bloxham when they went to church together,
and in its infinite mercy and wisdom leaves
her his chattel long after his vices have
transformed him into a sodden and idiotic parody
upon a man. The living body is chained to
the dead one, and must pay the penalty of its
association. Meanwhile, as the vagaries of the
wretched toper become more and more reckless,
and as in spite of every medical prophecy, that
"no constitution can stand it, and the next
attack must be the last," he persists in living
on, there is little doubt that the Gazette
and the workhouse will be the ultimate fate
of both.

Another case. Polly Comber earns her two
pounds a week at factory work, and is in
constant employment. She is cursed with a
husband who left her, years ago, but who turns up
periodically to break up her home, to sell the
bits of furniture she has gathered together
laboriously, to seize upon her savings, and
then to wallow in the mire again, leaving her to
begin her nest-building for herself and the little
children anew. In everything which elevates the
human being above the brute she is as
immeasurably the superior of her ruffian husband as
the things of heaven are to the things of earth.
She is prudent, self-denying, industrious, cleanly,
God-fearing, virtuous. The man she married, is
practically changed into a Beast. His individuality
is become as distinct from that of the
maniac and robber who swoops down upon her
from time to time like some obscene bird of prey,
as that of the people who lived long before she