arried, and
for a few years lived very happily.

"I had always been very fond of fishing and hunting, and while in
college I spent all my vacations in camp, on the prairie or in the
forest. After I was graduated, I used to devote two or three months of
the year to these pursuits. When I was married, I was not willing to
forego this luxury,--for such it was to me,--and without going into the
painful details, this subject became a source of difference between us.
I thought my wife was unreasonable, and she thought the same of me. Six
years ago she told me, if I went on my usual excursion, she would leave
me, never to return. I could not believe she was in earnest. I had
reduced the period of my absence to six weeks, and when I returned
found my house closed. Mrs. Gracewood was at the residence of her
brother, Mr. Sparkley. I sent her a note, informing her of my return.

"She wrote me in reply, that if I would promise to abandon my annual
hunting trip, or take her with me, she would come back. I replied that
I would travel with her wherever she desired to go, and at any time
except in June and July, and that a woman was out of place in a camp of
hunters. She positively refused to return or to see me on any other
than her own conditions. I met Ella every week at my own house, where
she came in charge of a servant. Neither of us would yield, and life
was misery to me. The next spring I placed all my property in the hands
of my brother, with instructions to pay my wife an annuity of three
thousand dollars a year, and made a will in favor of my child.

"I had been to this region before, and hunted upon the island where I
now live. To me it was a paradise, and I determined to spend the rest
of my days there. I felt that I had been robbed of all the joys of
existence in the love of my wife and child. Taking the materials for my
house, furniture, a piano, and my library, with a plentiful supply of
stores, I came up the river in a steamer, and have lived here ever
since."

"But didn't you wish to see your daughter?" I asked.

"Very much; but I was afraid that the sight of her would break down my
resolution, and induce me to yield the point for which I had contended.
A kind Providence seems to have sent my child to me, to open and warm
my heart."

"Do you still think you were right?" I asked.

"I do; my annual hunt was life and strength to me for the whole year. I
thought my wife's objections were unkind and unreasonable; b