e by her efforts of various sorts. These were,
sewing when she could get it, washing and scrubbing when she could not.
She was very poorly dressed, but had a Yankee, go-ahead expression, as
if she would get a living on the top of a bare rock.

Still puzzling over the likeness in her face to somebody I had known, I
continued to ask questions and to observe face, manner, and voice, in
hope to catch the clue of which I was in search. When she admitted that
her husband's intemperance had lost him his place and forbade his
getting another, and said his name was Jim Ruggles, "a light broke in
upon my brain." I remembered my vision of the fresh young girl who had
sprung out on our path like a morning-glory, on our way to New York
seven years before. The poor morning-glory was sadly trodden in the
dust. It hadn't done "no good," as the driver had remarked, to forewarn
her of the consequences of marrying a sponge. She had accepted her lot,
and, strangely enough, was quite happy in it. There could be no mistake
in the cheerful expression of her worn face. Whatever Jim might be to
other people, she said, he was always good to her and the children; and
she pitied him, loved him, and took care of him. It wasn't at all in the
fashion the Temperance Society would have liked; for when I first went
to the house, I found her pouring out a glass of strong waters for him,
and handing it to his pale and trembling lips herself. As soon as I was
seated, she locked bottle and glass carefully. Before I left her, she
had given him stimulants of various sorts from the same source, which he
received with grateful smiles, and then went on coughing as before.

"It's no time now for him to be forming new habits," said she, in answer
to my open-eyed surprise; "and it's best he should have all the comfort
and ease he can get. As long as I can get it for him, he shall have it."

She spoke very quietly, but very much as if the same will of her own
which had led her to marry Jim Ruggles, when a gay, dissipated fellow,
kept her determined to give him what he wanted, even to the doubtful
extreme I saw. So she struggled bravely on during the next four weeks of
Jim's existence, keeping herself and her three children on hasty
pudding, and buying for Jim's consumptively craving appetite rich
mince-pies and platefuls of good rich food from an eating-house hard by.
At the end of the four weeks he died most peacefully and suddenly,
having not five minutes before