ov. 18, '56, twenty years, averaged less than
fifty dollars a year. All my husband's labor for all his life, and mine
for twenty years, with a large part of my separate property, had gone to
swell his mother's estate, on the proceeds of which she kept her
carriage and servants until she died, aged ninety-four, while I earned a
living for myself and his only child.

I left Pittsburg with my baby about the 20th of May, '57, and went by
boat to St. Paul. Before leaving, I went to settle with Mr. Riddle and
say goodbye, and found him much troubled. He said:

"Why is it I have known nothing of all this? I did not dream there was
anything wrong in your domestic relations, and may have been selfish and
inconsiderate."

My husband, mine no more, came upon the boat while she lay at the wharf,
held baby on his knee and wept over her; when the last bell rang, he
bade me good-bye; carried her to the gangway, held her to the last
moment, then placed her in my arms, sprang ashore and hurried up the
wharf. He would, I think, have carried her off, but that he knew she
would break his heart crying for mother before I could get to her.

He had once taken her away in a fit of anger and walked the floor with
her most of the night, seriously alarmed for her life, and could not
venture on that experiment again. He loved her most tenderly, and his
love was as tenderly returned. Since, as a duty to her, I was careful to
teach her to "honor thy father" on earth as well as in heaven.

Had he and I gone into the pine woods, as he proposed, upon marriage;
had we been married under an equitable law or had he emigrated to
Minnesota, as he proposed, before I thought of going, there would have
been no separation; but after fifteen years in his mother's house I must
run away or die, and leave my child to a step-mother. So I ran away. He
thought I would return; enlarged and improved the house, wrote and
waited for us; could make no deed without my signature; I would sign
none, and after three years he got a divorce for desertion. In '70 he
married again, and I having, voluntarily, assumed the legal guilt of
breaking my marriage contract, do cheerfully accept the legal penalty--a
life of celibacy--bringing no charge against him who was my husband,
save that he was not much better than the average man. Knew his rights,
and knowing sought to maintain them against me; while, in some respects,
he was to me incalculably more than just. Years after I left