wife whose charm
has gone, through familiarity, through time itself, through the
inconstancy of passion and love. The gambler usually knows no duty; he
is kind and generous but only to please himself. He is easily bored and
his sympathies rarely stand the disagreeable long; he knows only one
_constant_ attraction,--Chance.

The other woman suffered in much the same way except that she was
fortunate enough finally to be deserted by her husband. This ended her
doubts and fears, broke her down for a short while, and then she went
back to industry. In this I have no doubt she found only an incomplete
satisfaction for her yearnings and desires, but she had something to
take up her time, and built up contacts with others in a way that was
impossible in her lonely home.

Case IX. The will to power through weakness; a case of hysteria in the
home.

This case is classic in the outspoken value of the symptoms to the
woman. It is not of course typical, except as the extreme is typical,
and that is what is usually meant, Roosevelt, we say, was a typical
American, meaning that he represented in extreme development a certain
type of man. So this case shows very clearly what is not so clear at
first in many cases of conflict between man and wife.

The woman in question was twenty-seven, of French-Canadian origin, but
thoroughly American in appearance and speech. She was of a middle-class
rural family and had married a farmer who finally had given up his farm
and was a mechanic in a small city.

The young woman had always been irritable, egoistic, and sensitive. As
a girl if anything happened to "shock her nerves", _i.e._ to displease
her, she fainted, vomited, or went into "hysterics." As a result her
family treated her with great caution and probably were well pleased
when she married off their hands and left the home.

Married life soon provided her with sufficient to displease her. Her
husband drank but not sufficiently to be classed as a heavy drinker. He
was a quiet, rather taciturn man, utterly averse to the pleasures for
which his wife longed. She wanted to go to dances, to take in the
theaters, to live in more expensive rooms, and especially she became
greatly attached to a group of people of a sporty type whom her husband
tersely called "tinhorn bluffs" and whom he refused to visit.

They quarreled vigorously and the quarrels always ended one way,--she
became sick in one way or other. This usually brought her husband