The third bad husband fell violently in love with a very handsome girl, and he was like a man in a fever until he gained her consent to be his wife.

He had been an only son of his mother, and the girl was an only daughter of typical, doting American parents.

She was a belle in a small way; admired in her circle for her beauty, dancing, and music, and generally considered an amiable and virtuous young woman, who would be a prize worth the winning of any man.

The young man was equally popular, and his success in the business world, together with his education and social standing, made him seem a very suitable husband for the pretty belle. The husband was popular in his club, and he was proud of his athletic prowess and his good fellowship with manly men.

When his fiancÉe asked him to bring her a chair or a fan or to get her shawl, and kept him busy waiting on her he laughed with delight at the novel tasks assigned to him, and felt that he was a royal courtier in the kingdom of beauty.

The engagement was a brief one; and the wedding was a brilliant affair.

Everybody declared that it was an ideal union, and all the outlook was toward perfect happiness.

They did not possess wealth; a simple competence only, which enabled them to begin housekeeping with one maid. The maid did not stay long, and the first cloud on the happiness of the home was in the difficulty the young wife found in keeping any maid more than a few months.

Soon after the honeymoon the young husband realised that his position of courtier in the kingdom of beauty was growing rather difficult.

He was obliged to go to his office at nine o'clock in the morning, but the frequent intervals between the departure of one maid and the arrival of another, made a similar frequency of a breakfast at the club or restaurant, and, before his departure from the house, he was often requested to 'be a darling and bring his own lovey dovey a glass of milk and a bit of fruit.'

Knowing that he had taken his 'lovey dovey' from a home where she always breakfasted in bed, the devoted husband felt it his duty to make life as pleasant as possible for her; yet the position of butler and maid combined was not pleasing to his manly spirit. Still he liked to be obliging, and he continued to do her bidding.

Between the basement kitchen and the sleeping-room of the young couple, two flights of stairs intervened, and it seemed never to occur to the mistress of the household that it was a hardship for any one save herself to go up and down these stairs a dozen times in a brief space of time on errands for her comfort.

The husband prospered, and engaged two more domestics for his wife. But with increased service her demands increased—and confusion instead of order reigned.

Maids were called to the top floor on trivial errands, while they were engaged in duties in the basement, and they were sent to the corner box to mail letters, to the grocery store, or the chemist's, or on errands a half-dozen times a day.

When they could not go, or when they were not there, 'darling husband' was commissioned to be errand-boy. He was seldom enabled to finish his cigar or read his paper in the evening without being asked to go up or down stairs, to bring a chair, shawl, or book, or a box of bonbons for his wife's pleasure, or to run to the corner to get something she needed.

He became skilled in the work of a lady's maid in the continual demand made upon him to assist his wife in fastening her gowns.

After three years the situation in which the young man found himself began to prey upon his mind. For it grew worse instead of better.

'I am no longer a manly man,' he said to himself, 'I am not the head of a house; I am an employÉ of a pretty woman. I am a combination of lackey, valet, butler, head waiter, and maid of all work. I haven't even a half day or an evening off; not a regular weekly time I can call my own, as most domestics have—I am going to strike.'

But when he made his first protest his wife became hysterical and sent for her mother.

The mother said the husband was a brute to refuse to bring up the breakfast tray to a poor delicate woman, who had an inefficient and inconsiderate servant. Any man with half a heart, she said, would have shown sympathy and kindness in such a situation. One word led to another, until a very unpleasant condition of things existed in the household.

He told the mother-in-law that it was her daughter's fault that she could never keep a servant; that servants would leave when they were imposed upon and overworked, and that it might, in time, be possible for a husband to leave unless greater consideration was shown in the small matters of daily life.

He said there was no pleasure to be had in a house with a woman who made every human being under the roof a slave to her caprices, and who was so utterly selfish that she could not understand how any one might object to being ordered about on errands night and day.

This scene was only the beginning of perpetual scenes. The husband began to stay away in the evenings. He often remained away at dinner, and the neglected wife wept upon her mother's sympathetic bosom.

And in due course of time a separation and divorce occurred. Looking back over her married life, the wife was unable to see wherein she had failed. And everybody said she was such a beautiful woman; so faithful; so amiable; so accomplished, and so evidently fond of her husband.

But everybody had not lived under the same roof with her.