who married her, takes her ills and her children to his house, kicks the
brute on the street, and, for all his pains, is eventually either
assassinated by the wretch or anathematized by the wife. Having made
matters much worse (by unanimous opinion), he abandons his reform, and
then, with his valuable experience, joins Society and becomes a wave in
the tide of events, instead of a presumptuous pebble rolling in small
opposition on the beach of time. How will Society approach the
wife-beater? Nobody knows. Probably she will exterminate the breed. The
woman, like the newspaper proprietor, will at last awake. The man who
gets drunk will not gain her affections--above all, he will not keep
them. The "old soak" will be wifeless. Monsters will cease to propagate
their species. When once the strong hand of Bread-and-Butter gets hold
of Whisky, then whisky will be as useful for good as it now is powerful
in evil. Society however deals with the affections cautiously, and
wisely, because her experience is inconceivably great.