The cover image was restored by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
SIX BAD HUSBANDSANDSIX UNHAPPY WIVES
BY ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
POEMS OF PASSION
POEMS OF PLEASURE
POEMS OF POWER
POEMS OF CHEER
POEMS OF SENTIMENT
MAURINE
THREE WOMEN
KINGDOM OF LOVE
POEMS OF PROGRESS
POEMS OF EXPERIENCE
YESTERDAYS
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FOREWORD
The six wives described in this littlebook are types which exist all overthe Christian world.
They may be found everywhere,save in the Orient.
This does not signify that the unselfish,tactful, tender and worthywoman is not in the foreground inthe picture of life.
She is.
But her virtues, her nobility, and[vi]her ofttimes sorrow, have all beenso frequently depicted, that manywomen who are the creators of theirown misfortunes, fall into the errorof believing they belong to herclass.
It is the writer's impression, basedon observation, that a larger numberof men marry for love than dowomen.
Just why so many men who beginmarried life with love and ideals,end it by being bad husbands, needsa wider and more careful analysisthan this little book gives.
But it can do no good wife any[vii]harm to study herself, and in readingthese pages, try and discover ifshe appears therein.
The noblest study of womankindis herself.
THE AUTHOR.
SIX BAD HUSBANDS AND SIX
UNHAPPY WIVES
I
The first bad husband had been avery good man until he married.He had built up a successfulbusiness and a fair name for himself, andhe had done it all without help, andwithout harming any one else.
He climbed without pulling othersdown; and he did little acts of kindnessas he went along, never hesitating to givea dollar where he felt it was needed, even[2]when anxious about the coming of anotherdollar to fill its place.
He helped indigent relatives; he aideda widowed cousin to educate her daughter,and always remembered the children in hisneighbourhood at Christmas time.
And when he was thirty-two, he decidedto settle