One day the hotel proprietor advised him of a contemplated raise in his assessment to re-imburse the business for extras in connection with elevating so much food upstairs, which was not part and parcel of the rules and regulations of the house in committee. Besides, the accommodation was needless.
"Needless!" exclaimed hubby. "Would you degenerate a lady and gentleman wilfully. I will leave your fire-trap at once and cast anchor at the 'Next Best.'" The proprietor argued that his competitor was welcome to such pickings, so he made no comment on the debate.
The "Next Best" was "full up," as it always is, so they carried the living corpse out on a stretcher, and hubby went batching with his burden in a three-roomed house on Bancroft Street. When it became hubby's duty to cook the meals and carry half of them to bed for his better half every morning before breakfast he began to taste silly and smell sort of henpeck like. He persisted humbly, lovingly, self-sacrificingly, henpeckedly, however, until one morning his sun rose brighter than it had ever done before and he saw a faint glimmer of light through the wool that was hanging in front of him.
"Perhaps there is such a commodity as superfluous personal sacrifice to one's matrimonial obligations," he soliloquized. "Perhaps this spouse of mine with the pre-historic constitution can be cured by an abstract treatment. Is she ill, or is she playing a wild, deceitful part? Is she sitting on me with all her weight?" He was willing to allow her the usual proportion of female indisposition, but a continued story of such nightmare proportions was beginning to unstring his physical telephone system. So, to we who have no wool over our eyes, this was one of the most pitiful and criminal cases of selfish indolence, perhaps coupled with a belief that a husband, through his sympathy, will love a woman the more because of her suffering. No supposition, of course, could be farther from the concrete—a husband wants, requires, admires, loves, a healthy, active working-partner. Failing this the husband as a husband is down and out.
When hubby began to realize this an individual reformation was at the dawning. The very next morning no breakfast arrived by private parcel post.
"Harry," she exclaimed, "bring me my porridge and hot cakes; I am starving."
"If you are starving get up and eat in your stall at the table," said Harry, sarcastically, although it pained him.
"Harry!" she shouted, "you selfish beast!"
For diplomatic reasons Harry was silent.
Harry made an abrupt exit without waiting for adjournment, and went up town. A new life seemed to be dawning upon him. It was the emancipation from slavery. He went into the drug store, into the hardware store, into the hotels and all the other stores—he talked and laughed as he had never done before.