Many a time I have said, ‘What! has she been at it again? Tell me all about it. Will you have a cigar?’ Hour after hour I have sat among the débris of the home, hearing, but not listening to, the accusations of the husband, for I have been thinking of the cowering wife in the corner and the terrified children behind me. But to watch the faces of these men, to see the gradations of passion, and the extraordinary change of facial expression, has not been a pleasant task. Yet I have sat on and on, watching for signs of exhausted nature, or hoping and waiting for some sign that alcohol had done its worst. And they come at length, for the physical strain upon such a man is intense. The wife and her children go to one bedroom and fasten the door. I get the poor fellow to another, see him into bed, leave a little light in a safe place, promise to see him on the morrow, and come away with the words, ‘Mr. Holmes, I won’t kill her to-night,’ in my ears and in my mind; for often have these words been said to me as I have left the room of such a man. On the morrow these men know nothing of what transpired the night before. They feel dazed, ill, and miserable, but memory is to them a blank. God help them and their poor wives, for, alas! no one else can help them. Magistrates and police can do nothing for them, human sympathy is helpless before them. Temperance pledges and tracts are worse than useless, for who or what can minister to a mind diseased? Drink in their case is only a symptom of a deeper-seated trouble. Cruelty in their case is not a natural condition but the outcome of their delusions. From these come the reports of many startling tragedies of murder and suicide. Of these I have saved none, but among these I have given myself, and am glad to think that I have often, at any rate, prevented worse happening.
The well-paid artisan class furnish not a few wife-beating cases, caused not by mental disease, nor yet by innate cruelty, but by regular and systematic drunkenness. These men work regularly, or nearly so, during the week, but Saturday brings to their families only added misery and sufferings, and Sunday no peace or rest. The scope for missionary work among such is very great, as one or two examples shall show.