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ABOU BEN ADHEM was asked one day by a
seeker after knowledge whether a man had better
marry or not.

The Sage was in a good mood for talk: he had
had his supper and it suited him, the tobacco in
his chibouque was precisely to his taste, and he had
made a fair operation that day in stocks. Life was
to him more than usually pleasant, and being in
good humor he was disposed to narrate.

“Listen,” said he, “to a true tale.

“I was once a married man — possibly I am yet.
The lady whom I married was too sinewy and tough
to die in a hurry.

“If I sigh as I speak let not that sigh be interpreted
as an indication that I am an unbeliever in matrimony.

“Matrimony in the abstract is a good and desirable
thing; whether it is always a good thing is another
question.

“I shall not testify, for I cannot be an unprejudiced
witness. I was married and I am bald-headed. It
was not a fever that took out my hair; it came out

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suddenly one night during an argument with my
wife.

“When two people — of opposite sex of course —
discover that their hearts throb in unison, they should
be joined, that they may continue to so throb. When
two people — a man and a woman — discover that
their tastes are similar, likewise their hopes and
aims, they should marry. In such cases life is,
doubtless, a rose-tinted dream.

“But where the masculine person is not tremendously
strong, is timid in his nature, and addicted to
miscellaneous pleasures; and the female member of
the firm is five feet nine inches in height, addicted to
having her own way, and very strong in the arm, I
will not say that, for the man at least, marriage is a
good thing. I do not believe it. I have had experiences.
There is such a thing as will power: a
strong will in a weak body will bear down and override
a weak will in a strong body; but when the
strong will animates a strong body the combination
is fearful. Give the wife both these qualities, and it
is bad for the husband. The husbands of such wives
must be exceedingly mild in temper to retain their
hair. I have known many men who possess such
wives, and have noticed that they invariably wore
wigs. But for such wives a worthy trade would languish.
How the lines of life cross each other! Who
would suppose that temper had anything to do with
the trades? Life is a riddle.

“Possibly it is bad for the wife when the husband
is so constituted, but I know not. I am speaking

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from the standpoint of the husband, and am in no
mood for pursuing the theme further than is necessary.

“I am large enough, and am not exactly timid, but
I am, or rather was, of an easy, quiet, philosophical
nature. I was wont to submit to almost anything
rather than have a struggle. Struggles I detested.
My wife, Zulieka, was five feet nine inches in height,
and not timid. The roar of the lion, though he was
behind iron bars, would frighten me: she would stride
into his den and conquer him. She was eminently
fitted by nature to be a lion-tamer in a moral menagerie;
and when I read that lions did sometimes rend
their keepers into infinitesimal fragments, I frequently
wished that she would embrace that profession.

“I have described my late wife, Zulieka, and her
husband, myself. I put them in the order in which
they stood before the world.

“My married life was not altogether a summer
morn.

“Dark tempests frequently arose and swept over
our domestic hearth. Zulieka represented, in these
tempests, the thunder, lightning, wind, and hail, and
I the worn, beaten, and drenched traveller on the
dreary moor.

“Zulieka had a passion for control; she felt that
she was born to command, and she did command
everybody who came near her, from the date of
her birth. When she put her foot down, it came
down with most significant emphasis; when she
said anything, she generally intended to be distinctly

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understood as meaning it. Two of her younger sisters
committed suicide to escape her domination.

“I did not willingly propose to this superior being:
she captured me; I was taken by her. She
forced me to propose to her, and compelled me to
ask the consent of her father. When she got her
eye on me and told me to do this I no more dared
to disobey her than I would have dared to face a
hungry tiger. I was her property, she had taken
me, — and I yielded.

“Never shall I forget the expression of satisfaction,
of devout thankfulness, that illuminated the countenance
of that long-suffering father when I asked
for her. `Take her, my son, take her, and we 'll be
happy.' It was a slight departure from the regular
formula, but I did not observe it. I thought him
liberal when he furnished me the means to start in
business, and insisted upon fixing the location himself.

“It was a thousand miles from where he lived, and
so remote from railroads that Zulieka could never
visit the home of her childhood, and there revive the
sweet recollections of the past. It was in the cold,
mountainous North. Was it accident or design?
Alas! what conundrums life continually presents for
solution, and to how many of them do we reply, `I
give it up'!

“My only hope of release was that cholera or
yellow fever or some exceedingly fearful disease
would strike her. It would take cholera or yellow
fever to do for her; her great nature would laugh

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the severe bilious or the more grasping typhoid to
scorn. Cerebro-spinal meningitis might bring her,
but I doubted it. My chief trust was in cholera and
yellow fever. They are sudden in action, and might
surprise her.

“I awaited anxiously the advent of those cheerful
liberators. `But they might take you!' I knew that.
But I had the advantage of her. Life was desirable
to her so long as she had the ecstasy of banging me.
Life was of no account to me so long as she lived to
bang. Therefore, I sighed for the advent of yellow
fever or cholera.

“I did thrice attempt to combat this terrible
woman. My first effort was a failure. The succeeding
ones were likewise. I well remember my first
essay. I attempted to dictate something to her concerning
our child, Hakao. She hurled one look at
me. Oh, that look! It was sufficient. I acknowledged
her power from that moment.

“We had been wedded five years. I longed to be
my own man, — to taste the ecstasy of doing just
once as I should see fit. I determined to do it. `I
am a man,' I said to myself, `and she is a woman.
I will assert my manhood.'

“That very evening, as I took my copote after tea
to go out, Zulieka remarked, —

“`Abou, you will be home by half-past eight.'

“I drew myself up to my full height (five feet
seven), and assuming my sternest look, replied, —

“`Zulieka, I shall not be at home at half-past eight.
It may be half-past nine, half-past ten, half-past eleven,

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or perchance daylight. I shall stay out as long as
I choose, and return when I please. I am a man,
madam, and not a child.'

“Zulieka started up as if to annihilate me, but a
second thought struck her, and she subsided, with the
remark, `Very well, Abou, very well.'

“She was quiet and apparently resigned. My
boldness had quelled her. Her face was quiet but
cold.

“So the ice of a lake is quiet and cold, but there
is death in the chilly waters under it.

“But I had embarked in this crusade and determined
to follow it, let it end where it would, and I
put on my copote with emphasis and left the house.

“That evening I met several of my friends, from
whom I had been for some time estranged by the
severe rule of my spouse. We had a supper, and,
after appropriate beverages, cards and cigars. My
friends were all married men, all possessed of — no,
not of, but by — muscular wives, and they determined
to enjoy the liberty they had stolen.

“I said supper and beverages. The supper was
light; the beverages were not. We drank lustily,
talked first loudly, then huskily, then sillily, and
finally at two o'clock in the morning separated, vowing
to meet at the same place every night. Each
wended his serpentine way to his respective home.
Crooked are the paths of life — at two in the morning.

“I found my way to my home easily enough. It was
a modest cottage in the suburbs, in the centre of a

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very respectable lot of ground. I should have preferred
a house nearer the centre of the town:
Zulieka doted on nature, and so we had a small
garden, with a lawn, clipped trees, worms, bugs, and
things of that sort.

“I found my way to the door, but not through it.
I should always have preferred to carry a night-key,
but Zulieka preferred that I should not. Hence I
did not.

“`Locked out!' muttered I to myself. `Thank
you, my dear. I shall essay the window. Keep me
out of my own house? Ha! ha!' And I laughed
derisively.

“I tried the windows, but they were all securely
locked. The skilful burglar might have essayed those
windows in vain. He would have had his labor for
his pains.

“It was a bitter cold night, and in parting with my
friends I had forgotten my overcoat. There I stood
shivering in the wind, while Zulieka was warm and snug
in bed. Loudly I knocked, — only echo answered.

“All the windows? No! I bethought me of one
which I had not tried. I disliked additions to a
house, but Zulieka preferred them; and therefore
an addition to our house had been built. It was a
laundry, — a one-story structure in the rear of the
kitchen, with one window in it. That window I tried,
and to my infinite joy it was unfastened. `Ha! ha!
From the laundry to the kitchen, from the kitchen
to the dining-room, thence to the sitting-room, and
thence, — ha! ha!'

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“And I pondered as to whether I should smother
her with pillows, as Othello did Desdemona, and I
doubted as to whether I would give her time to say
her prayers. I remember now that I finally resolved
that it would be only fair to give her time to say one
short one.

“Carefully I hoisted the window, and holding it up
with one hand clambered up. Poising myself on the
sill, I sprang gayly, not upon the floor, but into a
barrel of ice-cold water, which had been carefully
placed directly under that window, by whose loving
hands I had no difficulty in determining. With a
howl of anguish I struggled to get out, and in so
doing I tipped the barrel over.

“Soaked thoroughly, and with my teeth chattering
like castanets, I rushed to the door that opened into
the kitchen. It was locked. The window! I would
climb out the aperture through which I came, and
hie me to a hotel. Woe was me! the window had
fallen, and had fastened itself so that I could not open
it. I was a prisoner in a laundry, eight feet square,
the thermometer at the freezing point, wet through
and through, with no prospect of getting out.

“`I will sleep,' I said, and lay down. Alas! the
same kind hand that had locked all the doors, and all
the windows but one, and had placed a barrel of
water under that one, had likewise poured several
barrels on the floor. The floor was a good one and
held water, and there was at least three inches of that
fluid on it, in which I lay down.

“Springing to my feet I leaned for rest against the

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wall. The cold increased in intensity every minute,
and in an hour I was sheathed in an armor of ice, and
was as stiff and incapable of motion as the Cardiff
Giant.

“My tongue was the only member of my body that
was free, and that I employed in hurling anathemas
at Zulieka, who was warm and comfortable in her
bed. If she finally goes to the place to which I consigned
her that night, she will be as much too warm
as I was then too cold.

“Need I continue the harrowing tale? How slowly
dragged along the hours! The clock struck two.
Two! Why, five hours must pass before seven, and
could I endure till then? Three! four! five! I was
gradually congealing. Life was leaving me slowly.
I was not altogether miserable nor wholly discontented
with my fate. Should I die and be compelled
to meet the King of Pandemonium himself I could
not be much worse off. Life with Zulieka had robbed
death of its terrors. As I thought of her I exclaimed,
`O Death, where is thy sting?'

“Morning did come at last. At 7 A. M. Zulieka
arose, the first of the household. She sang her
matin song gayly as she dressed. I yelled like a
Camanche. Cheerfully she came to me. On her
face was an expression of pity and surprise.

“`Why, Abou,' said this female, with her large
eyes wide open, `can this be you? Where, oh where
have you been all night? I waited till very late for
you, and then went to bed, and lay uneasy all night
fearing that something had happened to you. Bless

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me! you are wet through and through, and your
clothes are frozen stiff. Dear me!'

“And she looked as innocent as — I pause for a
simile. A stranger would not have supposed that
she planned the trap into which I had fallen, and was
laughing internally at her success.

“`Take me down,' I replied, `and lay me in front
of the grate.'

“She did so, and as I was thawing out, she put
her arms about my neck and exclaimed, —

“`Dearest, how cruel it was in you to stay all night
away from your Zulieka!'

“I made no reply, — there was none to make.

“I may live long or I may die soon. The rheumatism
I am enjoying at this time, and the cough
which is rending me, I charge to that night. But
long or short I never contested the field with Zulieka
again. I was no match for her. I might as well
have engaged Mr. Heenan in the roped arena, or
attempted to cope with Prof. Agassiz in corals and
things. She was my superior. I was down. Had
I arisen I should have been knocked down again.
I spared her the trouble and myself the humiliation.
I stayed where I was. My only satisfaction was that
before I left her she went back to her father. That
was my revenge for his failing to rescue me from
her.

“My story is done. I do not know whether it
bears upon the question you put to me or not, for
I have really forgotten the question. Had I remembered
the question, I should have varied the

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narrative so that it would have been a complete
answer.

“But you must be an incomprehensible idiot if you
cannot get a moral out of anything I say. Go!”

And Abou relighted his chibouque and composed
himself for a long reverie.