- end_line
- 2879
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 2846
- text
- woman's-rights women, the injured wife began a suit, and, thanks to able
counsel and accommodating testimony, succeeded in such a way, as not
only to recover custody of the child, but to get such a settlement
awarded upon a separation, as to make penniless the unfortunate man (so
he averred), besides, through the legal sympathy she enlisted, effecting
a judicial blasting of his private reputation. What made it yet more
lamentable was, that the unfortunate man, thinking that, before the
court, his wisest plan, as well as the most Christian besides, being, as
he deemed, not at variance with the truth of the matter, would be to put
forth the plea of the mental derangement of Goneril, which done, he
could, with less of mortification to himself, and odium to her, reveal
in self-defense those eccentricities which had led to his retirement
from the joys of wedlock, had much ado in the end to prevent this charge
of derangement from fatally recoiling upon himself--especially, when,
among other things, he alleged her mysterious teachings. In vain did his
counsel, striving to make out the derangement to be where, in fact, if
anywhere, it was, urge that, to hold otherwise, to hold that such a
being as Goneril was sane, this was constructively a libel upon
womankind. Libel be it. And all ended by the unfortunate man's
subsequently getting wind of Goneril's intention to procure him to be
permanently committed for a lunatic. Upon which he fled, and was now an
innocent outcast, wandering forlorn in the great valley of the
Mississippi, with a weed on his hat for the loss of his Goneril; for he
had lately seen by the papers that she was dead, and thought it but
proper to comply with the prescribed form of mourning in such cases. For
some days past he had been trying to get money enough to return to his
child, and was but now started with inadequate funds.
Now all of this, from the beginning, the good merchant could not but
consider rather hard for the unfortunate man.
- title
- Chunk 3