Page:Dr. Heidegger's experiment. The birthmark, Ethan Brand, Wakefield, Drowne's wooden image, The ambitious guest, The great stone face, The gray champion.djvu/107

 IN some old magazine or newspaper, I recollect a story, told as truth, of a man let us call him Wakefield-who absented himself for a long time from his wife. The fact thus abstractedly stated is not very uncommon, nor without a proper distinction of circum stances to be condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record of marital delin quency; and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends, and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt up wards of twenty years. During that period, he beheld his home every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so great a gap in ,his matrimonial felicity when his death was reckoned certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory, and his wife, long, long ago

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