Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/42

 MARK TWAIN

please her; affectionate young husbands do such things. When Shelley ran away with another girl, by and by, this girl persuaded him to pour the price of many carriages and many horses down the bottomless well of her father s debts, but this im partial judge finds no fault with that. Once she appeals to Shelley to raise money necessarily by borrowing, there was no other way to pay her father s debts with at a time when Shelley was in danger of being arrested and imprisoned for his own debts; yet the good judge finds no fault with her even for this.

First and last, Shelley emptied into that rapacious mendicant s lap a sum which cost him for he borrowed it at ruinous rates from eighty to one hundred thousand dollars. But it was Mary God win s papa, the supplications were often sent through Mary, the good judge is Mary s strenuous friend, so Mary gets no censures. On the Continent Mary rode in her private carriage, built, as Shelley boasts, &quot;by one of the best makers in Bond Street,&quot; yet the good judge makes not even a passing comment on this iniquity. Let us throw out Count No. i against Harriet Shelley as being far-fetched and frivolous.

Shelley s happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, secondly, because Harriet s studies &quot;had dwindled away to nothing, Bysshe had ceased to express any interest in them.&quot; At what time was this? It was when Harriet &quot;had fully recovered from the fatigue of her first effort of maternity,. . . and was now in full force, vigor, and effect.&quot; Very well, the baby was born two days

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