| | 1 | Author: | Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 | Add | | | Title: | Wakefield  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | 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 circumstances—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 delinquency; 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
upwards
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,
resigned to
her autumnal widowhood—he entered the door one evening, quietly,
as
from a day's absence, and became a loving spouse till death. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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