What claim equally strong and equally tender does the other parent establish on his offspring?
What motive does the instinct of his young children find for preferring their father before any other person who may be a familiar object in their daily lives?
They love him--naturally and rightly love him--because he lives in their remembrance (if he is a good man) as the first, the best, the dearest of their friends.
My father was a bad man.

He was my mother's worst enemy; and he was never my friend.
The little that I know of the world tells me that it is not the common lot in life of women to marry the object of their first love.

A sense of duty had compelled my mother to part with the man who had won her heart, in the first days of her maidenhood; and my father had discovered it, after his marriage.

His insane jealousy foully wronged the truest wife, the most long-suffering woman that ever lived.

I have no patience to write of it.