Divorce, fro7)i a Layman s Point of View.
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DIVORCE, FROM A LAYMAN'S POINT OF VIEW. By Frank Chaffee. WHOM God hath joined together let no man put asunder." If this prayer-book sentiment be true, then one of two conditions must exist: either God has nothing to do with a large proportion of the marriages of these end-of-the-century days, or else the thriving business of the divorce mill must be conducted by other than men. I have lately been mixed up in a divorce case. I was neither plaintiff nor defendant, nor yet that very objectionable party of the third part, the cause of the trouble. I had no desire to be involved in the complication at all. It was simply an instance of having greatness thrust upon me. I had the mis fortune to be the intimate friend of the plain tiff, — a fine fellow indeed. This fine fellow had followed injunctions said to occur in Scripture, and had taken unto himself a wife. After the taking, he had discovered that the lady was not the angel he had taken her for; in fact, that she was an extremely unsuitable and altogether objectionable person. He felt annoyed at the discovery, and confided his woes to me. Now, I had always been a rather oldfashioned person. I had regarded marriage as an entirely serious matter, and had spent many years regarding its approaches and results without ever having gathered suffi cient confidence to attempt a personal ex perience. * I was sure that I had heard something, somewhere, about the parties of the marital combination cleaving unto each other until death doth them part. With these observations and views in my mind, I met my friend's recital of his trou bles with ready sympathy. I said : — "Old chap, this is terrible; you must reason with her." "Reason be blowed," he responded, with emphasis. " She is a bad lot. I shall get rid of her."
"Heavens! " I exclaimed, " you don't mean murder?" "Murder! " he said, as he laughed with some bitterness. " Oh, dear, no; we do these things very simply, nowadays. I shall just divorce her." "But, old man," I said, " she is your wife; and you promised to love and cherish, and all that sort of thing." "Yes," he replied, scornfully, " and I promised to honor, too; but do you expect me to keep such a promise under existing circumstances? Not much; I've instructed my lawyer 'to commence proceedings at once." I thought the matter over, and I made up my mind that my views must be all wrong. I knew there were divorces, of course, but I had never been intimately connected with one before, so I had never made a study of the subject, with its causes and effects. Now, as I pondered, from my friend's point of view, I decided that divorce was a very wise dispensation; that, if the orderings of Provi dence resulted disastrously, it was a very good thing that legal wisdom was compre hensive enough to remedy, readjust, reor ganize; in short, correct the doings of said Providence. I therefore set about formulating new views, and studied the subject in its various bearings. I promised to help my friend in his case, and joined him in his consultations with lawyers, detectives, and others who attend to marital dissolution. It did strike me that a couple of lawyers, a brace of de tectives, a consulting ex-judge, an irate plain tiff, and his fidus Achates, formed rather inadequate odds against one small woman. Then I reasoned that I had heard that one clever woman is usually a match for a dozen men. Justice to her sex compels me to state that, in the case of the sharer of my friend's
