Joint Letters in Evidence.
Letters were offered in evidence which were alleged to have come from Mrs. McDonald to women friends. Some of these are said to have been signed Mrs. J. Moysant, and to have been partly in the handwriting of Mrs. McDonald and partly in the handwriting of Moysant. These letters are said to have shown that Mrs. McDonald had a knowledge of the divorce suit pending against her.
An attempt was also made to prove that Mrs. McDonald was deeded certain property by McDonald in connection with the divorce proceedings, and that she negotiated and disposed of that property in part, thus, acquiescing in the terms of possession and establishing the legality of the divorce.
Mrs. Mary McDonald, now a white-haired woman upward of sixty, declares that she has brought suit to establish her legal status as the widow of "Mike" McDonald for the sake of her two sons, Guy and Cassius, for whom she desires to clear her name of any stain. Her petition for an injunction restraining the trustees of the estate from paying to Mrs. Dora McDonald any money as dower rights was heard by Judge Barnes on November 18.
The contest was long and bitter between the attorneys. Crimination and recrimination flew thick and fast. In the end, however, Judge Barnes decided that the divorce of Mike McDonald from Mary Noonan McDonald was legal, that the law could not go back of the records, and that, therefore, Mary Noonan McDonald was not entitled to any share of the McDonald estate.
But the sordid contest over the ill-gotten money of the gambling king was not yet at end. Dora McDonald failed to pay her attorney's fees, and the estate was again brought into the courts on an injunction obtained by James Hamilton Lewis, who threatens to throw the estate into involuntary bankruptcy.
Thus the long battle over tainted gain goes on. Let those who think gambling an easy way to wealth and power read aright the lesson of the life of Mike McDonald; one continual tissue of law-breaking, imprisonment, divorce, scandal upon scandal, murder, adultery, leaving a name covered over and associated with all vileness, all the mud and slime of society, to go down to the grave with a broken heart. Is that an alluring spectacle? Is such a life worth living? Who would emulate it?
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