"Speak out, Sir!" said the magistrate, "I am ready to hear you."
"Your worship, I am a married man," began the applicant—compressing his lips to keep down a rebellious sigh, which thereupon forced its way through his nostrils—rushing-ly indignant at his attempt to confine it—"I am a married man, your worship!"
"Well, Sir, and what of that?" said his worship.—"So much the better for you, if you have a good wife."
"Ah, Sir!" ejaculated the poor man, "I have been married eighteen years—and eighteen years of unmixed misery they have been to me! I thought to have lived in paradise, as it were; but I could not have been more miserable if I had lived in—the other place!"
He paused—sighed again—and then, taking out a ragged pocket handkerchief, he stood silently wiping his forehead until the magistrate roused him from his reverie by saying, "My good friend, I am very sorry for you, but what would you have me do?"
"I don't know, Sir," he replied, despondingly, "but I was told I could get some relief by applying here."
"If you wish to get divorced, I cannot do that for you," rejoined his worship:—"we should have little time for any thing else, I fear, if we could divorce all the unhappy couples who apply to us!"
"I have no doubt of it," said the man—"no doubt in the world of it! But, your worship, I don't wish to put my wife away so as to disgrace her. I would allow her a comfortable maintenance, if she would only leave me in peace."
"That you must agree upon between yourselves," observed the magistrate—"I cannot assist you in the negotiation, nor can I interfere at all between you, unless she has committed some breach of the peace—Has she struck you? or are you afraid she should attempt to take away your life?"
"I don't know whether she means to take away my life, or not," replied he, "but she is eternally beating me whenever she is tipsy; and that is almost every day!"