In America, the most preposterous ideas find partisans—and subscribers.
Thus, I saw in one of the most widely read American newspapers the announcement of a company recently founded, with a capital of 500,000 dollars, called:
"Matrimonial Infidelity Insurance Company."
The prospectus of this enterprise states its object and advantages with categorical clearness. Each sufferer, upon presenting proof, is to receive from the company a cheque as a sort of court-plaster to patch up his lacerated feelings. I would not advise you to put a penny in the concern. I have no confidence in the dividends of an enterprise which might some day have to pay a fabulous sum to a Mormon, whose twenty or thirty wives had taken it into their heads to desert in a batch.
The "Consoler" would be a good name for this company of insurance against the risks of marriage.
I also note the existence of a Harmony Association, the object of which is to examine men and women about to marry, and to give them Mr. Punch's advice, or to stamp the men warranted to wear and the women warranted to wash. No more frauds possible. Perhaps the association may presently undertake to furnish the certificate of the decease of the future mother-in-law.
As a specimen of small and harmless eccentricities, I extract the following from an American paper:
"Mrs. Margaret R., of New York, had her leg amputated the other day, and insisted upon its having Christian burial in her family lot in Calvary Cemetery. A death certificate was made out by the doctor, setting forth that the leg had died of amputation at the Chambers Street Hospital, November 29th, 1887; that it was fifty years old, married, and part mother of a family. The leg was buried with all due ceremony."