“Never attempted any violence with you?”
“He once seized a paper weight on the library table, very much excited, while I was talking with him.”
“Indeed! he tried to dash your brains out with a paper weight, did he? That is very important evidence, madam, very important.”
“But, sir, I did not say that he——”
“Oh, never mind, madame. Wives are too ready to forgive their husband’s brutality. The fact remains the same, however. This infamous attempt upon your life will be sufficient evidence with the western judge before whom the case will be tried. I congratulate you, madame, upon the prospect of a speedy release from such a monster.”
The woman is delighted, pays the retainer, which is a handsome one, agrees upon the amount to be paid when the divorce is granted, and the parties separate, mutually pleased with each other.
The counsellor now goes to work in earnest. Operations are carried on in some western state. Witnesses are provided who will swear to anything they are paid for; the divorce is duly obtained; the fee is paid; and the madame coolly informs her husband that they are no longer husband and wife.
A year or two ago the Chicago paper contained an account of a man who had gotten one of these patent divorces from his wife. Not caring to part from her just then, but wishing to do so when he pleased, he locked the papers up in his desk, and said nothing to her about the matter, and for ten years she lived with him as his mistress, in total ignorance of her true relations to him. At last becoming tired of her, he produced the decree of divorce and left her.
All sorts of people seek the assistance of the divorce lawyers to free them from their matrimonial ties. Extravagant and reckless wives of men who are not able to meet their demands for money; dissolute actresses, who wish to break up an old alliance in order to form a new one; married women who have become infatuated with some scamp they have met at the theatre matinee, or through the medium of a personal; married men who are tired of their wives and desire to be united to a new partner; lovers of married women, who come to engage fabricated testimony and surreptitious divorce for the frail creatures whose virtue is still too cowardly to dare the more honest sin; all who, with or without protest, seek a release from the married bond. For each and all the divorce lawyer has a ready ear and an encouraging word. Nothing is easier than to obtain a divorce, he assures them. If the cause assigned by them is insufficient, it can be made strong enough; if evidence is lacking, it can be obtained—manufactured, if necessary. He receives a retainer from each, and all, and sends them away with the happy consciousness that their matrimonial troubles will soon be over.