Aunt Sarah always had intellectual curiosity: she had left the old Baptist church in her girlhood to join a joy cult; she had followed with her mental telescope the scintillating trajectory of William James’s flight through the philosophic heavens of America; she had known about eugenics long before the newspapers had made the subject popular knowledge, and she had played in the musty, rickety garret of occultism at a time when the most daring minds in science were sitting tight in the seats of the scornful. But there was a shadow in the sunlight of Aunt Sarah’s mental advancement, an opaque spot in the crystal of her mysticism, an unresolved seventh in the harmony of her simple life in the Wisconsin backwoods—
She was married.
She was married to Uncle John!
At six o’clock in the evening of June 1, 1915, Aunt Sarah glanced up from reading Bennett’s “Folk Ways and Mores” as Uncle John entered the kitchen door. Uncle John had just come from performing the vespertime chores.
“Pa, we shall have to get a divorce!” said Aunt Sarah, shutting Bennett with determination. “Marriage is a worn-out convention; it is only one of the thousand foolish folk ways that hinder the advancement of science among the masses.”
“Very well, ma.”
“We will get a divorce.”
“I quite agree, ma.”
“Don’t attempt logic with me, John. I said that we would get a divorce.”
Uncle John shook his head. “When will it be?” he asked.