cide was buried next day, being conveyed from the Fifth-avenue
mansion to the Grand Central Depot, and thence to Tarrytown, the place
of interment. The funeral procession consisted merely of the hearse
carrying the body and one carriage. It is a strange, revolting story,
carrying its own warning and moral, besides furnishing an admirable
instance of the unexpected forms in which the great Nemesis manifests
herself.

CHAPTER XVII.

DIVORCE.

_The Chicanery of Divorce Specialists--How Divorce Laws Vary in Certain
States--Sweeping Amendments Necessary--Illustrative Cases_.

A large proportion of the marital infelicity now so alarmingly prevalent
in this country is no doubt caused by the mal-administration of our
divorce laws, and by the demoralizing discord between the legislative
statutes of the various States on the subject of divorce. While in the
middle and a portion of the Eastern and Southern States, the conditions
legally imposed, before a dissolution of marriage can be judicially
obtained, are wholesomely exacting and in accord with the strict
Scriptural standard, in certain of the Eastern, Southern and Western
States the most trifling alleged causes of disagreement or
"incompatibility" are sufficient to secure the law's disseverance of the
marriage tie. The divorce business of certain courts in Illinois, Iowa,
Utah, and some of the territories, enjoy an infamous notoriety all over
the world; while even staid old Connecticut offers a positive reward to
connubial infidelity by at once granting a full or absolute divorce upon
comparatively slight pretexts, leaving both parties legally free to
marry again as their altered fancies may elect.

He who, in New York,

"Reads the in image act with pride
And fancies that the law is on his side,"

may soon be taught, to his dismay, that some backwood's court in the
West has privately given his artful better-half a divorce, and
authorized her to wed at her earlier pleasure with the Lothario whom
he--the cast-off husband--had not even begun to suspect of treachery.
Or, again the lord and master whose preference has wandered from his
lawful wife to some designing female poacher on her rightful domain, may
openly give that wife the fullest justification in law for a New York
divorce, and, after the petition has been granted, go with his paramour
to any State outside the jurisdiction of the State of New York, and
there be legally joined to her for