chanics,
infatuatedly following out the first consequences of a matinee at the
theatre, and a "personal" in the daily newspaper. They may be the
worthless husbands of unsuspecting faithful wives, who, by sickness, or
some other unwitting provocation, have turned the unstable husband's
mind to dreams of new connubial pastures and the advertising divorcist.
They may be the "lovers" of married women, who come to engage fabricated
testimony and surreptitious unmarriage for the frail creatures whose
virtue is still too cowardly to dare the more honest sin. They are _not_
the wronged partners of marriage, who, by the mysterious chastising
providence of outraged hearts and homes are compelled, in bitterest
agony of soul to invoke justice of the law for the honor based upon
right and religion. The manufacture of a case of the contrabandists of
divorce is often such a marvel of unscrupulous audacity, that its very
lawlessness constitutes in itself a kind of legal security.

Another question naturally arises: What are such divorces worth? We
reply that the whole business is unblushing fraud upon the dupes who are
entrapped into patronizing the business. Not one of those divorces has
ever yet held good when ultimately contested in open court, by the
parties against whom they have been secretly obtained. Many of them,
however--perhaps thousands!--have served the whole purpose of those
purchasing them, because the husbands or wives so cruelly wronged have
either lacked the means, or the heart to take public legal measures for
exposing the fraud, and setting the divorce aside. How is the poor
clerk, or mechanic, the invalid or unfriended wife, to raise hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of dollars necessary for such a purpose?

It seldom happens that the so-called divorce specialist applies to any
of the courts in the States of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
Maryland or South Carolina, because in those States the testimony given
in divorce proceedings becomes part and parcel of the written court
record. The names, residences, and occupations of the witnesses, and all
the testimony they offer, is carefully taken down by the referee, and
reported upon by him to the court. The judge takes all the papers, and
grants the decree or refuses it, upon the report and the testimony, and
the record is perpetually on file, and accessible. Consequently when a
husband or wife unexpectedly finds that their hymeneal bonds are
severed, they have th