tting the divorce aside, but in bringing the lady and her paramour to
condign punishment. His efforts, however, proved perfectly impotent. The
lawyer, resident at the court, remembered nothing of the evidence, and
the court remembered the case only so far as that it was perfectly
regular and satisfactory.

Thus it will be seen that

"Domestic happiness,
That only bliss of Paradise which has survived the fall,"

when once perverted by cunning treachery like this, leaves the betrayed
with little chance to cover its poor grave with the ostentatious
monument of legal justice.

There are some aspects of this divorce specialist business which would
be amusing did they not furnish such a cloak and encouragement to
depravity and licentiousness. The following narrative of actual facts
illustrates a phase of the kept-mistress ethics, and shows how the
Western bogus divorce operates in lowering the tone of society and in
sapping the foundations of morality:

A few years since a young stock broker of this city, spent his summer
vacation in the sylvan glades of the country surrounding Lake Champlain.
He possessed an appreciative eye for feminine beauty, and a soul burning
for adventure. Like most men of this type, he was not apt to be
disturbed by qualms of conscience where the gratification of his
passions was concerned. In an evil hour, he made the acquaintance of a
handsome Vermont girl, just merging upon the full meridian of
exceptionally voluptuous charms. Without any special claim to mental
endowments, Sadie F----- was a superb animal. Her, our frisky broker
saw, and wooed. The girl fell madly in love with him, and, before long,
ceased to be a virgin of the vale. Lothario was much attached to her,
and by his persuasions and ornate representations of city life, backed
by aureate promises, she was induced to fly from her once happy rural
home and to live with her seducer in this city. He began by treating her
well, placing her in handsome apartments in a boarding house on the west
side, and for nearly a year the ardor of his attachment knew no
abatement. Gradually, however, the affection on his side began to wane.
She awoke from her delusive dream to the consciousness that she was
alone in a great city without friends, money, or virtue. Whither could
she flee? She could not return to her country home to look into the
sorrowful depths of her mother's tender eye, or face the stings and
sneers of the people of he