ailway company for 10,000 dols., being the value set by himself on his
wife's leg, and ten days afterwards accepted 5,000 dols. as a compromise,
and withdrew the suit The Wheelwrights left Utica in June, 1870, and in
the following August the dutiful Mrs. Wheelwright, who now called herself
Mrs. Thomas, broke her other leg in a hole in the platform of the railway
station at Pittsburg. Again her husband sued the railway company for
15,000 dols., and compromised for 6,500 dols. The leg was mended
successfully, and in July, 1871, we find the Thomases, now passing under
the name of Mr. and Mrs. Smiley, at Cincinnati, where Mr. Smiley, after
long searching, discovered a piece of ragged and uneven sidewalk, upon
which his wife made a point of falling and breaking her right arm. This
time the city was sued for 15,000 dols., and Mr. Smiley proved that his
wife was a school teacher by profession, and that the breaking of her arm
rendered it impossible for her to teach, for there as on that she could
not wield a rod or even a slipper. The city paid the 15,000 dols. and
the Smileys, having by honest industry thus made 26,500 dols., removed to
Chicago, and entered their names on the hotel register as Mr. and Mrs.
McGinnis, of Portland, Me. On the second day after their arrival at the
hotel, Mr. McGinnis found an eligible place on the piazza for Mrs.
McGinnis to break another leg, which that excellent woman promptly did.
The usual suit of 15,000 dols. was brought, and the hotel-keeper, fearing
that the notoriety of the suit would injure his hotel, was glad to
compromise by paying 8,000 dols. By this time, it is understood, Mrs.
McGinnis was willing to retire from business, but her husband had set his
heart on making 50,000 dols., and like a good wife she consented to break
some more bones. It should be said that there was very little pain
attending a fracture of any one of the lady's bones, and that she did not
in the least mind the monotony of lying in bed while the broken bones
knitted themselves together. There can, therefore, be no charge of
cruelty brought against her husband. Indeed, she herself entered with a
hearty goodwill into the scheme of making a living with her bones, and
would go out to break a leg with as much cheerfulness as if she was going
to a theatre. In March, 1872, Mrs. Wilkins--hitherto known as Mr.
McGinnis--walked into an open trench in a street in St. Louis and broke
another leg. This time the suit