ponge-cake and a plain common garden sponge, why should he be forced
forevermore to court dyspepsia on her account? I fail to see either
justice or reason in this, though as to the method of divorce I
cannot agree with those who claim that as the man has married the
woman by hitting her with a club, as I have already shown, the proper
method of divorce is for the woman to return the blow with a
rolling-pin. The proper way to do is for the husband to be permitted
to return the girl to her parents as not up to the specifications, or
if she have no parents to dispose of her at the best bargain possible
to one of his neighbors who may happen to be in need of a girl of that
sort at that particular time.... But these Newport separations, as I
believe they are called, are apt to prove embarrassing, particularly
when the divorcees all happen to be present at the same dinner-table.
A lady whose hostess is the wife of her former husband, finding
herself sitting opposite the divorced wife of her present husband, who
has at one time or another been married to two or three other ladies
at the board, is not likely to be able to comport herself with that
degree of _savoir faire_ that is the ear-mark of the refined....

As for the mother-in-law, for certain reasons of a private nature I
was not going to speak of her in these memoirs, but after mature
reflection upon the subject I deem it my duty to posterity to say
that....

SOME LONG-FELT WANTS

I have often wished that in my youth I had studied science a little
more carefully. It is growing very obvious to me the longer I live
that there are a number of little things that we need in this world to
make life more comfortable. It does not seem to me beyond reason to
think that by the use of a proper mechanism these thunderbolts that
play about the heavens can be made to do errands for us. It angers me
to see so much light going to waste in the heavens from the flash of
the lightning, when it might be stored up for use instead of these
intolerable axle-grease dips that we are forced to use to light us on
our way to bed. I don't see why some one cannot entrap one of these
bolts on a wire, just as we catch a rat in a trap, and keep it running
round and round a loop, giving out its light until it is exhausted....
It would be pleasant, too, to have a kind of carriage that would go of
its own power. I cannot quite reason the thing out, but I believe that
the time will come when there wil