'If,' said the unspeakable Bashmead, severely, three minutes later, 'you cannot behave like a gentleman, Mr. Jobson, wouldn't it be as well if you went?'
'Good-bye, Mr. Jobson,' said Muriel. Her manner would have been noticeably chilly in a refrigerator. Jobson left.
'A man,' said Bashmead, judicially, 'who could find anything to laugh at in a beautiful story like 'Stolen Lips' is capable of anything.'
'Yes, isn't he?' said Muriel.
'He is outside the pale; unworthy to associate with his fellow-man. A fit companion for the brutes that perish. In fine, a worm!'
'Yes, isn't he?' said Muriel.
It is a painful story. I have only to add that a wedding was arranged and shortly took place between Rupert Alexander Bashmead and Muriel, only daughter of the late Francis Prendergast; that the bride, who was given away by her uncle, Sir Theophilus Prendergast, looked charming in mousseline de soie, with heliotrope aiguillettes; and that the presents were both numerous and costly. As for George Jobson, shortly before the wedding he joined an exploring expedition to darkest Clapham, and, as he never came back, it is only too probable that he fell a victim to the bores and other beasts which infest that desolate region. Somewhere out in that trackless desert, the great Common, from which so few travellers return, lies a rapidly bleaching skeleton. In happier days that skeleton was Jobson.
ALL ABOUT THE PASTIME OF DIVORCE
Divorce, which is derived from the Latin word
Divorce, in its earliest stages, was a crude thing. Prehistoric Man conducted his divorces, as he did his marriages, with the fat end of a stone bludgeon. The only way in which the divorce ceremony differed from the marriage ceremony was that in the former case the plaintiff hit harder.
The idea of the remarriage of a
It was under the Ancient Romans that Divorce, considered as a fine art, reached its highest point. The astute husbands and wives of that epoch saw their way to doing themselves a bit of good by means of it. There is no doubt that the Romans gave divorce-presents, probably in the shape of fish-slices, egg-holders, plate-warmers and all those things which, when taken round the corner to the local pawnbroker (/avusicidus/), could be exchanged for solid and satisfactory cash (/denarii/). The Ancient Roman, therefore, got his unfortunate friends as it were, coming and going, and may be said to have known a bit.
In modern times Divorce varies greatly according to the country in which it takes place. In England for instance, it is so rare that, when it happens, the newspapers devote most of their middle page to a report of the proceedings. But as a matter of fact, divorce in England is mostly confined to the theatre. If the first act of an English play is laid either in the morning-room of Maltravers Park or in the drawing-room of Lady Beevor's town-house in Grosvenor Square, you can he pretty sure that somebody's divorce is going to be the motive of it.
It is assumed — in England, at any rate — that the United States leads the world in the matter of divorce: and it will probably be a severe blow to our patriots to learn that this is not the case. Even at the risk of inflaming Messrs. Goodwin, Fitzsimmons, and Hopper to renewed efforts, we must state the truth — that Japan makes America look like a timid novice in this particular branch of industry. In Japan there are twenty-two divorces per thousand inhabitants, while in the United States there are a mere eight per thousand. It is but a melancholy consolation that the next competitor in order, Switzerland, only scores three.
This is the sort of revelation which takes all the heart out of an energetic and persevering people. The reason is not far to seek. It lies in the fact that, while certain States are doing all that can be expected of them — we take off our hat to Washington, where there are eleven separate and distinct grounds for divorce — others are simply loafing. In South Carolina, for instance, divorce is actually not permitted, and in many states it cannot he obtained for such perfectly adequate causes as teasing the Siberian eel-spaniel, omitting to bring home candy, putting ice in the claret, wearing a straw-hat before June the fifteenth, reading the novels of Harold Bell Wright, using a last season's automobile, revoking at Bridge, and appearing in public in tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles. Naturally the Japanese, a race which pulls together as one man in every patriotic movement, is way ahead of the United States.
But, even under existing conditions, with every obstacle placed in the way of divorce, it is astonishing that it is not more common. When we look about us and see how uniformly repulsive our fellow human-beings are, it seems extraordinary that only eight out of every thousand of them take the sensible course of breaking away from one another forever. The reason is that, in this country, the expense of divorce is so great. The male aspirant is faced with the prospect of having to part not only from his wife, which he could endure cheerfully, but from a considerable portion of his hard-earned doubloons in the shape of alimony. Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is only found in men who are giving away somebody else's money. It is getting so that divorce, instead of being the pastime of the people, has degenerated into a relaxation for the idle rich.
Alimony in Japan is a mere matter of
AUBREY'S ARRESTED INDIVIDUALITY
What soured existence for Aubrey Devine was the fact that his wife was, in one important matter, unreasonable. She declined to go before the world as the bearer of his name. Her argument was two-fold. In the first place she claimed that, as Adelaide Brewster Moggs, she was already carrying a sufficient weight of name for
