SALE OF A WIFE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1332, 3 September 1886, Page 2

SALE OF A WIFE.

1 J ) One hundred dollars la a very low Serure on a wife, and ia particularly ac when the ssdd commodity la young. i good-looking, and buxom. But each e transaction actually took place lately in Utah, and the facts of the case serve to show how little sanctity the average Mormon attaches to the holy Institution of marriage. A young Scotch lass recently went to Utih to visit her father whc lived there. Bat upon arriving there she found that he was dead, and that aba was a stranger in a strange land. As the unfortunate girl was in needy circumstances, she sought employment as a household servant in the family of a Mormon. She had not been long In this service when her youth and beauty attracted her employer’s attention, and be offered to make her his wife. She declined his offer, but he threatened to coerce her, and dually she complied with his desire through fear and became his wife Shortly afterwards she communicated with an uncle residing in the East

the condition in which she had been placed, and he at once came to her. He remonstrated with the girl’s Mormon husband, and demanded that she be restored to her friends; bat he stubbornly declined to surrender her. As the senti-

ment of the community was decidedly Mormon, the uncle feared to appeal to the law, lest he should excite the wrath of the Mormons and bring down summary vengeance on his own head. It then occurred to him that the use of money might enable him to accomplish his purpose, and so he offered the Mormon lOOdol for his young wife. The fellow greedily accepted the bargain, and in the presence of two eye witnesses delivered his wife to her nnele, and formal'y relinquished all his right, title, and interest in and to her— American letter in Otago Daily Times,