DIVORCE CASES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1550, 5 September 1905, Page 2

DIVORCE CASES.

[Auckland Observer, j

The worst and most absurd marriageß are precisely those which are made by people into whose heads the subject of separation or divoroe as a remedy never enters. The determining faotor in such oases is either frivolity or stupidity, and, if the law were such that quarrels in the family oircle were punishable by rack and gallows, the frivolous and the stupid marriages would still happen, and still prove disastrous. In the long list of divorce cases that occupied the Supreme Court at its session now drawing to a close, there ore several that quito amply bear out the contention just stated. But one in particular supplies so remarkable an instance of folly, as differentiated from wilfnlness, that it will bear detailing. The foots of the case were not elicited in the Court with all details and particulars, but sufficient was adduced to ensure its identification with what follows here. On a certain stud farm not many miles from Auckland, a young girl was employed as a domestic servant. She had been known from infancy by a man who kept a training stable in the vicinity, and this individual paid her so much unweloome attention that at last it became noticeable. Amongst others who observed the persecution wbb a felloe-servant of the girl, a groom, and this young fellow suggested that he should scats away the intruder by protending to be the girl's husband. The girl agreed, the sobeme was applied, the bogie man was banished, and all might have been well if the girl had been satisfied. But tho story of the “ marriage ” got qkmad, aod the girl, When taxed by her mistress, first confirmed the rumor and then denied it. The groom behaved in a similar way, and the mistress suggested that tho best way ont of the scyape was far the young couple to gc| m arr ied in reality. They agreed, though there does not appear to have been

a particle cf love on either side, and were married accordingly. Tho girl and her husband wont up-country, saw her parents, and arranged to eogage in farming; tho husband returned to Auckland on the plea that be had to settle up somo business, and, virtually, from that day to this no sign or trs.ee of him has ever been discovered. Now this young couple had no mere thought in their heads at the time about the law of divorce than they had about

, the fourth dimension ; if they made that i foolish matoh because they knew the law , provided a way out when it suited them, i they were equally competent to have left the business alone, because there was no reason, other than a mere whim, why they should marry. They would have committed the same, silly, thoughless act whatever the nature of the law might have been, and it was, as a matter of fact, much less elastic than it is now. But having committed that folly—five years ago—and haviDg paid for it in such bitter coinage, is it not well for the girl that the law does provide her with a means of oscaps from it at last ? The world penalises its fools, and it is right that folly should be checked, sio'ce it hurts everybody it touches, but there is a limit to vengeance even when it is directed against stupidity, and the limit was surely reached in this girl’s qase when i Bhe had been bound to a man for five years who is best a myti, aucl possibly : something much worse. I