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JACK LONDON WINS IN BATTLE FOR A BRIDE.

Messenger-boys, Telephones, Korean Valet, Political Influence, Pleadings, Many Explanations, and a Special Dispensation Finally Won a Marriage License on Sunday for Jack London.

And then next day the Hearst reporters discovered that this marriage was not legal; Jack was liable to three years in jail; so, as a matter of precaution, he was going to be married in every state in the Union! All over the country this story was telegraphed; such trifling with a sacred institution displeased certain women's clubs in Iowa, which canceled their engagements to hear Jack London lecture! Returning to his home after these excitements, I find Jack being interviewed by the "Oakland Herald."

That report was all the imagination of the Chicago reporters who were scooped on the wedding story. There was nothing in that at all.

Later on Jack took another trip to the East, and delivered his famous address, "Revolution," which you may find in his volume "Revolution and Other Essays." He is describing the feelings of a Colorado workingman under the régime of the militia general, Sherman Bell, whose orders were, "To hell with the Constitution." Says London:

Nor does the Constitution of the United States appear so glorious and constitutional to the workingman who has experienced a bull pen or been unconstitutionally deported from Colorado. Nor are this particular workingman's hurt feelings soothed by reading in the newspapers that both the bull pen and the deportation were preeminently just, legal, and constitutional. "To hell, then, with the Constitution," says he, and another revolutionist has been made—by the capitalist class.

And next morning here comes the "New York Times," not quite saying that Jack said "To hell with the Constitution," but carefully implying it; which dishonesty, of course, takes wings, and from one end of the country to the other Americans read that Jack London has said, "To hell with the Constitution." Jack is on his way home, and cannot answer; here am I, as vice-president of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, under whose auspices the meeting had been held, writing to the "Times" to call attention to the injustice it has done to a great American novelist. The "Times" puts my letter under the title: