Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/271



CURRENT TOPICS. QUIET DIVORCES. — It is very satisfactory to note that the Supreme Court of Colorado, in People v. McCabe (32 Рaс Rep. 280), have held that it is not lawful for an attorney-at-law to advertise " divorces obtained quietly, good everywhere." This was a proceeding against an attorney to disbar him; and the court, in consideration of his plea that he did not know it was wrong, and his pledge not to do so any more, simply suspended him from practice for six months. This is a wholesome example. Divorces ought not to be obtained quietly. Such actions ought to be well heralded, especially to the defend ant. Experience has unfortunately demonstrated . that " divorces obtained quietly " are not " good everywhere," and that they lead to very unpleasant complications, and sometimes to the State-prison. In one sad case in the State of New York, where the absent husband, relying on the " quiet divorce" which his wife had obtained, and which he had dis covered, and was willing to accept, and marrying again, found himself in prison for bigamy! Where easy and quiet divorce, in connection with the salu brity of the climate, is recommended from the bench as an inducement for immigration, as it re cently was in South Dakota, the judges are in danger of becoming unintentionally particeps criminis. Before judges suspend lawyers for making a royal road to divorce, in some States at least they should suspend themselves; as for example in Texas' Kansas, Montana, Michigan, and Nevada, where they grant an absolute divorce for a single accusation of unchastity! We speak of respectable courts, and not of courts which are capable of granting divorces for any one of a half-hundred ridiculously trivial causes cited in Mr. Carroll D. Wright's statistics. It would not be singular that a lawyer should not think it wrong to advertise "quiet divorce" in a community where the courts grant absolute divorce because a husband does not wash himself, or keeps his wife awake by talking, or refused to. cut his toenails, or abused her for having two teeth pulled, or never offered to take her riding, or scolded her for groaning in labor, or where the wife would not cook or sew on buttons, or struck the husband with her bustle, or shot an old sweetheart, or would not

walk with her husband on Sunday. It would seem quite proper to keep such divorces as " quiet " as possible. PRIZE-FIGHTING. — One of the leading Boston newspapers recently defended its practice of pub lishing elaborate accounts of prize-fights on the ground that everybody wants to read them, — even many of the soberest and order-loving part of the community, including professional men. This is true, but it is no reason. The same class read the accounts of rapes, lynchings, seductions, murders, and official executions; but these are unhealthy read ing. We ourself always read the accounts of the prize-fights, and formerly even had an unholy desire, stimulated by these details, to witness a sluggingmatch; but we should be glad to relinquish this bad curiosity for the sake of ridding the public prints of such matters, just as we should be willing to give up our " little wine now and then," and eke our lagerbier, if prohibition could be effectuated. So, we dare say, it is with respect to most of the respectable classes. Prize-fighting is a disgusting and brutal business. We inherited it from England, from whom we inherited most of our bad ways : but it seems to have fallen into comparative disrepute or disuse there, while here it is rampant. What a matter of reflec tion for thinking men that an ignorant, vulgar, loaferish, human kangaroo from the antipodes should come to this country, and in nine minutes should make $40,000! — ten years' salary of the Chief-Justice of the United States : more than any but a very few lawyers save in a lifetime; as much probably as the sainted Phillips Brooks left; the equivalent of the average annual salaries of eighty Methodist clergy men, or those of a dozen country college professors : more than has often been cleared by the beneficent work of a literary lifetime; enough to give a liberal education to forty poor young men, to build a hospi tal, a library, a reform school, to erect ten mission churches, or to fit out several missions to the heathen! The stupid, low-browed brute who won, it is said, has been offered $1,ooo a week to go on the stage! How many actors of genius are there who make so much. or how many men in any occupation depending mainly on intellect? It is not a great many years since New York City sent an ex-prize-fighter to