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 The Law of the Land.

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acted, we have diminished the number of tures of olden times, and we may outgrow the modes of legal killing, we have tried to hu- hanging, electrocuting, garroting and guilmanize the punishment, if such a thing be lotining of the present. possible, we have forever got rid of the tor- |

THE LAW OF THE LAND. XII. WHEN A MAN MARRIES. BY WILLIAM ARCH. McCbEAN. IT has been said of old, Needles and pins, needles and pins. When a man marries, his trouble begins.

The question asks itself, what under the sun have needles and pins to do with trou ble after marriage, as far as man is con cerned? Contrast the before and after, the time when he had always pinned on a but ton where he should have sewed one on, and where he could have deftly made use of a few dozen pins if he had had a woman's intuition in the use of them, he had awk wardly labored with the needle. Then later, the time when he gladly gave way to the skill of some one else to do the pinning and sewing. His troubles in this direction ought, to be at an end, instead of beginning, and there ought to be as much salvation in this before and after, as in the various other panaceas, for instance, for baldness. Of course a knowledge of the true use of needles and pins may mean a new kind of trouble, beginning with the paying of bills for all the kinds of uses they may be put to. If this is what the old saw means, the put ting aside of old habits and the learning of new ones with such pointed subjects may cies possibly of trouble. mean the developing of a new spe- i It makes no odds how many wives a man may have, as far as needles and pins are concerned, man never grows familiar enough

with them in the make-up of his wife so as not to be scratched by every chance ac quaintance on his part. Of course this is trouble enough of its own kind, yet, in spite of this fact, we have to learn of the case where man's awkwardness, and ignorance of his wife's make-up of pins and needles, have ever led to trouble from a legal point of view. A divorce for making life burden some from such a cause is a thing of the future. Needles and pins maybe only for rhythm, so that it may be said that there arc many reasons for trouble in the matter of marriage beside these household necessities. It may be the marriage was on the wrong day of the week, Friday, or in the wrong month of the year, May. Or it may be married in red, you'd better be dead. Or Miss Long may have married Mr. Liver, and hence it must mean that change the name and not the letter, change for worse and not for bet ter. It must be confessed that a certain amount of trouble usually gives an artistic and romantic flavor to courtship and mar riage, which might be dull and tasteless if from start to finish it was one hot, blazing, blistering, sunshiny picnic. There is no excuse for trouble when it comes to marriage unless it is manufac tured by disinterested third persons out of a spirit of loving-kindness, and it is a poor