wife is held to be, in itself, a sufficient cause for pronouncing a
decree in favour of the husband, a kind, though constantly unfaithful
husband, is protected from divorce, and only punished by separation
from the wife he has wronged. It is necessary for a man to add either
cruelty or desertion to his other offence, in order that his wife
may obtain from the laws of her country the opportunity of marrying
someone else. But the wit of woman has proved equal to the emergency.
Nowhere, it may be safely stated, have more tales of purely
imaginative atrocity been listened to with greater attention, or with
more favourable results, than in the Divorce Court. On an incautious
handshake a sprained wrist and an arm bruised into all the colours of
the rainbow have been not infrequently grafted. A British imprecation,
and a banged door, have often become floods of invective and a
knock-down blow; and a molehill of a pinch has, under favourable
cultivation, been developed into a mountain of ill-treatment, on the
top of which a victorious wife has in the end, triumphantly planted
the banner of freedom.

[Illustration]

Hence the Divorce Court, after some years of suspicion, has gradually
come to be looked upon as one of the sacred institutions of
the country. And, speaking generally, those who make use of its
facilities, however much certain of the more strait-laced may frown,
are considered by society at large to have done a thing which is
surprisingly right and often enviable. The result at any rate is that
the number of the divorced increases year by year, and that a lady
whose failings have been established against her by a judicial decree,
may be quite sure of a hand of ardent sympathisers of both sexes,
amongst whom she can hold her head as high as her inclination prompts