PART 2

RENO TRAGEDIES


Mrs. Smith did her little six months in Reno and the world's sympathy
was with her, and the recording angel, I dare say, winked solemnly to
himself and said: "Another domestic tragedy!"....

It is certainly a tragedy to be told outright by the husband one has
borne children for and has been a good wife to, and has loved and
cherished for the best part of one's life, to "cash in one's old face
and make room in his heart and home for a younger and more fair." This
was the case, apparently, with the Smiths.

And yet during my short stay in Reno, I have heard of more tragic
cases than that of Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith had been left her child and
money. We can't buy happiness with money, it's true, but we can at
least buy comfort, and that is something after all. I knew of a
different case where there was no money to buy comfort: a mother, with
a baby in her arms and the one desire in her heart, to make it
legitimate before it should grow old enough to understand..... I met
this heart broken mother in a hospital in Reno, six years after her
arrival there. I had heard about her and went to see the child.

"The divorce colony, all frivolity and gaiety," you say? Pardon me, I