WAYS OF LIVING.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 97, 16 December 1904, Page 5

WAYS OF LIVING.

MATRIMONIAL COMPLICATON.

The present war is certain to have farreaching consequences affecting the domestic side of lifo. If only by reason of mortality of the campaign, that ia inevitable. But there are other factors besides death that cause marital differences and complications — factors as uoobvious as that is patent. Many reservists' wives have, for one reason or another, got a rod in pickle for their absent husbands. They have been making discoveries of late. One woman had a surprise on going to the works where the bread-winner was employed for the purpose of drawing half his wages. When the money was put into her hand she gazed at it open-mouthed.

'What's this?' she at length asked. ' You've given me too much.' 'No,' said the clerk. 'That's half of what he's been drawing.' Then the full force of the absentminded beggar's perfidy dawned upon her. ' Oh, the villain !' she exclaimed, turning ronnd and shaking her fißt in what she believed to be the direction of South Africa. ' Wait till he comes back !' Sorno reservists, more absent-minded still, forgot to tell their wivea that they "had been in the Army, and spent their pay themselves. In most of 3uch cases the summons to rejoin came in the home like a thunderbolt. So incansed was one woman at this secrecy that she would not see her husband off to the front. A dozen times a day she confides to sympathetic neighbours her determination to ' have it out with him when he comes back, if it's twenty years' Common charity impels one to hops that he will be killed m South Africa.

Uut in a few instances housewives had a still heavier blow — their first intimation th&u their husbands had any connection whatever with the Army came to .them in the form of the news that they had sailed tor Cape Town. A claimant on a certain War Pund is a woman who bad this unpleasant surprise. Hers is a sad case. Although only nineteen — and she does not look even that ago— she has a big bouncing boy. About fourteen months since she married without the remotest idea she was taking unto herself a soldier. Her life-partner worked up to a few weeks a^o, keeping on till the hour on a certain Saturday. Then, without any quarrel, and without saying a singla word as to his intention, he gave himself up as a deserter, and was straightway drafted off to the front. He has already made amends tor deserting i'roin the Army j v. hen he returns he will have to atone for deserting his wife.

Another woman did not discover for about two months that her husband had gone to South Africa. One day he put on his boat clothes and went out, and the next she heard of him was that he had gone to uphold the honour of his country. A reservist who lived close by, but did not know that he was a wiie deserter, dropped across him in one of the transports, and in writing home he mentioned this circumstance., little thinking it would be so interesting.

Since numbers of men have basely acted as in these case 3, it is not improbable that some women are now widows uaawares. Not until a year or two ago did a faithful, hard-working wife learn that in all likelihood her worthless husband fell in the Egyptian War. A man who came to whitewash her ceilings stepped in front of a coloured portrait hanging in the kitchen. ' Where did you get that ?' he asked. 'That's my husband,' was the simple reply. ' Knew him well; same regiment as me,' continued the ex-soldier. 4 Oh, no ' and the woman smiled at the ' mistake.'

But further conversation made her doubtful on the point. Assuming that the man was a deserter at the time he married her, that he wont back to the ranks when he lefc her, and that he reassumed a regimental name, it was quite possible that the original of the portrait was identical with the soldier whom the snapper-up of odd jobs had known.

It is too early yet to say whether parallel instances of waiting for those who are dead have happened in connection with the South African campaigH. But such a thing may happen, at all events before peace is proclaimed. And some mysterious disappearances may never bo thoroughly cleared up, for the difficulty of tracing a soldier who is on the regimental records under a false name, and tnat absolutely unknown to those interested, is enormous.

While some soldiers who are dead are assumed to be alive, others who are alive are believed to be dead. It is not at all an uncommon thing — indeed, it happens in every war — for men who are officially recorded as among the slain to be in fact a long way this side of the grave.

An old soldier recently told the writer of a very eaay method by which so serious sin error could be designedly caused" If, for a,ny reason — say, for instance, to rid himseif of his wife, of whom he had become tired — a man wished to be reported as dead, he might exchange his identification ticket for that of a 'Tommy' who had fallen. As a consequence the name on that ticket would, barring accidents, be taken to be that of the deceased and be published accordingly.

That this, or something 1 like it, will be done more than once in South Africa is beyond doubt ; so that here is another source of domestic complications. Judging by tne past, some women will marry iigain and discover in subsequent yaars that their real husbands are alive, after all. Whether that will cause pleasure or pain will depend a good deal upon circumstances. A man who was 'killed' in the former Boer War, on suddenly appearing before his wife — she had married No. 2 — and remarking that he was still alive, was coolly informed by his spouso that she was very sorry to hear it.