THE FUNNY SIDE OF DIVORCE

Evening Star, Issue 19002, 25 July 1925, Page 15

THE FUNNY SIDE OF DIVORCE

DISILLUSIONED WIVES AND HUSBANDS However clearly the doors of divorce may bo guarded in England, in the United States they are thrown so wide open that the least enterprising of dissatisfied husbands and wives can find an easy escape from In's or ber bonds. In some accommodating States, tho least thorn in the matrimonial bod is sufficient to ensure the sympathy of tho law. A few months ago a Chicago man applied for. and was granted, his freedom, on tho ground that ho “ could no longer stand the jokes of his wife's friends,” which the good lady herself was heartless enough to encourage. “ They were always poking fun at me,” he wailed, “ and malting me a laugh-ing-stock.” The court wasted no time in deciding that such an ill-used itan should be free to make a happier choice of a life-partner. Another disillusioned husband appealed to the law with a still greater grievance. His wife, he declared, was “an impossible person to live with.” Not content with nagging during the day. she would not permit him the solace of slumber at night. Her playful little habit was “ to leave her bed in the middle of tho night, plant herself in a rocking-chair, bring her heels down with a bang at every rock, and sins: at the top of her voice, ‘Oh, won’t it bo joyful, when me meet to part no more!”

This, the court decided, was conduct which no self-respecting husband should be asked to tolerate, and Mr Cornell (for this was tho victim’s name) was granted a divorce, with many expressions of sympathy. When such trivial grievances serve to untie the marriage-knot, one cannot wonder that relief was granted to the St. Louis lady whose life was made a burden by her husband’s pernicious habit of snoring. If, she said, it had been an ordinary snore, she could have put up with it; but it was a snore that could be heard several blocks away, as witnesses proved, and made sleep quite impossible within the four walls of her home.

There was less sympathy, however, with the Minnesota lady, who claimed a divorce on the flimsy pretext that her husband’s hair of flaming and aggressive red, made a discord in the color-scheme of her drawing-room. “ She ought,” the court informed her, “ to have taken her spouse’s locks into consideration when she chose the furnishings.”

In another recent petition the aggrieved wife her spouse never lost an opportunity of quoting texts “/about wives obeying their husbands.” No wonder a decree was promptly granted to the sufferer I