" A JINER.”

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2248, 17 June 1881, Page 4

" A JINER.”

[From the “New Britain Observer.”] She was about forty-five years old, well dressed, had black hair, rather thin and tinged with grey, and eyes in which gleamed the fires of a determination not easily baulked. She walked into Major Huse’s office and requested a private interview, and having obtained it and satisfied herself that the law students were not listening at the key-hole, said slowly, solemnly, and impressively— * I want a divorce. ’ ‘ What for ? I suppose you had one of the best of husbands,’ says the major. ‘ I s’pose that’s what everybody thinks ; but if they knew what I've suffered in ten years they’d wonder I hadn’t scaled him long ago. I ought to, bat for the sake of the young ones I've borne it and said nothing. I’ve told him, though, what ha might depend on, and now the time’s come. I won’t stand it, young ones or no young ones ; I'll have a divorce, and if the neighbors want to blab themselves hoarse about It they can, for I won’t stand it another day.’ ‘Bat what’s the matter? Don’t your husband provide for yon! Don’t he treat yon kindly?’ pursued the lawyer. ‘We get victuals enough, and I don’t know but he’s as true and kind as men in general, and he’s never knocked one of ns dowh, I wish he had, then I’d get him into gaol, and know where he was nights,’ retorted the woman. ‘ Then, what’s your complaint against him ?’ ‘ Well, it yon must know, he’s one of them plaguey jlners.’ ‘ A what ?' * A jlner—one of them pesky fools that’s always jlnirg something. There can’t nothing come along that’s and sly and hidden, dark but he’d jina it. If anybody should get-up a society to burn his house down, he’d jine it, just as soon as ho conld get In; and if he had to pay for it he’d go all the suddener. We hadn't been married more’n two months before he jlned the Know-Nothin’s, We lived on a farm* then, and every Saturday night he come tearing in before supper, grab a fistful of nut cakes, and go off gnawin’ them, and that’s the last I’d see of him till morning. And every other night he’d roll and tumble in his bed, and holler in his sleep, ‘ Put none but Americans on guard— George Washington;’ and rainy days he would go out in the corn barn and jab at a picture of the Pope with an old bagnet that was there. I ought to have put my foot down then, bat he fooled me so with his lies about the Pope’s coming to make all the Yankee girls marry Irishmen, and to eat up all the babies that warn’t born with a cross on their foreheads, that I let him go on, and even encouraged him in “it. Then he jlned the Masons. Pe’raps you know what them be, but I don’t, ’oept they think they are the same kind of critters that built Solomon’s Temple ; and of all the darned nonsense and gab abont worshipful masters and square and compasses and sich like that we had in the house for the next six months, you never see a beat. And he’s never outgrowed it nuther. What do you think of a man, ’b’qnire, that’ll dress hisself in a white apron ’bout big enough for a monkey’s bib, and go marching up and down, and making motions and talking the foolish lingo, at a picture of George Washington in a green jacket and a truss on his stomach ? Ain’t he a loonytiok ? Well, that’s my Sam, and I’ve stood it as long as I’m agoin’ to. The next lunge the old fool made was into the Odd Fellows. I made it warm for him when be told me he’d jined them, but ho kinder pacified me by tollin’ me they had a sort of branch show that took in women and that he’d get me in as soon as he fonnd out how to do it. Well, one night he come home and said I'd been proposed, and somebody had blackballed me. Did it himself, of coarse. Didn't want mo around knowing his ’ goings on. Of course he didn’t, and I told him so. Then he jlned the Sons of Matter, Didn’t say nothin’ to me about it, but sneaked off one night, pretendin’ he’d got to sit np with a siok Odd Feller, and I’d never found it out, only he came back lookin’ like a man that had been through a thrashing machine, and I wouldn’t do a thing for him till he owned np. And so it’s gone from bad to wus, and from was to wnsaer, jinlng this and that and t’other, till he’s Worship Minister of the Masons, and Goddess of Hope of the Odd Fellows, and Sword-swallower of the Finnegans, and Virgin Cerus of the Grange, and Grand Moguls of thsr Sons of Indolence, and Two-edged Tomahawk of the United Order of Black Men, and Tale-bearer of the Merciful Manikins, and Skipper of the Guild Oaratrine Columbus, and Big Wizard of the Arabian Knights, and Pledge-passer of the Reform Club, and Chief Bulger of the Irish Mechanics, and Furse-keeper of the Order of the Canadian Conscience, and Double-bar-reled Dictator of the Knights of the Brass Circles, and Standard-Bearer of the Royal Archangels, and Sublime Porte of the Onion League, and Chambermaid of the Celestial Cherubs, and Puissant Potentate of the Petrified Pig-Stickers, and the Lord only knows what else, I’ve borne it and borne it, hopin’ he’d get ’em all jined after awhile, bat ’taia’t no use, and when he’d got Into a new one, and been made Grand Guide of the Rights of Horror, I told him I’d quit, and I will.’

Here the major interrupted, saying—- * Well, your husband Is pretty well Initiated, that’s a fact; but the Oourt will hardly call that a good cause for divorce. The most of the societies you mention are composed of honorable men, and have excellent reputations. Many of them, though called lodges, are relief associations and mutual Insurance companies, which, if yonr husband should die, would take care of yon, and would not see you suffer if you were sick.’

‘Hoc me suffer when I’m pick 1 Take care of me when he’s dead I Well, I guess not; I can take care of myself when he’s dead, and if I can’t 1 can get another. There’s plenty of ’em. And they needn’t bother themselves when I’m sick either. If I want to be sick and suffer, it’s none of their business, especially after all the sufferin’ I’ve had when I ain’t sick, because of their carryin’s on. And you needn’t try and make me believe it’s all right, either. I know what it la to live with a man that jines so many lodges that he don’t never lodge at home, and signs his name, “Yours truly, Sam Smith, M.M., 1.0.0. F., K. 0.8.. K. of P., P. of R.A.H., I 1.P.. K. of X N. 0., L.E.T, H.E R.8.J.P., X.Y.X.,” &o.’ ‘Ob, that’s harmless amusement,’’ remarked Mr Huse.

She looked him square in the eye and said, ‘ I believe you are a jiner yourself.’ He admitted that be was to a certain extent, and she arose and said, ‘1 wouldn’t have thought it. A man like you, chairman of a Sabbath school and superintendent of the Republicans. It’s enongh to make a woman take pison. But I drn’t want anything of you. I want a lawyer that don’t belong to nobody or nothin’.’ And she bolted out of the office and Inquired where Captain Patten kept.