DIVORCE IN AMERICA.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8521, 16 November 1889, Page 4

DIVORCE IN AMERICA.

f 'San Francisco Call.) The frivolous character of the complaints in many cases or divorce recently granted and now on the docket leads thoughtful people to ask, " What are we coming to ? ' We do not know that the wives in a given number of cases are more hlameable than the husbands, but • v il is the wives who snfler the most from such sundered relations. As a rule, they suffer more in their affections and in their reputations than the stronger sex. \\ hile there is something to be said in favor of a law of divorce which separates mismated couples, there is no condemnation too severe for men or women who enter the marriage state with the idea in their minds that if they do not like it they will take advaantage of the law that allows them to escape. Yet there is no doubt • hut that thoughtless young men and giddy girls often do approach the altar with that thought in their minds. In caaea where the husband is very young the idea is apt to grow in strength as the years pass. He iinds himself while yet on the sunny side of thirty with" a wife who has possibly lost some of her girlish beauty, and children whose necessities absorb the greater part of his earnings. He compares the free and independent life of some .of his bachelor associates, and imagination magnifies the pleasures he might participate in if he was unmarried. Some day the wife, who is ill-prepared to fight the battle of life alone, is stunned by the service of an application for divorce. Cases of this kind, we regret to say, are not uncommon Almost everyone caD recall one or more in his own circle of acquaintances. Of course, if the real reasons were preferred in the application less harm would be done ; but the legal necessity of setting forth reasons often suggests a resort to falsehood. Trifles in the way of disagreements will be magnified and baseless suspicions urged as matter of facts. The remedy for them, as for most other evils, lies with the people themselves. The law is not so mncb at fault as the facility with which it iB evaded. The Church and society are too lenient in matters of this kind. It may be questioned if a man who divorces a wife for no other reason than that he prefers to live single is injured in his business or social relations by his act. If he has been a Church member he still remains one. And yet he has committed the most cowardly crime a man can commit. A woman thus divorced, unless she have powerful friends, has no future, and her children are thrown upon the world without the character and instincts of right which are inculcated in well-regu-lated homes.