Selling a Wife for Three Pounds.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 873, 23 November 1888, Page 4

Selling a Wife for Three Pounds.

A Vienna correspondent. writes : —Whilst Englishmen are disputing whether marriage is a failure or not, the Russian peasant liveß quietly at home, and sells his wife if it please him so to do. Fielding, in one of his novels, makes one of his loose gallants stake the possession of his wife for one night with a designing gambler, and when the die was cast and lost, the reckless husband was foroed to hand over the keys of his lodgings to his rival; but in the story before us, a peasant thoroughly sober, if a Russian peasant can ever be properly called so, gave his wife wholly and entirely to a creditor in discharge of a debt he waß unable to pay—and the debt was not a very large one. The peasant in question had owed a neighbour for a considerable time the sum of thirty roubles (about £3 in English money). When pushed in a corner he bethought himself of the most precious object of his scanty home—his wife—and offered her to the claimant in lieu of the thirty roubles. It is reasonable' to suppose that the proffered consort (was somewhat comely, for the proposal was immediately accepted by the impatient creditor, who happened to be a widower. The wifevendOT summoned all his friends from the village to meet him at the inn, where he treated them all to ‘vqdki.’ When the shades of night came on the purchaser withdrew steathily from the hilarious company. Driving straight to his friend’s house,, he communicated to the wife, in the name of her former husband, the changed state of affairs, and Bhe, without further questioning, accompanied him to his home. For some reason not stated, she thought proper to go back again the. next morning. The creditor hastened to fetch his property back again. Arrived at his neighbor’s house, however, he met with a warm reception from the former husband and his sons. After a fierce con*

flict had taken place; the Mayor of village arrived on the scene, and with the help of the officers succeeded in capturing the rival husbands and the fair object' of their strife, and placing them in confinement to await the deeisioh as to rights df pbssesBidiSi,, wfeioh will ih coarse 'ot time be_ delivered by the local court.