" for protection
of a sort.
The divorce carried with it a clause forbidding the guilty husband
to marry any one else before five years had passed. But while the
divorce was legal all over the world, this restriction ended at
the State bounds.
So Peter Cheever and Zada L'Etoile went over into the convenient
realm of New Jersey the next morning, secured a license, and on the
following day were there made man and wife before all the world.
This entitled them to a triumphant return to New York. And now Peter
Cheever had also done the honorable thing. This "honorable thing"
business will be one of the first burdens dropped by the men when
the women perfect their claim to equality.
In about two weeks a daughter was born to the happy twain. Thanks to
Charity's obliging nature, it was christened in church and accepted
in law as a complete Cheever. Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Cheever now began
to live (more or less) happily ever after (temporarily).
Altogether it was a triumph of legal, social, and surgical technic.
It outraged many virtuous people. There was a good deal of harsh
criticism of everybody concerned. The worthies who believe that
divorce is the cause of the present depraved state of the United
States bewailed one more instance of the vile condition of the
lawless Gomorrah. The eternal critics of the rich used the case as
another text in proof of the complete control that wealth has over
our courts, though seventy-five divorces to obscure persons were
granted at the same time without difficulty, with little expense
and no newspaper punishment.
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