l failure, or natural vicious tendencies;
men, even, who never opened a law-book before entering upon their present
avocation, but gleaned a practical knowledge of the legal alternative of
'wedded woe' by a course of training in the private detective's trade.
These latter worthies often hire the use of practising lawyers' names.
Occasionally they hire the said lawyers themselves to go through the
mummeries of the courts for them; and we could name one of our most
eloquent and respectable criminal pleaders who, on a certain occasion at
least, permitted himself to be nominally associated with one of the
boldest operators of the Ring.

"The dens of the divorcers are situated chiefly on the thoroughfares most
affected by lawyers of the highest caste, though even Broadway is not
wholly exempt from them; and Wall street, Pine street, and especially
Nassau street, contain a goodly number each. Without any ostentatious
display of signs or identifications, they are generally furnished in the
common law-office style, with substantial desks and chairs, shelves of
law-books, and usually a shady private apartment for consultations.
Sometimes the name upon the 'directory' of the building and name over the
'office' itself will be spelled differently, though conveying the same
sound; as though the proprietor thereof might have occasional use for a
confusion of personalities. Along the stairs and hallways leading to
these dens, at almost any hour of the day, from 10 A.M. to 3 P.M., may be
met women in flashy finery and men with hats drawn down over their
eyes--all manifestly gravitating, with more or less shamefacedness,
towards the places in question. They may be dissolute actresses, seeking
a spurious appearance of law to end an old alliance and prepare for a new
one. They may be the frivolous, extravagant, reckless wives of poor
clerks or hard-working mechanics, infatuatedly following out the first
consequences of a matinee at the theatre and a 'Personal' in the
_Herald_. They may be the worthless husbands of unsuspecting, faithful
wives, who, by sickness, or some other unwitting provocation, have turned
the unstable husbandly mind to thoughts of connubial pastures new and the
advertising divorcers. They may be the 'lovers' of married women, who
come to engage fabricated testimony and surreptitious unmarriage for the
frail creatures whose virtue is still too cowardly to dare the more
honest sin. They are not the wronged partner