all unacquainted with divorce proceedings, legal separations, and
common law ceremonies, was called upon to make this strange man's
troubles my own, to sort out his domestic woes, and say:--

"This sin" is yours, but "that sin" is hers, and "those other sins"
belong wholly to the co-respondent.

What a useful word that is! It has such a decent sound, almost
respectable. We are a refined people, even in our sins, and I know no
word in the English language we strive harder to avoid using in any of
its forms than that word of brutal vulgarity, but terrific
meaning--adultery.

The adulterer may be in our midst, but we have refinement enough to
refer to him as the "So-and-So's" co-respondent.

I was engaged in saying things more earnest and warm than correct and
polished--things I fear the writer of the letter could not have approved
of--when I was pulled up short by the opening words of another
paragraph, which said: "God! if women suffer in real life over the loss
of children, husband, and home, as you suffered before my very eyes last
night in the play; if my wife is tortured like that, it would have been
better for me to have passed out of life, and have left her in peace.
But I did not know that women suffered so. Help me, advise me."

I could not ignore that last appeal. What my answer was you will not
care to know; but if it was brief, it was at least not flippant; and
before writing it, I, in my turn, appealed for help, only my appeal was
made upon my knees to the Great Authority.

* * * * *

On election nights it is customary for the manager to read or have read
to the audience the returns as fast as they come in from various points,
showing how the voting has gone.

[Illustration: _Clara Morris and James Parselle in 3d Act of "Miss
Multon"_]

An election was just over, when one evening a small incident occurred
during a performance of "Miss Multon" that we would gladly have
dispensed with. In the quarrel scene between the two women, the first
and supposedly dead wife, in her character of governess to her own
children, is goaded by the second wife into such a passion that she
finally throws off all concealment and declares her true character and
name.

The scene was a strong one, and was always looked forward to eagerly by
the audience.

On the evening I speak of the house was packed almost to suffocation.
The other characters in the play had withdrawn, and for the first