ning of the
word was extended to pain inflicted on the mind, and now coldness
and neglect may almost of themselves constitute cruelty, though
the English court has sometimes had the greatest hesitation in
accepting the most atrocious forms of refined cruelty, because it
involved no "physical" element. "The time may very reasonably be
looked forward to, however," a legal writer has stated
(Montmorency, "The Changing Status of a Married Woman," _Law
Quarterly Review_, April, 1897), "when almost any act of
misconduct will, in itself, be considered to convey such mental
agony to the innocent party as to constitute the cruelty
requisite under the Act of 1857." (The question of cruelty is
fully discussed in J.R. Bishop's _Commentaries on Marriage,
Divorce and Separation_, 1891, vol. i, Ch. XLIX; cf. Howard, op.
cit., vol. ii, p. 111).

There can be little doubt, however, that cruelty alone is a
reasonable cause for divorce. In many American States, where the
facilities for divorce are much greater than in England, cruelty
is recognized as itself sufficient cause, whether the wife or the
husband is the complainant. The acts of cruelty alleged have
sometimes been seemingly very trivial. Thus divorces have been
pronounced in America on the ground of the "cruel and inhuman
conduct" of a wife who failed to sew her husband's buttons on, or
because a wife "struck plaintiff a violent blow with her bustle,"
or because a husband does not cut his toe-nails, or because
"during our whole married life my husband has never offered to
take me out riding. This has been a source of great mental
suffering and injury." In many other cases, it must be added, the
cruelty inflicted by the husband, even by the wife--for though
usually, it is not always, the husband who is the brute--is of an
atrocious and heart-rending character (_Report on Marriage and
Divorce in the United States_, issued by Hon. Carroll D. Wright,
Commissioner of Labor, 1889). But even in many of the apparently
trivial cases--as of a husband who will not wash, and a wife who
is constantly evincing a hasty temper--it must be admitted that
circumstances which, in the more ordinary relationships of life
may be tolerated, become intolerable in the intimate relationship
of sexual union. As a matter of fact, it has been found by
caref