f that were
not so every couple in order to continue legally married would have to
go through a new ceremony in every state through which they traveled."

"Right-o!" whistled Tutt. "A parson on every Pullman!"

"It follows," continued Mr. Tutt, lighting a fresh stogy and warming to
his subject, "that as each state has the right to regulate the status of
its own citizens it has jurisdiction to act in a divorce proceeding
provided one of the parties is actually domiciled within its borders.
Naturally this action must be determined by its own laws and not by
those of any other state. The great divergence of these laws makes
extraordinary complications."

"Hallelujah!" cried Tutt. "Now, in the words of the psalmist, you've
said a mouthful! I know a man who at one and the same time is legally
married to one woman in England, to another in Nevada, is a bigamist in
New York, and--"

"What else could he be except a widower in Pittsburgh?" pondered the
elder Tutt. "But it's quite possible. There's a case going on now where
a woman in New York City is suing her ex-husband for a divorce on the
usual statutory ground, and naming his present wife as co-respondent,
though the plaintiff herself divorced him ten years ago in Reno, and he
married again immediately after on the strength of it."

"I'm feeling stronger every minute!" exclaimed Tutt. "Surely in all this
bedlam we ought to be able to acquit our new client Mr. Higgleby of the
charge of bigamy. At least _you_ ought to be able to. I couldn't."

"What's the difficulty?" queried Mr. Tutt.

"The difficulty simply is that he married the present Mrs. Higgleby on
the seventeenth of last December here in the city of New York, when he
had a perfectly good wife, whom he had married on the eleventh of the
preceding May, living in Chicago."

"What on earth is the matter with him?" inquired Mr. Tutt.

"He simply says he's a traveling man," replied his partner, "and--he
happened to be in New York."

"Well, the next time he calls, you send him in to see me," directed Mr.
Tutt. "What was the present lady's name?"

"Woodcock," answered Tutt. "Alvina Woodcock."

"And she wanted to change to Higgleby?" muttered his partner. "I wonder
why."

"Oh, there's something sort of appealing about him," acknowledged Tutt.
"But he don't look like a bigamist," he concluded. "What does a bigamist
look like?" meditated Mr. Tutt as he lit another stogy.

* * * * *