21

MODERN BREACH OF PROMISE

Miss Mack's Case Against Millionare Law Taken as an Example.

Will the Wounded Heart Bleed the Less for Money Compensation?

Law, Love, Business-The Thing Considered Psychologically-What Is Miss Mack's Motive?

New York has been somewhat entertained recently by the details of a breach of promise suit, in which the complainant is Miss Josephine Mack, who asks $150,000 damages of Mr. George Law. Mr. Law is a millionare-not one of those men whom the excitable think may be a millionare, but one who is in fact the possessor of more than $1,000,000 worth of property. Miss Mack is also very rich and she is beautiful. Mr. Law is 50 years of age, a man who has risen from poverty to affluence, who knows how to spend thousands in a night in the gambling rooms of Long Branch or Saratoga, who enjoys the society of pugilists, and who is fond of high and fashionable living. Miss Mack is barely 20. She expected to marry Mr. Law, but was prevented from doing so by his unexpected marriage to another young woman, to whom Miss Mack had introduced Mr. Law. The attorneys are Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll and Mr. Francis L. Well-man.

Litigation involving persons so fashionable, an amount of money so large, and attorneys so distinguished cannot but arrest attention.

The case as set forth for Miss Mack contains some elements which are, or are meant to be, pathetic. It is alleged that Miss Mack's affections have suffered severely, that she has been chagrined before society, which was aware of the fact that she took excursions on Mr. Law's yacht, was entertained as the guest of honor at certain splendid dinners given by him, and, with her mother's assistance, was the hostess at box parties at the opera to which Mr. Law sent the invitations.

When Miss Mack heard that Mr. Law was married she was prostrated, and confined to her bed for several days. These facts Mr. Ingersoll and his assistant will set forth in their effort to procure $150,000 from Mr. Law for Miss Mack.

This is one of the best illustrations which could be wished of a modern breach of promise case.

It may be interesting to examine the case from a psychological point of view. Indeed, even the law, which is cold, and often coarse, regards breach of promise cases from this point of view. The laws regulating such cases are purely sentimental, are framed to deal with sentiment, and are created to avenge the sorrows of the heart.

First, then, will Miss Mack's wounded heart bleed any less when she has procured her money - if she does procure it?

If so, did the heart ever bleed at all? Wus any sorrow of the soul ever assuaged by material possessions?

Will Miss Mack's mortification be allayed by a victory over the man who did not want her-a victory which the court has to assist her to win?

Will anyone respect her more, sympathize with her more, or will her position in society be improved?

What, in short, can be a motive of Miss Mack?

One is compelled to answer that it can be only a mercenary one.

From first to last the breach of promise case must be vulgar, venal, opposed to all the instincts of the refined feminine heart, and purely the outgrowth of a commercial society, in which standards of honor have sunk to the standards of the tradesman.

Barter and sale have entered into questions which involved life and death. Money, that variable exchange medium, has got mixed up with the sacred sentiments of the soul, the heart and the head have become confused, and it is impossible for the commercial daughter of a commercial age to cram in her pocket that which is a balm to her injured heart.

Could anything be more foreign to the spirit of love than all this? Why, love conceals its wounds as well as its raptures, love hides from public gaze, love laughs under happiness, weeps under neglect, knows no vengeance, is exquisite in its suffering, delicate in its timidity. What has it to do with the courts of law, with payments of money, with distressing publicity, with common revenges?

One may affirm without hesitation that the woman who will prosecute a breach of promise case is one who has not suffered in her affections, but who merely has been chagrined, injured in her vanity, and filled with a desire for cheap revenge.

To be sure, one has heard cases related of women who have been for years under the expectation of marriage, and whose opportunities for marriage have been practically ruined, and who therefore have been left unprovided for, perhaps in a condition of poverty, while the men they trusted have married others, prospered, and gone unrebuked. When these women have sued for breach of promise the public has vouchsafed some sympathy to them. This public has been made of industrious persons, who think much of material success. They confound it with respectability. They feel that the business chances, so to speak, of such women have been injured, perhaps ruined, and that the injured person is entitled to some reimbursement. That such standards are quite common shows that the code in America is largely the tradesman's code. Instead of the code of the gentleman.

(The word gentleman is used in its superficial sense, as meaning a man with pride, higher cultivation of manners and with the feudal code of honor. It is not to be supposed that the idea is conveyed that tradesmen are not gentlemen, in the sense of being kind, true, polite, unselfish and noble. Please accept the words in their superficial sense. In the sense meant a tradesman is one who looks at life largely from a business point of view. A gentleman is one who disregards business, and views matters from a point of his own. One stands for the middle class; the other for the aristocracy.)

Now, the code of the gentleman confines all questions of sentiment to the heart. If a man injures his honor or the honor or affection of any woman associated with him he wipes out the hurt to the heart with the blood of the wrong-doer. This is consistent. It is not Christian, for "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." But it is consistent with the nature of the offense. If there is to be any vengeance at all it must be, in those questions of the happiness or misery of life, a vengeance which hits at the source of life. To avenge a misery one must create a deeper misery. To punish one who has wrecked another's life the wrong-doer must be deprived of life. The duel is the legitimate thing. It is the only way, too, in which a gentleman can avenge the wrongs of his sister or his friend, the only way in which a deliberate deceiver can be appropriately punished, the only way in which a woman can be righted.

But the duel, with the march of civilization, has been outgrown. It has been made unlawful. Much importance has come to be attached to the right of every man to use his life, for good or ill, until its natural end. This is well and good. Man has ceased, in a large measure, to interfere with the prerogatives of God. He has grown to have greater respect for the mystery of life. That is as it should be.

But is it not unfortunate that in setting aside as obsolete this code of vengeance, that another one, and a vulgar and cheap one, should have been substituted? Were not ideals higher, love regarded with more reverence, when dealt was the penalty for love betrayed, than now, in these decadent days when case and reprisal of money is the revenge taken by a deserted woman?

Is not, in fact, any sort of revenge out of the question? What does a woman want who loves? Why nothing but love. If she loses that, can sword thrust or filed papers, or decisions of judges do anything to comfort her? It cannot give her love. Only one thing in the world can do that--the power of God moving in the heart of a man. Once that is lost changed or dissipated, it is gone forever. It is as dead as the tree which lies with roots torn from the ground and denuded limbs beating against the bluff. It is as impossible to resuscitate as would be the life of that tree. There is nothing to do but to bear with bravery the disappointment, meet the pity of society with dignity and live for other things than the love of that particular man. If no other love ever comes-why, the gods he praised, therefore things in the world besides love, which are worth the living for!

It is safe to affirm that in ninety-nine cases out of 100, where there is a breach of promise case, there never has been any affection.

The woman whose heart has been actually wounded weeps in the night, but not in the day, hides her love, laughs works, plays-does anything rather than let the world discover and pass its course comments upon that sorrow, which with all its pain is still dear.

It is an unnecessary strain to spend sympathy upon the woman who sues a man for breach of promise. A woman who can be consoled with money can be consoled with another love. She is a woman to whom marriage has meant convenience. It is her business prospects, not her heart, which has been injured.
ELIA. W. PEATTIE.

MRS. WYNFORD PHILLIPS.
Mrs. Wynford Phillips, society woman, orator and leader of the woman's suffrage cause in London, is widely known and much loved in England. The suffrage movement is gaining ground daily in England, and the best women in the land are its supporters. Mrs. Phillips is a slight woman, very beautiful, with earnest eyes and strong features. As a girl bride, just after her husband, John Wynford Phillips, had been elected to the house of commons, Mrs. Phillips made her advent in politics, and scarcely a week passes that she does not address some society. She is an ideal wife and mother. Her two children are handsome, dark-eyed boys. Her London home is very beautiful, but she prefers their wild, picturesque mountain chalet in Switzerland, where the family usually passes the summer.

DEMOCRATIC STATE PLATFORM.
The Nebraska democratic state platform for 1895 is as follows:

We, the democrats of Nebraska, in convention assembled, reaffirm our faith in those principles written in the declaration of American independence, and emphasized by Jefferson and Jackson, namely, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and we demand that all of the departments of the government legislative, executive and judicial, shall be administrated in accordance with these principles.

We reaffirm the declarations made by the last democratic state convention held in Nebraska on September 26, 1894.

We believe that the restoration of the money of the constitution is now the paramount issue before the country, and insist that all parties shall plainly state their respective positions upon this question, in order that the voters may intelligently express their preference; we, therefore, declare ourselves in favor of the immediate restoration of the free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, as such coinage existed prior to 1873, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation, such gold and silver coin to be a full legal tender for all debts, public and private.

We send greeting to our democratic brethren throughout the union, who are making such a gallant fight for the restoration of bimetallism and congratulate them upon the progress made.

We deprecate and denounce as un-American and subversive of the principles of free government any attempt to control the action or policy of the political parties of this country by secret cabals or organizations of any character, and warn the people against the danger to our institutions which lurks under any such secret organization, whether based on religious, political or other differences of opinion.

Recognizing that the stability of our institutions must rest on the virtue and intelligence of the people, we stand as in the past, in favor of the free common school system of the state, and declare that the same must be perpetuated and receive liberal financial support, and that the management and control of said school system should be non-sectarian and non-partisan.

The democracy of Nebraska approves and commends the declarations of President Cleveland in the past in condemning the pernicious activity of incumbents of federal offices under the government, in attempting to control the policy of his first administration in that regard.

We affirm the uncompromising opposition of the democratic party to the fostering aid by the government, either national or state of chartered monopolies, and declare it as the recognized policy of the party from the days of Jefferson and Jackson to watch with the utmost jealousy the encroachments of corporate power, and we are in favor of such legislation as will insure a reasonable control by the state of corporations deriving their powers and privileges from the state, and especially the regulation of rates for transportation by the railroads of the state.

ABOUT WOMEN.
The Countess Cacilia Plater-Zybeck, one of the wealthiest women in Russia, has been enrolled in the guild of master tailors of Warsaw. She is at the head of a cutter's school in that city, and does much to help the poor.

Patti has found a method of entertaining while sparing her voice. At her Craig-y-Nos castle last week she played the title role in a new dumb show piece called. "Nouke, the Enchantress," being generous enough, however, to close with a song.

Mrs. Flora Ann Steel, the author of "Tales of the Punjaub," is the wife of a retired Indian civilian. She has spent more than twenty years of her married life in India, and, in order to pursue her studies in folk-lore, mastered five of the native dialects.

In the possession of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts in a guinea which she treasures above all her minor belongings. Her grandfather, who was a gentleman of slovenly outward appearances, was given it by a benevolent old party, who chanced to mistake him for a pauper.

Belle Boyd, known as the "rebel," Is making a tour of the south. She is described as being dramatic in her style, with eyes expressing a daring disposition and with an abundance of light auburn hair, which hangs over her brow. She is as piquant and vivacious at 51 as she was at sweet 16, when she entered the "service."

MODERN BREACH OF PROMISE

Miss Mack's Case Against Millionare Law Taken as an Example.

Will the Wounded Heart Bleed the Less for Money Compensation?

Law, Love, Business-The Thing Considered Psychologically-What Is Miss Mack's Motive?

New York has been somewhat entertained recently by the details of a breach of promise suit, in which the complainant is Miss Josephone Mack, who asks $150,000 damages of Mr. George Law. Mr. Law is a millionare-not one of those men whom the excitable think may be a millionare, but one who is in fat the possessor of more than $1,000,000 worth of property. Miss Mack is also very rich and she is beautiful. Mr. Law is 50 years of age, a man who has risen from poverty to affluence, who knows how to spend thousands in a night in the gambling rooms of Long Branch or Saratoga, who enjoys the society of pugilists, and who is fond of high and fashionable living. Miss Mack is barely 20. She expected to marry Mr. Law, but was prevented from doing so by his unexpected marriage to another young woman, to whom Miss Mack had introduced Mr. Law. The attorney's are Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll and Mr. Francis L. Well-man.
Litigation involving persons so fashionable, an amount of money so large, and attorneys so distinguished cannot but arrest attention.
The case as set forth for Miss Mack contains some elements which are, or are meant to be, pathetic. It is alleged that Miss Mack's affections have suffered severely, that she has been chagrined before society, which was aware of the fact that she took excursions on Mr. Law's yacht, was entertained as the, guest of honor at certain splendid dinners given by him, and, with her mother's assistance, was the hostess at box parties at the opera to which Mr. Law sent the invitations.
When Miss Mack heard that Mr. Law was married she was prostrated, and confined to her bed for several days. These facts Mr. Ingersoll and his assistant will set forth in their effort to procure $150,000 from Mr. Law for Miss Mack.
This is one of the best illustrations which could be wished of a modern breach of promise case.
It may be interesting to examine the case from a psychological point of view. Indeed, even the law, which is cold, and often coarse, regards breach of promise cases from this point of view. The laws regulating such cases are purely sentimental, are framed to deal with sentiment, and are created to avenge the sorrows of the heart.
First, then, will Miss Mack's wounded heart bleed any less when she has procured her money - if she does procure it?
if so, did the heart ever bleed at all? Wus any sorrow of the soul ever assuaged by material possessions?
Will Miss Mack's mortification be allayed by a victory over the man who did not want her-a victory which the court has to assist her to win?
Will anyone respect her more, sympathize with her more, or will her position in society be improved?
What in short, can be a motive of Miss Mack?
One is compelled to answer that it can be only a mercentary one.
From first to last the breach of promise acse must be vulgar, venal, opposed to all the instincts of the refined feminine heart, and purely the outgrowth of a commercial society, in which standards of honor have sunk to the standards of the tradesman.
Barter and sale have entered into questions which involved life and death. Money, that variable exchange medium, has got mixed up with the sacred sentiments of the soul, the heart and the head have become confused, and it is impossible for the commercial daughter of a commercial age to cram in her pocket that which is a balm to her injured heart.
Could anything be more foreign to the spirit of love than all this? Why, love conceals its wounds as well as its raptures, l;ove hides from public gaze, love laughs under happiness, weeps under neglect, knows no vengeance, is esquisite in its suffering, delicate in its timidity. What has it to do with the courts of law, with payments of money, with distressing publicity, with common revenges?
One may affirm without hesitation that the woman who will prosecute a breach of promise case in one who has not suffered in her affections, but who merely has been chagrined, injured in her vanity, and filled with a desire for cheap revenge.
To be sure, one has heard cases related of women who have been for years under the expectation of marriage, and whose opportunities for marriage have been practically ruined, and who therefore have been left unprovided for, perhaps in a condition of poverty, while the men they trusted have married others, prospered, and gone unrebuked. When these women have sued for breach of promise the public has vouchsafed some sympathy to them. This public has been made of industrious persons, who think much of material success. They confound it with respectability. They feel that the business chances, so to speak, of such women have been injured, perhaps ruined, and that the injured person is entitled to some reimbursement. That such standards are quite common shows that the code in America is largely the tradesman's code. Instead of the code of the gentleman.
(The word gentleman is used in its superficial sense, as meaning a man with pride, higher cultivation of manners and with the feudal code of honor. It is not to be supposed that the idea is conveyed that tradesmen are not gentlemen, in the sense of being kind, true, polite, unselfish and noble. Please accept the words in their superficial sense. In the sense meant a tradesman is one who looks at life largely from a business point of view. A gentleman is one who disregards business, and views matters from a point of his own. One stands for the middle class; the other for the aristocracy.)
Now, the code of the gentleman confines all questions of sentiment to the heart. If a man injures his honor or the honor or afection of anuy woman associated with him he wipes out the hurt to the heart with the blood of the wrong-doer. This is consistent. It is not Christian, for "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." But it is consistent with the nature of the offense. If there is to be any vengeance at all it must be, in those questions of the happiness or misery of life, a vengeance which hits at the source of life. To avenge a misery one must create a deeper misery. To punish one who has wrecked another's life the wrong-doer must be deprived of life. The duel is the legitimate thing. It is the only way, too, in which a gentleman can avenge the wrongs of his sister or his friend, the only way in which a deliberate deceiver can be appropriately punished, the only way in which a woman can be righted.
But the duel, with the march of civilization, has been outgrown. It has been made unlawful. Much importance has come to be attached to the right of every man to use his life, for good or ill, until its natural end. This is well and good. Man has ceased, in a large measure, to interfere with the prerogatives of God. He has grown to have greater respect for the mystery of life. That is as it should be.
But is it not unfortunate that in setting aside as obsolete this code of vengeance, that another one, and a vulgar and cheap one, should have been substituted? Were not ideals higher, love regarded with more reverance, when dealt was the penalty for love betrayed, than noew, in these decadent days when case and reprisal of money is the revenge taken by a deserted woman?
Is not, in fact, any sort of revenge out of the question? What does a woman want who loves? Why nothing but love. If she loses that, can sword thrust or filed papers, or decisions of judges do anything to comfort her? It cannot give her love. Only one thing in the world can do that-the power of God moving in the heart of a man. Once that is lost changed or dissipated, it is gone forever. It is as dead as the tree which lies with roots torn from the ground and denuded limbs beating against the bluff. It is an impossible to resuscitae as would be the life of that tree. There is nothing to do but to bear with bravery the disappointment, meet the pity of society with dignity and live for ither things than the love of that particular man. If no other love ever comes-why, the gods he praised, therefore things in the world besides love, which are worth the living for!
It is safe to affirm that in ninety-nine cases out of 100, where there is a breach of promise case, there never has been any affection.
The woman whose heart has been actually wounded weeps in the night, but not in the day, hides her love, laughs works, plays-does anything rather than let the world discover and pass its course comments upon that sorrow, which with all its pain is still dear.
It is an unnecessary strain to spend sympathy upon the woman who sues a man for breach of promise. A woman who can be consoled with money can be consoled with another love. She is a woman to whom marriage has meant to convenience. It is her business prospects, not her heart, which has been injured.
ELIA. W. PEATTIE.

MRS. WYNFORD PHILLIPS.
Mrs. Wynford Phillips, society woman, orator and leader of the woman's suffrage cause in London, is widely known and much loved in England. The suffrage movement is gaining ground daily in England, and the best women in the land are its supporters. Mrs. Phillips is a slight woman, very beautiful, with earnest eyes and strong features. As a girl bride, just after her husband, John Wynford Phillips, had been elected to the house of commons, Mrs. Phillips made her advent in politics, and scarcely a week passes that she does not address some society. She is an ideal wife and mother. Her two children are handsome, dark-eyed boys. Her London home is very beautiful, but she prefers their wild, ploturesque mountain chalet in Switzerland, where the family usually passes the summer.
DEMOCRATIC STATE PLATFORM.
The Nebraska democratic state platform for 1895 is as follows:
We, the democrats of Nebraska, in convention assembled, reaffirm our faith in those principles written in the declaration of American independence, and emphasized by Jefferson and Jackson, namely, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unallienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and we demand that all of the departments of the government legislative, executive and judicial, shall be administrated in accordance with these principles.
We reaffirm the declarations made by the last democratic state convention held in Nebraska on September 26, 1894.
We believe that the restoration of the money of the constitution is now the paramount issue before the country, and insist that all parties shall plainly state their respective positions upon this question, in order that the voters may intelligently express their preference; we therefore declare ourselves in favor of the immediate restoration of the free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, as such coinage existed prior to 1873, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation, such gold and silver coin to be a full legal tender for all debts, public and private.
We send greeting to our democratic brethren throughout the union, who are making such a gallant fight for the restoration of bimetallism and congratulate them upon the progress made.
We deprecate and denounce as un-American and subversive of the principles of free government any attempt to control the action or policy of the political parties of this country by secret cabals or organizations of any character, and warn the people against the danger to our institutions which lurks under any such secret organization, whether based on religious, political or other differences of opinion.
Recognizing that the stability of our institutions must rest on the virtue and intellegence of the people, we stand as in the past, in favor of the free common school system of the state, and declare that the same must be perpetuated and receive liberal financial support, and that the management and control of said school system should be non-sectarian and non-partisan.
The democracy of Nebraska approves and commends the declarations of President Cleveland in the past in condemning the pernicious activity of incumbents of federal offices under the government, in attempting to control the policy of his first administration in that regard.
We affirm the uncompromising opposition of the democratic party to the fostering aid by the government, either national or state of chartered monopolies, and declare it as the recognized policy of the party from the days of Jefferson and Jackson to watch with the utmost jealousy the encroachments of corporate power, and we are in favor of such legislation as will insure a reasonable control by the state of coporations deriving their powers and privileges from the state, and especially the regulation of rates for transportation by the railroads of the state.

ABOUT WOMEN.
The Countess Cacilia Plater-Zybeck, one of the wealthiest women in Russia, has been enrolled in the guild of master tailors of Warsaw. She is at the head of a cutter's school in that city, and does much to help the poor.
Patti has found a method of entertaining while sparing her voice. At her Craig-y-Nos castle last week she played the title role in a new dumb show piece called. "Nouke, the Enchantress," being generous enough, however, to close with a song.
Mrs. Flora Ann Steel, the author of "Tales of the Punjaub," is the wife of a retired Indian civilain. She has spent more than twenty years of her married life in India, and , in order to pursue her studies in folk-lore, mastered five of the native dialects.
In the possession of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts in a guinea which she treasures above all her minor belongings. Her grandfather, who was a gentleman of slovenly outward appearances, was given it by a benevolent old party, who chanced to mistake him for a pauper.
Belle Boyd, known as the "rebel," Is making a tour of the south. She is described as being dramatic in her style, with eyes expressing a daring disposition and with an abundance of light auburn hair, which hangs over her brow. She is as piquant and vivacious at 51 as she was at sweet 16, when she entered the "service."