where she had left him "to shift for his.seli and become silf-supparting"—no letters hav ing ever passed between them. "Suppos ing," I said, "that a divorce is what yjn need, and that I can get it for you, which of your two husbands do you prefer to be separated from?" "/ lave that entoirely to you, sor,—entoirely," she promptly replie i, the only proviso being that she "could gir thim papers from the coort to shake in th-* shiriff's face if he ivir presoomed," etc. Then I told her not to worry about it, and to say nothing (a rather useless suggestion doubt less under the circumstances) until I could write a letter to a certain magistrate "in the oulii countrie" and find out if her first hus band was still in the land of the living,— assuring her, as a matter of course, that she had nothing to fear in the meantime, as I would defend her "in coort" if the "shiriff should arrist her." She gave me the last known address of husband No. i and went away well satisfied with my advice. In due time I received a reply from "the ould countrie" to the effect that "the gentle man enquired about had for over two years past reposed peacefully" in a certain grave yard where "he had been buried at public expense." The magistrate added a note to the effect that he personally knew the man in question, and that as soon as he was thrown upon his own resources by the emi
gration of his wife, he commenced to waste away, "and being disinclined to work for a living, in due time had laid himself down and died." I then found that his exit from this mundane sphere antedated, by several months, my client's alliance with husband No. 2. I sent for her and told her she needed no "divarce," and had committed no crime. "Ye've done well, sor, but ye must put it in writing, and I'll nail it on me front door as a warnin' to thim dirty neighbors and the sheriff, too, that I'm an honest loidy and know how to 'consilt' a lawyer whin my good name is set upon by sich as thim." So it was "put in writing," and for weeks afterwards Mrs. Mulligan's front door was decorated with my "opinion" which had been tacked thereto, after the aforesaid lady had ornamented my letterhead with heiroglyphics of her own, intended to spell the word "WARNING.1' Some daring miscreant upon a certain night, so I have been told, removed this "opinion" of mine from the door in question (it is the only one of all my "opinions" that has ever been published exactly as written), but Mrs. Mulligan has more than triumphed over her "vinimous" neighbors, and I have heard no more of either her domestic, or foreign, affaires de coeur, or of the crime of "hogamy" for which she at one time so feared "arrist."
