affair that cannot furnish one or more of these third persons, possessed of a philan thropy of helping other people to attend to their business. There are those who must see in marriage the proof of all the old saws; if these are wanting, something must be wrong. It is necessarily shocking to all preconceptions of trouble and true love if the two did not go hand in hand, for the course of true love never ran smooth. Hence a priori and a fortiori too much happiness would be a re flection upon itself, and trouble can only be the means of discovering and appreciating one's own true love. If there were only two people in the world, there might be trouble. Seeking it is a human failing. One or the other has heard of the silver lining and is incredulous, or it sounds dollarish, so a little cloud must be manufactured in order that the silver lin ing may be mined. Trouble is a peculiar old dog when it comes to marriage, and slights no one who has had a hand in stirring him up and drag ging him out of his kennel. He will run the whole flock to cover. The disinter ested third persons are as apt to be in at the trouble finish assort the his parties gamethemselves. out, as plaintiff, Lawdefen helps
This phase of the subject was well illus trated recently upon the Pacific slope. The man was twenty-one years old and the woman a girl of sixteen, poor young things, marriage mad. They boarded a fishing and pleasure schooner, and went to a point on the high seas about nine miles from the nearest point of any land belonging to the United States. They were not within the three-mile limit of any other king or poten tate. At such point they were married by the sea-captain, the minor not having the consent of either father, mother or guardian. They returned to land and lived together for the space of a week and a day, in the same port from which they had gone on their little cruise, when the lucid interval made its appearance. It was of such luci dity and duration that the courts had to be resorted to, to determine where the parties were at. Their State code required that marriage must be licensed, solemnized, au thenticated and recorded, the forms of the same being prescribed. The diagnosis of the situation by the court was that the par ties went upon the high seas to be married with the avowed purpose of evading the law relating to marriage. The rule that all mar i riages without the State, which would be valid by the laws of the country in which dant, libellant, respondent, co-respondent, the same were contracted, are valid in their State, did not hold, for the parties did not go witnesses, etc. The one trouble, overshadowing all others, to another State or country. They went is the universal, uncontrollable predilection upon the high seas, where no written law ex isted by which marriage could be solemnized. of the human race for marriage. A mad The parties went where there was no law au ness in the blood running toward mar thorizing the marriage, and went with the in riage. There seems to be a time when thoughts tention of immediately returning to their turn to marriage, and marriage, and only- domicile to enjoy the fruits of their contract, marriage, for no other reason than for sweet one which they could not have made at marriage's sake. It is not a question of their domicile. There is no ground of ex the fitness of the subjects for marriage, or pediency, sound policy or good morals upon the true purpose of marriage, that controls, which the transaction can be given legal sanction. The marriage could only be up but it is this getting married so as to be mar ried, that makes humanity pause in its lucid held on the ground of mutual consent, sol emnized by a sea-captain, and cohabitation intervals to consider how marriage-mad hu for eight days; but such a marriage being manity is.
