ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. 77 



are married to her all the same — because, as I said before, the intention constitutes 

 the crime. It is as clear as day that Edwitha is your wifte, and your redress lies in 

 taking a club and mutilating Jones with it as much as you can. Any man has a 

 right to protect his own wife from the advances of other men. But you have 

 another alternative — you were married to Edwitha _;?rj/', because of your deliberate 

 intention, and now you can prosecute her for bigamy, in subsequently marrying 

 Jones. But there is another phase in this complicated case : You intended to marry 

 Edwitha, and consequently, according to law, she is your wife — there is no getting 

 around that ; but she didn't marry you, and if she never intended to marry you,_j'<7z< 

 are not her husband, of course. Ergo, in marrying Jones, she was guilty of bigamy, 

 because she was the wife of another man at the time ; which is all very well as far 

 as it goes— but then, don't you see, she had no other husband when she married 

 Jones, and consequently she was not guilty of bigamy. Now, according to t-his 

 view of the case, Jones married a spinster, who was a widow at the same time and 

 another man's wife at the same time, and yet who had no husband and never had 

 one, and never had any intention of getting married, and therefore, of course, never 

 had been married ; and by the same reasoning you are a bachelor, because you have 

 never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a wife living; 

 and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have been deprived of that 

 wife ; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia in the first place, while things 

 were so mixed. And by this time I have got myself so tangled up in the intricacies 

 of this extraordinary case that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise 

 you — I might get confused and fail to make myself understood. I think I could 

 take up the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile, perhaps I 

 could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed at all, or that you 

 are dead now, and consequently don't need the faithless Edwitha — I think I could 

 do that, if it would afford you any comfort. 



"Arthur Augustus." — No ; you are wrong; that is the proper way to throw a 

 brickbat or a tomahawk; but it doesn't answer so well for a bouquet; you will hurt 

 somebody if you keep it up. Turn your nosegay upside down, take it by the stems, 

 and toss it with an upward sweep. Did you ever pitch quoits ? that is the idea. 

 The practice of reckleb^.y heaving immense solid bouquets, of the general size and 



