“You understand, of course, that society is not happy in all its honors. All the brownstone houses have to have closets put in every year in order to accommodate the skeletons. Still, many a woman and man, if let alone, would bear his or her connubial burdens meekly, rather than to face the scandal and publicity of a divorce trial. Our special divorce lawyers know this, and so they invade society. They transfer the base of operations to the drawing rooms. How? By using swell members of the fashionable world to first find out where there is a canker in the case, and then to deftly set forth, in a perfect way, how divorce is the only cure.” Nine-tenths of this delicate business@ is employed in pursuing hesitating wives. Husbands could hardly be approached in their own homes with a proposition to break them up. Take an impressionable woman, already unhappy, who has once been thinking of divorce, and the case is different. She is clay for the moulder. The serpent whispers how nice it will be to bank her alimony, tells her lies about the old man, induces her to believe that the firm down-town will put in no bill if they don’t succeed, and so the affair is arranged. For this despicable service the “agent” receives ten per cent of the fee paid the divorce lawyer by the wife, which fee, be it remembered, comes out of the husband’s pocket. Oftentimes the “agent” is called upon to personate the husband, especially in serving the summons of the court upon him. The lawyer in charge has the case quietly put on record in the proper court, and has a summons prepared for service upon the defendant. A boy is called in from the street, anybody will answer, and is paid a trifle to take the summons to the defendant’s place of business or residence, and deliver it to him in person. Arriving at his destination, the boy is met by the “agent” of the divorce lawyer, at the door or on the steps. The agent sharply demands his business, and is answered by the boy that he wishes to deliver a paper to Mr. X—. “I am Mr. X—.” The boy in perfect good faith, for he has never seen Mr. X— in his life, delivers the summons upon the defendant in person. He is then dismissed, and plays no further part in the case. His affidavit is sufficient for this part of the proceedings, and the shameful mockery of justice proceeds to another stage.