generations of harlotry behind him? I am seeking no controversy with Catholicism. With its peculiar ideas of marriage and divorce I have nothing at present to do. I am simply tying a few bow-knots in the ears of an ass. I deny, however, that it is within the power of any church to add to the sanctity of a marriage ceremony. Marriage is nothing more or less than formal notification to the world that a man and woman have already become husband and wife. It matters not how this announcement is made, so long as due respect is shown the established customs of the country, so long as it is generally accepted as sufficient. "What God hath put together, let no man put asunder," cried the Archbishop as he contemplates the possible annulment of a non-Catholic marriage contract. What God hath put together no man CAN put asunder. Even the almighty hand of death cannot break that sacred bond. But how does God join people together?--how does he make a man and woman husband and wife? Is it by the mumbled formula of priests or magistrates? If so, then is a MARIAGE DE CONVENIANCE AS SACRED as the mating of Cupid and Psyche. Then is the union of a snub-nosed American parvenu with an idiotic European "nobleman" whom she has bought with her daddy's dollars as holy in the sight of heaven as that of old Isaac's son with Laban's beauteous daughter. God joins man and woman together only with the golden links of love. When they are joined thus they are bone of one bone and flesh of one flesh. Were they alone in the world no marriage ceremony would be needful; but being a portion of society they must obtain its sanction. When they are joined together by church or state and love is lacking the union is not of heaven, but of hell. The woman is no true wife, but a kept mistress, and every child born unto her is a bastard. She has sold herself, and the priest or preacher who knowingly sets the seal of his approval upon her sin becomes an accomplice in a subterbrutish crime. But neither church nor state can read a woman's heart--all it can do is to announce to the world, "This woman elects to be that man's wife." There's naught more sacrosanct in the act of church or state in so far as the marriage ceremony is concerned than in the newspaper notice of its consummation. A few years ago a young and cultured woman, a woman beautiful as the dawn and with a suggestion of the Madonna in her fair young face, was persuaded by an ambitious mother to marry an old Silenus whom the political ocean in its madness had scooped out of the ooze and thrown among the stars. Three children have been born to her, and if current report may be credited, all are semi-idiots. Her gross husband is so repulsive to her that her babies are conceived as in some devil's dream and brought forth in despair. Thank heaven this ill-mated couple are not Catholics. But had they been: does Archbishop Cleary mean to tell me that all the power of the Church of Rome could have rendered their union holy? It is quite