It was one of those letters in which you can find everything except an end; and the writer was one of those men whose subjects, like an unhealthy hair, always split at the end, making at least two subjects out of one.

For instance, he started to show me the resemblance between his life and the story of the play; but when he came to mention his wife, the hair split, and instead of continuing, he branched off, to tell me she was the step-daughter of “So-and-so,” that her own father, who was “Somebody,” had died of “something,” and had been buried “somewhere”; and then that hair split, and he proceeded to expatiate on the two fathers’ qualities, and state their different business occupations, after which, out of breath, and far, far from the original subject, he had to hark back two and a half pages and tackle his life again.

Truth to tell, it was rather pathetic reading when he kept to the point, for love for his wife cropped out plainly between the lines after years of separation.  Suddenly he began to adorn me with a variety of fine qualities.  He assured me that I had penetration, clear judgment, and a sense of justice, as well as a warm heart.

I was staggering under these piled-up traits, when he completely floored me, so to speak, by asking me to take his case under consideration, assuring me he would act upon my advice.  If I thought he had been too severe in his conduct toward his wife, to say so, and he would seek her out, and humble himself before her, and ask her to return to him.

He also asked me whether, as a woman, I thought she would be influenced wholly by the welfare of her children, or whether she would be likely to retain a trace of affection for himself.

That letter was an outrage.  The idea of appealing to me, who had not had the experience of a single divorce to rely upon!  Even my one husband was so recent an acquisition as to be still considered a novelty.  And yet I, all unacquainted with divorce proceedings, legal separations, and common law ceremonies, was called upon to make this strange man’s troubles my own, to sort out his domestic woes, and say:—­

“This sin” is yours, but “that sin” is hers, and “those other sins” belong wholly to the co-respondent.

What a useful word that is!  It has such a decent sound, almost respectable.  We are a refined people, even in our sins, and I know no word in the English language we strive harder to avoid using in any of its forms than that word of brutal vulgarity, but terrific meaning—­adultery.

The adulterer may be in our midst, but we have refinement enough to refer to him as the “So-and-So’s” co-respondent.

I was engaged in saying things more earnest and warm than correct and polished—­things I fear the writer of the letter could not have approved of—­when I was pulled up short by the opening words of another paragraph, which said:  “God! if women suffer in real life over the loss of children, husband, and home, as you suffered before my very eyes last night in the play; if my wife is tortured like that, it would have been better for me to have passed out of life, and have left her in peace.  But I did not know that women suffered so.  Help me, advise me.”