was “reliable,” “a, good worker,” etc.  “His general conduct,” a policeman would say of another, “as regards both the women, was good.”  The barristers, as was natural, dwelt on the Army record of most of the men, and, even when a client had pleaded guilty, would appeal to the judge to remember that he had before him a man with a stainless past.  “But wait, wait,” the judge would interrupt; “you know bigamy is a very serious offence.”  “I quite agree with your lordship,” counsel would reply nervously, “but I beg of you to take into consideration that the prisoner was carried away by his love for this woman—­” This was where the judge always grew indignant.  He was a little man with big eyebrows, a big nose, a big mouth, and white whiskers.  His whiskers made him appear a little like Matthew Arnold in a wig and scarlet, save that he did not look as if he were sitting above the battle.  “You tell me,” he declared warmly, “that he loved this woman, while he admits that he deceived her into marrying him and falsely described himself in the marriage certificate as a bachelor.”  Counsel would again nervously agree with his lordship that his client had done wrong in deceiving the woman, but in three sentences he would have found another way round to the portraiture of the prisoner as all but a model for the young.  Certainly, the great increase in the offence of bigamy proves at least the hollowness of all the talk about the growing indifference to the marriage tie.  Whatever we may think of bigamists—­and there are black sheep in every flock—­the bigamist is manifestly a much-married man.  He is a person, I should say, with the bump of domesticity excessively developed.  The merely immoral man, as most of us know him, does not ask for the sanction of the law for his immorality.  He does not feel the want of “a home from home,” as the bigamist does.  The increase in bigamy, it seems clear enough, is largely due to the war, which not only gave men opportunities for travel such as they had never had before, but enabled them to travel in a uniform which was itself a passport to many an impressionable female heart.  Men had never been so much admired before.  Never had they had so wide a choice of female acquaintances.  “I am amazed,” said Clive on a famous occasion, “at my own moderation.”  Many a bigamist, as he stands in the dock in these days of the cool fit, could conscientiously put forward the same plea.  But the most that any of them can say is that they thought the first wife was dead or that she wanted to bring up the children Roman Catholics.

The first wife in one of the bigamy cases went into the witness-box, and I saw what to me was an incredible sight—­an Englishwoman of thirty who could neither read nor write.  Red-haired, tearful, weary, she did not even know the months of the year.  She said a telegram had been sent to her husband saying she was dangerously ill in February.  “Was that this year or last year?” asked counsel.