Los Angeles herald., 1905-04-23
: T is a great thing to be the wife of

II
man and the mother of his chill
dren. 1t is, after all, the greatest
thing in the world marriage is, for a
woman, and no woman realizes that
fact more exqusitely, with greater
definiteness of meaning, than does poor
little Mrs. Cordova, sitting today
among the dust heap ruins of her hap
piness.
Happiness for poor little Mrs. Cor
dova was enshrined in the black
frocked figure of an itinerant Methodist
preacher, who wrote his sermons on a
typewriter. rode a bicycle and spent
his leisure hours tinkering with a
camera. The use of these mechanical
devices was the keynote to the charac-
ter of the Rev. ]. Frank Cordova; his
inherent proclivity to acquire them at
a sacrifice of things more essential and
even necessary to the proper conduct
of the clerical life must be recognized
as the salient, the predominating fea-
ture Of his psychology.
In other words, to put the matter
briefly and explicitly, the Rev. Mr.
Cordova was an inquisitive, curious
man, and, being such, he was as much
out of his sphere in the pulpit of the
South River Methodist church as-well,
as a bull in a china shop. And speak
ing of bulls, it is here opportune to re-
mark that the blood of a thousand bull
fighters flowed in the veins of the black
frocked man in the pulpit. A MeXi-
can by birth and temperamentally
Latin to the tips of his fingers, it used
to be the young theolog's delight to en-
tertain his fellow students of Drew
Theological seminary with wild tales
of his Castlian ancestry, of their pro-
wess in the bull rings of Old Spain and
of their scarcely less effulgent glories
as lady killers in the courts of love.
The fact that their swarthy, black
eyed, good-looking descendant should
run amuck of all the traditions of their
race and of their religion in order to
stand behind the pulpit of a little, un-
beautiful wooden church, painted white
and with a steeple-a church of an
allen creed in a cold and alien land
the fact of so running amuck could
hardly hold in store for the misguided
man anything else but disaster.
A Triangular Adjustment
So much for the mans side of the
triangular situation which evolved
therefrom and which the New Jersey
courts have been, and are still, trying
to adjust So much for the mans. AS
to the woman's side. that is, the other
womans Julia Brownies, it is, ironical-
IL enough, hardly worth consideration,
not even to such extenuating consid-
Grafton as may with justice be meted
out to the man who was her pastor
aid her paramour. For If love justi-
fes everything, as she no less than he
has averred in their defense, then Julia
Browne. being thus loved. as she be-
lieves and he declares, neither asks
nor requires either sympathy or pity.
But to return to the wife in the tri- |
angle. the deserted wife. sitting among
the ruins of her happiness.
What does she look like? What does |
this woman look like whose husband. |
a we'll situated Methodist minister, was
prompted to desert for the daughter |
of a blacksmith not so many years |
younger than herself and not nearly so
pretty of face,
Well to begin with, she is everything |
that Julia Browne is not. And it is only |
by feature and line by line, that a
woman's looks in such a case as this
can be properly estimated. The wo-
man cordova ran away with was
plump and buxom, the wife he deserted
is fragile almost TO spirituality. Where
the blaoksmith's daughter had fat. |