The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-04-14

It Is truly unfortunate that in the minds or persons whose travels rarel. take them west of HOhokus Nev Jersey, the great state of California Is identified with the home of thres scourges: namely and to wit, earth quakes, moving-pictures and divorces Granting the existence of the earth Quakes, which no genuine Californian will admit it is also unfortunate tha; these interesting tremblers succeed SC poorly in destroying the moving pie ture which our Hoholzus travellers naturally connect with the moving picture actor and divorce. We hate what we do not know. and while kempis remarks very sagely that few persons are improved by travel, could we go to California we might find a new background, destructive of our prejudices.
 The New Rings.
 We mi Int find upright, hard work ing men and women who set forth with their tin pails every morning when the whistle blows to summon them to another long, hard day at the moving picture factory. We might encounter an unobStruSive almost bashful, earthquake. whose gentle, soothing tremblings would bring back the days when we were rocked in our mothers arms. We might even find plenty of people in the picture col onles and assuredly, thousands, out side, who have never known the easy processes of a divorce court. Any thing may happen in California for we have never been there. But to Know people and places is often a great help to kindliness and charity Alter years of patient residence in Boston, heroic souls have been heard to speak well of the east wind.
 We should also meet in California an enterprising jeweler. who, mis- taking his little corner for the whole wide world, has designed a new ring. It is intended for the adornment of persons who have secured a legal divorce, and with its broken bows and broken hearts curiously fashioned in gold and stones, is said to be very beautiful. But its designer is no Cellini; obviously tie work lacks the prime artistic inert of sincerity. Broken cupid bows and fractured hearts are all very well for the deep grief of the swain, mourning his first rebuff. But he realizes after a time that first love is usually like measles or humps; inevita 5le but not per nanent. Our Californian craftsman should leave mythology and carry his wits back to Puritan New England threading his way through Flaw thorne's Scarlet Letter." He need not eXclaim with the ancient beadIe : blessing on the righteous colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshfne!" but In these grim pages of human sorrow he will find a hint. Reworlxing his design, he will remove the hearts and bows to replace them with the great letter A For thus should they be
  they have chosen for eternity, to enter upon another engagement with no higher ideals than one might use on a stock farm.
 The Place of Law
 But as the moralist has learned through said experience, neither the civil law nor good advice acts as a sufficient barrier against the deter mlnatiOn of men and women who pro- pose to cat off the old state to as sume a new. Good advice is handi- capped by this difficulty. that when it opposes our set intention, it seems bad, not good; and as for the civil law. its purpose may be admirable, but it can be easily circumvented by clever practitioner. The spirit of the man who sent his wife to an in sane asylum and then elected a crowd of men to the legislature on condi- ton that they make mental infirmity legal ground for divorce, still works but in a subtler manner. It is true that the so-calIed strict divorce laws usually indicate an ideal aimed at it rarely attained, and for this reason they may be justified. True also is 1t. that the state can and should surround the marriage bond with more effective protection than il present guarantees. Even if marriage be stripped of all religious connection, and be regarded simply as natural contract, it remains clear that no contract is of higher import ance to society. It is encoura ging to