< Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu
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CHAPTER XIX

IN THE LION'S DEN


To understand the rest of this episode, you must know something about the divorce laws of New York, and about divorce procedure. The code of the State, which was framed by a combination of Puritan bigotry with Roman Catholic obscurantism, requires infidelity legally proven. The defendant cannot confess, and neither party to the suit can testify against the other; moreover, if it appears that both have desired the divorce or consented to the divorce, there is "collusion" and the divorce is not granted. These laws are administered by judges who are almost invariably corrupt, many of them in addition being under the spell of Catholic superstition, considering that they have decreased the period of their sojourn in purgatory when they succeed in twisting the law or the evidence so as to balk some person's desire to be free from marital disharmony.

Into this jungle of ravening beasts and poisonous serpents I now walked, unarmed and unprotected—having made the mistake of employing a lawyer who was a sensitive and honorable gentleman. The Court appointed a referee to hear the case, and before this referee I appeared with my counsel and my witnesses; also there appeared the counsel for the other party, as required by law, and a solemn farce was played. The referee had got the case as a morsel of graft from the infamous Tammany machine; whether he was malicious or merely ignorant, I do not know, but he was evidently possessed with curiosity concerning the notorious scandal, and questioned me concerning my attitude toward the matters in evidence—how I had regarded them and what I had done about them. My attorney objected that under the law I was not permitted to testify concerning my wife's conduct, but the referee insisted that I should answer his questions, and for fear of angering him, and possibly exciting his suspicions, I answered.

Under the law it was provided that all this testimony should be secret, the property of the Court. My attorney and the attorney for the other party demanded of the referee

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