Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1882 — A Worm That Turned. [ARTICLE]

A Worm That Turned.

When Mr*. Davenport sued for a divorce in a Missouri court, says T. W. Higginson, in a facetious vein, she testified that her hnshand “ had a theory of his own in regard to marriage, and wanted his own married life to be in accordance with it. That theory was that the wife shpnld have no will of her own in any respect, and that she most obey him in all things, and question nothing; Being a man of accurate and methodical mind, he seems to hare embodied the application of these principles in certain rules, to which he obliged her to subscribe. She waa to wear what clothes he bade her wear. She was to eat onty what he directed. She was to walk in... the streets only with those whom he named. She most correspond only with her near relatives. She must show him all her letters. And finally she must “ speak to no one about books or literature or Europe.” Here was a simple and consistent basis for married life. Here was the old principle of “ baron and feme ” put into practice. In theory it should have prod iced a model household, with which even Dr. Shattuck or Mr. Parkman would be quite content, Alas for the uncertainty of human wishes ! The actual working of events was quite the other way. Mrs. Davenport could not permanently endure such a condition of things—to be forbidden even to mention Mont Blano or Queen Victoria; and to have her dresses selected by one of that sex who are, as Dr. Jeffries assures us, very generally color blind. In the brief abstract of the trial which I have seen, it does, not appear that the married pair actually came to blows on a question of ribbons; but Mrs. Davenport frankly admits that, under certain circumstances, she “talked back.” It ended in her leaving her husband and returning to her mother’s home. Here it is that the Roman virtue of Mr. Davenport seems to have quailed. Perhaps in his zeal to control his wife’s wardrobe he did not ask himself what, in her absence, would become of his own ? Perhaps it was not till he found himself buttonless and stockingless that his courage yielded, and he weakly wrote to her as his “tomsy-womsy,” called her the best and sweetest of women, and implored her to return. -She, not wishing the sterner sex to have the monopoly of weakness, relented also ; she returned; the rules were again put in force, and she sued for a divorce. The court gave it to her ; and now the one consistent and old-fashioned husband in America is without a “ tomsy-womsy. ”