Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1890 — NOT SO MUCH OF A JOKE. [ARTICLE]

NOT SO MUCH OF A JOKE.

Mock Marriage by Telephone Proves Binding and Creates a Sensation In Two Indiana Cities. Minnie Worley is the pretty night operator at the South Ber.d telephone exchange. She is twenty-two years old, and was bora and raised in the wagon city. Frank Middleton occupies a similar posi tion in Michigan City. He is twenty-five and good looking. To keep awake o’ nights the young people worked up an acquaintance over the wire and finally became sowewhat attached to each other. One night last week Middleton in a spirit of fun, proposed to Minnie that they get married, by telephone. She consented, and he thereupon called in a Michigan City justice of the peace, named Dib’ ble, who, in order to carry out the supposed joke, placed himself in connec

Hon with the pair and repeated the legal ceremony. Afterward nothing was thought of the affair for several days, hut finally some one suggested that they had better investigate and see if they were not really married. Accordiugly the unintentional bride consulted legal counsel, who informed her that her name was Mrs. Middleton, and that she was firmly fastened in the bonds of matrimony. The groom was likewise surprised, and at once hastened to South Bend to see his bride, whom he had never before seon. Tne lawyers assert that, although the couple took out no license, they are, nevertheless, married, and that the justice is oriminally liable for performing the ceremony without securing the license. It is now reportee that the couple have since secured a lioense, and will make the best of it and live together. The only way out of the scrape is to begin divorce proceedings. Both parties are from respectable families, and the escapade has created a great socitl sensation in their respective cities. It has just soaked out that Middleton was to have been married in two months to a young lady in Elkhart.