Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1875 — Sale of a Wife. [ARTICLE]

Sale of a Wife.

The following facts, which a correspondent of the Wigan (England) Obterter vouches for as strictly correct, go to prove that the education movement has not yet penetrated into every nook and comer of Lancashire. A registrar of births, -deaths and marriages (especially the latter), not a hundred miles from Wigan, was . seated in his office on Monday last, when his usual routine of duties was somewhat 'diversified by aa application which the Registrar-General was, unfortunately, not provided for. Two men and a woman presented themselves before him, and after ■oneof the men had, with the solemnity befitting such an occasion, ptud to the other one the sum of 4s. 6d., he vtas requested to let them “sign their hand t*> a bit of paper/* In trebly to the nos unreasonable 4paeiy as to the nature of thm mysterious

proceeding: one of the “high contracting parties” informed him that he had just sola liis wife (the woman who accompanied them) to his friend, and all they required of him was to legalize the transaction. Great was the worthy Registrar’s amazement, but greater still was the chagrin and disappointment of the buyer and seller, in which, by the way, they were sympathized with by the fickle fair one, when they were told that such a transaction could not be allowed. In vain did they cajole and entreat. and even the reiterated assertion of the obedient wife that she was willing failed to melt the heart of the Registrar. Here was a dilemma! The would-be Benedict had paid his money to the would-be bachelor, who, in language more forcible than polite, expressed his determination to suck tp “ th’ brass.” And so there the episode ended, and the parties took their departure, sadder and, let us hope, wiser than they were before.