Should She Have Left Him? — page 129: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

lan PIsSHOrF TOC THE KRESCCE. 123 you have consulted. I am somewhat astonished someone has not seen it—that it was left for me to suggest it—me,achurchman. There is sucha thing as a marriage by civil contract. The Church holds marriage to be a holy sacrament, and abhors the civil marriage. But the law not only recognizes it, but provides for it by vesting authority to perform it in civil magistrates. It was this sort of a mar- riage that the man Adams and the woman Hallock thought they had made. Now, if I am not mis- taken, the law in this State is still more liberal. The mere standing up publicly of the man and woman, each declaring before a witness that they propose to live together as man and wife, constitutes a valid marriage—a common law marriage, I believe they call it.” Mrs. Courtenay, inclining her head in token of her comprehension of the bishop’s remarks, thought it was a very common marriage indeed. “Now,” continued the bishop, “‘it is quite among the possibilities that the mere fact of Adams and this woman standing before a witness—this magis- trate—and declaring their intentions to live as man and wife, may be interpreted as being a common law marriage, and if it were, the position of Tres- cotte and Dorothy would be much simplified.” Mrs. Courtenay was delighted, and filled anew with admiration for the bishop, who, she had always declared, was the most delightful man of her acquaintance. “Of course,” continued the bishop, “a competent Comicloo cS C@ 3