according to law, she is your wife--there is no getting around that; but

she didn't marry you, and if she never intended to marry you, you are not

her husband, of course. Ergo, in marrying Jones, she was guilty of

bigamy, because she was the wife of another man at the time; which is all

very well as far as it goes--but then, don't you see, she had no other

husband when she married Jones, and consequently she was not guilty of

bigamy. Now, according to this view of the case, Jones married a

spinster, who was a widow at the same time and another man's wife at the

same time, and yet who had no husband and never had one, and never had

any intention of getting married, and therefore, of course, never had

been married; and by the same reasoning you are a bachelor, because you

have never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a

wife living; and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have

been deprived of that wife; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia

in the first place, while things were so mixed. And by this time I have

got myself so tangled up in the intricacies of this extraordinary case

that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise you--I might

get confused and fail to make myself understood. I think I could take up

the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile,

perhaps I could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed

at all, or that you are dead now, and consequently don't need the

faithless Edwitha--I think I could do that, if it would afford you any

comfort.

"ARTHUR AUGUSTUS."--No; you are wrong; that is the proper way to throw a

Sketches New and Old