Once Enough

1910

"I am not an inquisitive man," said the minister, "but there is one thing I would like to know. Why do people who marry more than once never get the minister who tied the first knot to tie the second or third or fourth?

"I have married enough couples to earn for me the title of marrying parson. Many of those people were prominent enough socially to get their doings recorded in the newspapers and I learn through that medium that a fairly large percentage of them marry again. But they never ask me to officiate.

"Why don't they? Didn't I bring them good luck the first time? Has their experience prejudiced them against me personally, or is there a superstition that prevents a man being married twice by the same minister?

"Even members of my own congregation who marry again seek a strange minister. Why?"

Domestic Woe Caused By Phrase in Bible

March 1914

NEWARK, N. J. — Before Vice Chancellor Emery John P. Hammer, who is seeking a divorce from Anna Hammer, gave as the basic cause of his marital troubles his wife's too literal interpretation of the biblical injunction, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife."

"We often had words on account of my mother," Hammer explained, and so I got in the way of going to see her without saying anything about it to my wife. She used to say that, according to the Bible, after a man married he had no business to see his father and mother or other relations, but should stay by his wife.

"When my stepfather died in December, 1910, I attended to the funeral arrangements, as my mother was too old to do it herself, being about 80, and when I got home my wife said to me, 'Did you have a good time?'

"Then I told her that while before I had been going to see my mother secretly, thereafter I would do so openly."

This declaration. Hammer testified, brought on a serious estrangement, and his wife finally, on March 24, 1911, left him, after a violent quarrel.

Evangelist Criticizes Women's Dress — 'Nearly Naked'

1914

Oliver on Dress

Evangelist Makes a Few Remarks While Sojourning on Pacific Coast

Rev. French E. Oliver, who conducted the Union Evangelistic Campaign in this town, a short time ago, has come into public notice on the Pacific coast, where he is spending a season for the benefit of his health, through severe arraignment of women for immodesty in dress.

Among his utterance on the subject, while at Venice, were the following: "Most assuredly I would say that women are losing their modesty. To the styles adopted by some of the women I attribute their downfall and the crowding of the divorce courts. Think of the fact that there are over one million divorce suits filed in the United States in one year. Women are dressing to attract the attention of men, and it is this situation that results in the downfall of both. Seventy per cent of the women who go in bathing daily have scant enough clothing to shield their nakedness. No stockings, low cut waists and neither garments that do not reach to their knees. Could that be considered womanly modesty? It is the same at the Eastern beaches that are at Venice. The more aristocratic the resort the more prevalent the lack of modesty.

"One reason why the world is not as good to-day as it was years ago is that the same religion is not being preached. There is too much modernism in present day religion. Religion can not be changed with the fashions, for there is but one religion and that is the one that was first preached."

—The Van Wert Daily Bulletin, Van Wert, OH, Aug. 22, 1914, p. 2.

Divorcing Christian Scientist Husband, No Time For Child

Columbia City, Indiana, 1906

ASKS DIVORCE FROM CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST

COLUMBIA CITY, Ind., Aug 13 — Mrs. Ida Creager, residing near Collamer through her attorney, F. B. Moe, of South Whitley, Monday filed suit in the Whitley circuit court for divorce from her husband, Joseph Creager, alleging that he is a Christian Scientist and wholly failed to support her and their twelve-year-old daughter for more than two years past. Her complaint avers that since they removed from this county to Elkhart three years ago she has been compelled to work out in order to secure the means to support herself and child, while her husband refused to labor, stating that he was a Christian Scientist and had no time to devote to his family as he preferred to be alone and without wife and child that he might read and meditate along the line of his spiritual welfare. When she fell ill last fall he brought her to the home of her mother, Mrs. Sisk near Collamer, where she has since made her home. She asks an absolute divorce and custody of the child and $100 of alimony.

--The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, Fort Wayne, Indiana, August 14, 1906, page 6.