DIVORCE DODGES THE following published in town topics lets a little daylight in upon the manner of procuring divorces in chicago the rapid city by the lake is a rigidly progressive gres sive and church building centre of modern Chri christian seian civilization not a little disquietude was caused in chicago last week by the exposure iu in a leading daily newspaper of the manners and methods by which a certain lawyer in the metropolis of the west has been securing divorces for his patrons at the lowest possible cash cost and w with ith as little delay as need be the lawyer in question is a mr A goodrich an unobtrusive gentleman of middle age whose business of one sort and another in the courts has gathered him in a fortune of several hundred thousand dollars and has led incidentally sad to relate late to his disbarment from active practice mr goodrich however has been in the habit of conducting the technical part of his divorce industry through the medium of an associate counsel who was quite content to perform these offices for a ma moderate money consideration P leaving his principal to enmesh the fish and by his good generalship and tactful display of sympathy bring their affairs to a head the author or rather authoress of the expose is a 4 young w woman 0 O la who in journalistic cire circles le ama i is s known as the nellie of chi cago personating a married woman who sought release from matrimonial ri fetters she called on mr goodrich explained to that gentleman that she had not the slightest ground under the law for a separation from her husband but nevertheless wished to secure one the lawyer bit at the bait savagely gely he agreed for a consideration of to procure his caller her desired divorce the young woman then found a masculine acquaintance who for the sake of the joke was willing to figure as the husband from whom she desired to emancipate herself in each others other Fj company the ah pair r called on mr goad alch who was handed a retainer by the supposed would be divorcee and negotiations were opened in earnest the bious husband agreed on his cifes wi fes paying him 1000 not to contest the suit whereupon the lawyer asked him whether he preferred to be divorced for cruelty or infidelity idding adding with much frankness that the latter charge was referable inasmuch as most judges were ready to believe it quicker than anything I 1 else he assured the couple ahm th ua their way was now easy despite the fact that no infidelity had been committed and he went so far ate as to pledge his word that they should haye have their divorce in ten days all alkhis this constituted pretty strong evidence as to the airy lightsomeness with which divorces have been procured in chicago but the re fe Kub table mr goodrich in the fullness fallness of his heart volunteered to his fair client a few statements as to his own record as a divorce procurer that even chicago finds a little astonishing he declared in ia substance that he had bad been instrumental in divorcing innumerable couples as devoid of legal grounds for the severing of their marital chains as the couple then before him he announced moreover that if he chose to step up to the bar and tell all he knew about collusive divorces of the methods by which divorced people of both sexes of his own acquaintance had procured ro decrees of the adroit if if irregular m means ea which he himself h had ard ar employed pl oy abich to separate legally t bound nd but m mutually t ally hated souls that there would bea be astir stir up in the town beside which the great lire fire would be as a mere whiff of hot air it is hard to imagine the results of such a wholesale disclosure upon chicago society the young detective journalist is making her revels 1 eions in serial form and their termination is awaited with breathless expectancy by persons who may or may not be interested in the possibility that 50 per cent of the divorces land and remarriages solemnized in the garden city within the last ten years maybe may be ille illegal gal on account of the methods by W which ich they were procured