"Jolly for us," commented Tutt. "It means dollars per year to us. Well," he remarked, stretching his legs and yawning, "divorce is sure an evil."
"That's no news," countered Mr. Tutt. "It was just as much of an evil in the time of Moses, of Julius Caesar, and of Edward the Confessor as it is now. There hasn't been anything approaching the flagrancy of Roman divorce in modern history."
"Thank heaven there's still enough to pay our office rent--anyhow!" said Tutt contentedly. "I hope they won't do anything so foolish as to pass a national divorce law."
"They won't," Mr. Tutt assured him. "Most Congressmen are lawyers and are not going to take the bread out of their children's mouths. Besides, the power to regulate the domestic relations of the United States, not being delegated under the Constitution to the Federal Government, is expressly retained by the states themselves."
"You've given me a whole lot of ideas," admitted Tutt. "If I get you rightly, as each state is governed by its own independent laws, the status of married persons must be governed by the law of the state where they are; otherwise if every couple on some theory of exterritoriality carried the law of the state where they happened to have been joined together round with them we would have the spectacle of every state in the union interpreting the divorce laws of every other state--confusion worse confounded."
"On the other hand," returned Mr. Tutt, "the law is settled that a marriage valid when made is valid everywhere; and conversely, if invalid where made is invalid everywhere--like our Mongolian case. If that were not so every couple in order to continue legally married would have to go through a new ceremony in every state through which they traveled."
"Right-o!" whistled Tutt. "A parson on every Pullman!"
"It follows," continued Mr. Tutt, lighting a fresh stogy and warming to his subject, "that as each state has the right to regulate the status of its own citizens it has jurisdiction to act in a divorce proceeding provided one of the parties is actually domiciled within its borders. Naturally this action must be determined by its own laws and not by those of any other state. The great divergence of these laws makes extraordinary complications."