  My memory was never my strong point. As I approach maturity (!) I find to my surprise that it is growing better rather than worse. But perhaps it couldn't grow worse! Nevertheless the time I won the world's championship as the prize forgetter I really didn't deserve it. It happened early in the divorce proceedings I had instituted at Reno against Maxine Elliott. Pardon an interjection; but I must express my surprise here that so many men and women I meet are all laboring under the delusion that I have always been on the receiving end of divorce actions! No less recently than June, 1913, I had the pleasure of reading in the New York "Evening World" a very clever article concerning my kinship with Bluebeard, and Solomon, and Henry the Eighth in the course of which the young woman who wrote the article declared I was "more divorced against than divorcing!" The truth is quite the reverse of this and it seems to me should be so easy of confirmation as to admit of no uncertainty in anyone's mind, however much my reputation makes it seem as if I should be the "divorced against" half of any match! Three divorces have marked my matrimonial experiences. I obtained two and by dint of hard work and much skirmishing (and for purely business reasons) managed to help my fourth wife obtain her freedom from me! Before the thought of divorcing Maxine had entered my head, in fact while we were still living at Jackwood, I had become interested in the mining game and after the dÉnouement at Trouville I headed straight for Reno. Even then I think it was rather my purpose to get into the mining gamble head over heels than to make the divorce center of America my "legal residence" that led me to Nevada. I'll admit that my establishing my business headquarters at Reno proved a great convenience! The proceedings were well under way and I was on the stand as a witness when the judge asked me the name of my wife before I married her. I told him it was Hall. "That's not what she says," replied the judge severely. And then it developed that when her answer to my complaint had been returned to the court she signed herself McDermott. "But that is the name of her first husband," I explained. "Her maiden name is Hall." "She swears her maiden name is McDermott," quoth the judge. "Well, her brother's name is Hall," I insisted. "I always supposed it was her name too." "Great Scott!" thundered the judge. "Don't you know your own wife's name?" "No, not if it isn't Hall," I responded. Then it developed that Maxine's maiden name was McDermott, sure enough. The McDermott she married was no relation. Her brother had assumed the name of Hall. But after all—what's in a name? |
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