Mr. Bigamy's Confessions: An Old Seven Wives Tale

by Stephen J. Gertz

Some one has said that if any man would faithfully write his autobiography, giving truly his own history and experiences, the ills and joys, the haps and mishaps that had fallen to his lot, he could not fail to make an interesting story; and Disraeli makes Sidonia say that there is romance in every life. How much romance, as well as sad reality, there is in the life of a man who, among other experiences, has married seven wives, and has been seven times in prison - solely on account of the seven wives, may be learned from the pages that follow.

He's just a guy who can't say no. The guy in question is L.A. Abbott (b. 1813), who, in 1870, published an anonymous memoir of marriage craps, lucky seven not so lucky for our "matrimonial monomaniac," who, evidently, found the process of divorce distasteful so why bother? The trials and tribulations of a bigamist ensue.

It was all a series of misunderstandings, claims Abbott, a homeopathic doctor. When he took a young lass with him on his professional rounds out of town, for instance, she was the one who claimed they were married, not him, who was, after all, still married to another. When his brother-in-law found out about this incident, the gods of matrimony rained hell and Abbott wound up in the hoosegow.

Spoiler Alert: the farmer's daughter makes an appearance:

“From the day, almost, when I began to board with this farmer there sprung up a strong attachment between myself and his youngest daughter which soon ripened into mutual love.”  

Mutual love often ripens in Abbott's life, alas, too often at the same time. First comes love, then comes marriage, then come cops in the jailhouse carriage. It's one misadventure after another as our hero takes it on the lam throughout New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New England, Canada, and California, one step ahead of the authorities - and in-laws with pitchforks and torches. But never for long. You can run but you can't hide: Abbott becomes acquainted with the penal system x seven, prison scrapes and daring escapes. Oh, and he forges bank notes, steals, and kidnaps his own son - who later tries to murder him. Citizens of the Bay State will be fascinated by Abbott's discussion of "Love-Making in Massachusetts," whence the farmer's daughter worsts Abbott in Worcester.

Save for "flogging the devil" out of one wife, it's one serio-comic connubial calamity after another, escapades aplenty, the entire book neatly summarized in its Table of Contents, which reads like a film treatment for a whacked-out farce, Mel Brooks & Ingmar Bergman's Scenes From A Marriage Monomaniac. Caveat: beware of milliners on the make.

Frontispiece.

CHAPTER I. THE FIRST AND WORST WIFE. My Early History. The First Marriage. Leaving Home to Prospect. Sending for My Wife. Her Mysterious Journey. Where I Found Her. Ten Dollars for Nothing. A Fascinating Hotel Clerk. My Wife's Confession. From Bad to Worse. Final Separation. Trial for Forgery. A Private Marriage. Summary Separation.

CHAPTER II. MISERIES FROM MY SECOND MARRIAGE. Love-Making in Massachusetts. Arrest for Bigamy. Trial at Northampton. A Stunning Sentence. Sent to State Prison. Learning the Brush Business. Sharpening Picks. Prison Fare. In the Hospital. Kind Treatment. Successful Horse-Shoeing. The Warden my Friend. Efforts for my Release, A Full Pardon.

CHAPTER III. THE SCHEIMER SENSATION. The Scheimer Family. In Love with Sarah. Attempt to Elope. How it was Prevented. Second Attempt. A Midnight Expedition. The Alarm. A Frightful Beating, Escape. Floggiing the Devil Out of Sarah. Return to New Jersey. " Boston Yankee." Plans to Secure Sarah.

CHAPTER IV. SUCCESS WITH SARAH. Mary Smith as a Confederate. The Plot. Waiting in the Woods. The Spy Outwitted. Sarah Secured. The Pursuers Baffled. Night on the Road. Efforts to Get Married. " The Old Offender." Married at Last. A Constable After Sarah. He Gives it Up. An Ale Orgie. Return to " Boston Yankee's." A Home in Goshen.

CHAPTER V. HOW THE SCHEIMERS MADE ME SUFFER. Return to Scheimer's. Peace, and then Pandemonium. Frightful Family Row. Running for Refuge. The Gang Again. Arrest at Midnight. Struggle with my Captors. In Jail Once More. Put in Irons. A Horrible Prison. Breaking Out. The Dungeon. Sarah's Baby. Curious Compromises. Old Scheimer my Jailer. Signing a Bond. Free Again. Last Words from Sarah,.

CHAPTER VI. FREE LIFE AND FISHING. Taking Care of Crazy Men. Carrying off a Boy. Arrested for Stealing my Own Horse and Buggy. Fishing in Lake Winnepisiogee. An Odd Landlord. A Woman as Big as a Hogshead. Reducing the Hogshead to a Barrel. Wonderful Verification of a Dream. Successful Medical Practice. A Busy Winter in New Hampshire. Blandishments of Captain Brown. I go to Newark, New Jersey.

CHAPTER VII. WEDDING A WIDOW AND THE CONSEQUENCES. I Marry a Widow. Six Weeks of Happiness. Confiding a Secret, and the Consequences. The Widow's Brother. Sudden Flight from Newark. In Hartford, Conn. My Wife's Sister Betrays Me. Trial for Bigamy. Sentenced to Ten Years' Imprisonment. I Become a " Bobbin Boy." A Good Friend. Governor Price Visits Me in Prison. He Pardons Me. Ten Years' Sentence Fulfilled in Seven Months.

Attempt To Elope With Sarah Scheimer.
An exciting bridal shower and bachelor party rolled into one.

CHAPTER VIII. ON THE KEEN SCENT. Good Resolutions. Enjoying Freedom. Going After a Crazy Man. The Old Tempter in a New Form. Mary Gordon. My New " Cousin." Engaged Again. Visit to the Old Folks at Home. Another Marriage. Starting for Ohio. Change of Plans. Domestic Quarrels. Unpleasant Stories about Mary. Bound Over to Keep the Peace. Another Arrest for Bigamy. A Sudden Flight Secreted Three Weeks in a Farm House. Recaptured at Concord. Escaped Once More. Traveling on the Underground Railroad. In Canada.

CHAPTER IX. MARRYING TWO MILLINERS. Back in Vermont. Fresh Temptations. Margaret Bradley. Wine and Women. A Mock Marriage in Troy. The False Certificate. Medicine and Millinery. Eliza at Saratoga. Marrying Another Milliner. Again Arrested for Bigamy. In Jail Eleven Months. A Tedious Trial. Found Guilty. Appeal to Supreme Court. Trying to Break Out of Jail. A Governor's Promise. Second Trial. Sentenced to Three Years' Imprisonment.

CHAPTER X. PRISON LIFE IN VERMONT. Entering Prison. The Scythe Snath Business. Blistered Hands. I Learn Nothing. Threaten to Kill the Shop Keeper. Locksmithing. Open Rebellion. Six Weeks in the Dungeon. Escape of a Prisoner. In the Dungeon Again. The Mad Man Hall. He Attempts to Murder the Deputy. I Save Morey's Life. Howling in the Black Hole. Taking Off Hall's Irons. A Ghastly Spectacle. A Prison Funeral. I am Let Alone. The Full Term of my Imprisonment.

CHAPTER XI. ON THE TRAMP. The Day of my Deliverance. Out of Clothes. Sharing with a Beggar. A Good Friend. Tramping Through the Snow. Weary Walks. Trusting to Luck. Com fort at Concord. At Meredith Bridge. The Blaisdells. Last of the "Blossom" Business. Making Money at Portsmouth. Revisiting Windsor. An Astonished War Den. Making Friends of Enemies. Inspecting the Prison. Going to Port Jervis,

CHAPTER XII. ATTEMPT TO KIDNAP SARAH SCHEIMER'S BOY. Starting to See Sarah. The Long Separation. What I Learned About Her. Her Drunken Husband. Change of Plan. A Suddenly-Formed Scheme. I Find Sarah's Son. The First Interview. Resolve to Kidnap the Boy. Remonstrance of my Son Henry. The Attempt. A Desperate Struggle. The Rescue. Arrest of Henry. My Flight into Pennsylvania. Sending Assistance to my Son. Return to Port Jervis. Bailing Henry. His Return to Belvidere. He is Bound Over to be Tried for Kidnapping. My folly.

CHAPTER XIII. ANOTHER WIDOW. Waiting for the Verdict. My Son Sent to State Prison. What Sarah Would Have Done. Interview with my First Wife. Help for Henry. The Biddeford Widow. Her Effort to Marry Me. Our Visit to Boston. A Warning A Generous Gift. Henry Pardoned. Close of the Scheimer Account. Visit to Ontario County. My Rich Cousins. What Might Have Been. My Birthplace Revisited.

CHAPTER XIV. MY SON TRIES TO MURDER ME. Settling Down in Maine. Henry's Health. Tour Through the South. Secession Times. December in New Orleans. Up the Mississippi. Leaving Henry in Massachusetts. Back in Maine Again. Return to Boston. Profitable Horse-Trading. Plenty of Money. My First Wife's Children. How They Have Been Brought Up. A Barefaced Robbery. Attempt to Blackmail Me. My Son Tries to Rob and Kill Me. My Rescue. Last of the Young Man.

CHAPTER XV. A TRUE WIFE AND HOME AT LAST. Where Were All My Wives? Sense of Security. An Imprudent Acquaintance. Moving from Maine. My Property in Rensselaer County. How I Lived. Selling a Recipe. About Buying a Carpet. Nineteen Lawsuits. Sudden Departure for the West. A Vagabond Life for Two Years. Life in California. Return to the East. Divorce from my First Wife. A Genuine Marriage. My Farm. Home at Last.

Wright, in American Fiction 1774-1900, wrongly includes the book as a novel. Kaplan, in contrast,  rightly includes it in American Autobiographies. It's too fantastic to be phoney. “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't” (Mark Twain).

Twain would have loved this book. Groucho Marx would have had a field day with it.

Capt. Spaulding: [to Mrs. Rittenhouse and Mrs. Whitehead] Let's get married.
Mrs. Whitehead: All of us?
Capt. Spaulding: All of us.
Mrs. Whitehead: Why, that's bigamy.
Capt. Spaulding: Yes, and it's big of me too.
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N.B.: A word to the wise (and wives): If you write and publish a book anonymously keep your name off the copyright page.
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[ABBOTT, L. A.]. Seven Wives and Seven Prisons: or, Experiences In the Life of a Matrimonial Monomaniac. A True Story, Written By Himself. New York: Published for the Author, 1870. First edition. Twelvemo. 205 pp. Original green cloth, gilt lettering. Frontispiece, three plates.

Kaplan, American Autobiographies 10. Wright II, 3. 
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Images courtesy of Garrett Scott, Bookseller, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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D-I-V-O-R-C-E or, John Milton on Splitsville

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1643, poet John Milton, who later wrote Paradise Lost, anonymously published The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, the first of four tracts he wrote 1643-1645 in support of divorce against Canon law, which he believed was contrary to the true meaning of Scripture and the Gospel. If a marriage was not working it was to the good of both sexes for it to be dissolved. His argument was that unsuitable unions of couples ‘chained unnaturally together’ should be broken on the grounds of incompatibility, a radical idea in its time. It shocked his contemporaries.

Divorce in 17th century England was against the law. You married for life, a holy bond that only God could break by calling one of the parties home. If the union was contentious it was a marriage to the death.

Milton had a stake in the issue.  In 1642, at age thirty-three, he married  a seventeen year old girl, Mary Powell. She soon deserted him to return to her parents. Divorce was impossible, divorce and remarriage doubly so. You could legally separate but never dissolve the union. The only out was a church annulment but that involved admitting that the marriage was never consummated,  the husband was impotent, or the wife frigid, each a major public embarrassment. He argued that neither ecclesiastic or civil powers held authority in matters of marriage and divorce; it was a a strictly private affair.

John Milton.

But only for the man. Milton had no interest in granting women the power to divorce their husbands. Yet his definition of marriage as something more than a union for procreation (or remedy against fornication) was wholly modern if one-sided: "the apt and cheerful conversation of man with woman, to comfort and refresh him against the evils of solitary life."

An unhappy couple, "mistak’n in their dispositions through any error, concealment, or misadventure"  was doomed to a "spight of antipathy to fadge together, and combine as they may to their unspeakable wearisomnes and despaire of all sociable delight." This violated  his belief in marriage as mutual companionship.

The 1643 first edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce sold out almost immediately; controversy then and now tends to promote sales. Attempts were made to ban the tract.  A second edition was issued in 1644, greatly enlarged by almost half and including a new Preface "To the Parliament of England with the Assembly." Two more editions appeared in 1645, reprints of the 1644 issue, one with an errata page, the other, possibly unauthorized, without one. The other three of Milton's Divorce tracts are The Judgment of Martin Bucer, Tetrachordon, and Colasterion. John Milton's model for the ideal marriage is manifest in the relationship between Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost (1667).

Gustave Doré, Adam and Eve in the Garden, Paradise Lost (1866).

In 1964, as the first kid on my block to come from what was then still quaintly called a "broken home," I was in the vanguard, a young, lone pioneer on the  frontier when the Greatest Generation decided things weren't so great and made a strategic retreat from the domestic battlefield to a separate peace. It was in the next year, 1965, that the divorce rate in the U.S. began its march toward doubling by 1975; I was an anxious point-man on recon before hostilities broke-out on a large scale.

Holy matrimony, Batman! In those days,  New York State, as so many others, made divorce a legal ordeal as wrenching as its emotional anguish. But there was an exotic, legit alternative. You could visit  pre-drug cartel Juarez in sunny Mexico, hang around for a few hours, have lunch. see the sights, pay a nominal court fee, and be granted a that's-all-there-is-to-it divorcio al vapor - evaporated nuptials. 

My mother was necessarily one such divorce tourist. I'm not sure whether it occurred during Mexico's Dia de los Muertos holiday but afterward my parents' marriage was officially dead and no one was celebrating except me. Consumed with guilt for bearing such a betraying sentiment (and for so much more), I  beat myself up like a human piñata for years afterward. And, in what became a family tradition, my own marriage ended in divorce, as did my sister's. For me, divorce was a rite of passage ceremony, an adult bar mizvah for the damned. When I walked out the door I dropped off a cliff.

Now, everybody's doing it; so what else is new? But forty-eight years ago my sister and I earned purple hearts for injuries incurred in the cross-fire, wounds that, for me, never bled until much later when the  effects of my parents' divorce finally spilled. When the  school psychologist - who I was sent to because I was truant for nearly three months straight - asked how I thought my parents' split affected me, I insouciantly replied, "not at all," the response of a kid who'd battened-down the hatches and hunkered-in until the storm passed but it never did.

As crippling as its aftermath was had my parents not split-up my outcome would have been so much worse before it got so much better. It might not have gotten better at all. I'm thankful to John Milton for his efforts at reformation.

In 1968, country-western diva Tammy Wynette spelled out what was still the broken love that dare not speak its name, below introduced by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, a married couple that only a six-shooter could separate but was never drawn and fired for the sake of their child, Trigger, who they stuffed as a keepsake after his death.

And now, as God said in Paradise Lost when He expelled Adam and Eve from  Eden, "Happy Trails!"*


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M[ILTON], J[ohn].  The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; restor'd to the good of both SEXES, from the bondage of CANON LAW, and other mistakes, to the true meaning of Scripture in the LAW and GOSPEL compar'd: wherein also are set down the bad consequences of abolishing or condemning of Sin, that which the law of God allowes, and Christ abolisht not: now the second time revis'd and much augmented in two books: to the Parliament of England with the Assembly. London: Imprinted in the Year 1645.

Forth edition. Small quarto. [8], 72 pp, with the usual mispagination to pp. 69-78 in sheet G. Lackng errata.

Wing M2110. Coleridge, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Milton Collection in the Alexander Turnbull Library 17. Parker, Milton: A Biography, pp. 890-891.

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* Paradise Lost by John Milton. Newly Revised for a Popular Audience by T. Basil Leeves. Frostbite Falls: Wottsamatta U Press, 1989.
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Image of 1645 edition courtesy of Bernard Quaritch Ltd, currently offering this title, with our thanks.

Image of 1643 first edition courtesy of Rutgers University, with our appreciation.

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Breaking Rare Book News: Tarzan Dumps Jane, Boy Broken-Hearted

By Stephen J. Gertz

 

I suppose it had to happen. Another episode of Splitsville. I had no idea their relationship was on the rocks.

After living in sin and swinging around the jungle with Jane Porter for years, Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, né Lord Greystoke, has decided, it seems, to throw her to the lions and monkey around with Gloria, another Great White Woman, here in trés chic Chanel, who, apparently, on the way to Altoona, PA, got on the wrong Trailways bus and wound up in Africa.

She met the Ape-Man, who, reportedly in the midst of a mid-life crisis, was vulnerable to her charms. She put the pep back into his tired jungle cry. He was a goner.

 

These are the first editions in French of Tarzan comic books Nos. 1 & 2 (1936, 1937), originally published in the United States in 1929 and illustrated, as here, by Hal Foster.  P.F. Caillé was responsible for the French adaptation.

Hal Foster (pseudonym of Harold Rudolph Foster, 1892-1981) quit his art studies and followed an adventurous life, big-game hunting and searching for gold. He returned to his home town, Chicago, in 1921, resumed his art education, first at the Art Institute of Chicago, later at the National Academy of Design, and committed himself to art. 

He began as a book and advertising illustrator and soon developed a solid reputation. In 1929, he was asked to illustrate the comic-strip and comic book editions of Tarzan, based upon the 1914 (Chicago: A.C. McClurg) novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes,  that spawned the successful series of books that captured the imagination of children and adults and led to a multimedia empire. 

The family in happier times..

Tarzan and Gloria? It could have been worse. Tarzan and Sheila, Tarzan and Gertrude. Tarzan and Hermoine. Tarzan and Tallulah. Or, in a more up-to-date mating with a  light bestial touch, Tarzan and Bambi.

 

Decades will pass before the full impact of his parents' split hits Korak ("Killer") aka Boy, by then, hopefully, Man, and he fully grasps that his failed relationships, anger and depression, substance abuse, spotty employment record, and unnatural attraction to lower primates of either sex stem from this tragedy when his mom, Jane, disappeared,  and Tarzan took sides with his evil step-mother, Gloria, making his adolescence a living hell and conflict with Pops a daily routine. Divorce is a jungle.

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Booktryst is pleased to have scooped TMZ  the National Enquirer, the Huffington Post, the Star, Daily Mail, and other tabloids on this story.  

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BURROUGHS, Edgar Rice. Tarzan No. 1 and No. 2. Illustrations de H, Foster. Adapt. française de P.F. Caillé. Paris: Hachette, 1936, 1937. Tall octavos. 64; 48 pp. Quarter yellow cloth over pictorial boards.

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Why P.F. Caillé kicked "Jane" to the curb and instead used the name Gloria remains a mystery, Hachette has a lot to answer for.

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Book images courtesy of Harteveld Rare Books Ltd, currently offering this item, with our thanks.

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Rare Early Scientology Book May Help Katie Holmes v. Tom Cruise

By Stephen J. Gertz

It's "based upon the Nexological teachings contained in 'Lessons For Living' which is a course of instruction in the relationship between things," so you know you can depend upon it.

The book is Mind Over Matter: The Development and Control of Psychokinesis (1955) from Human Engineering Inc., an organization related to Scientology and apparently run by Kenneth Hart, a relation to husband and wife,  Alphia and Agnes Hart, publisher and editor, respectively, of the early-Scientology-related newsletter, The Aberree, published between 1954-1964; Kenneth Hart appears in several issues. Alphia Hart was a former editor of the official Dianetics Journal.

Human Engineering Inc. embraced hypnotism, telepathy, and, as here, psychokinesis, aka telekinesis or Carrie's Disease, more commonly known as mind over matter, the control of the material through the exertion of mental power with sequela mayhem at the high school prom, death, and destruction.

The book's wrapper illustrates the concept: a man reads the newspaper while controlling the universe with his mind. This is something I do on a regular basis. I was, as an example, responsible for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" while sitting comfortably 3000 miles away in my Lazy-Boy lounger reading Popular Mechanics.  I also led the Navy SEAL team that took down Osama Bin Laden while I was reading an issue of Boy's Life, the official publication of the Boy Scouts of America, in bed one evening. (I later received the anti-terrorism merit badge, an embroidered portrait of Dick Cheney giving the Okay! sign with a wink).  Discovery of the Higgs boson? Me, while reading about Hugo Boss in GQ. Don't look for these facts in the news; I mentally blocked their publication.

Perhaps if Katie Holmes reads this book she can develop her mental powers to move Tom Cruise to the other side of the world as far away from her as possible. I'm concentrating on that as I write. Later I'll intensely focus on getting Katie interested in an aging rare book guy and discovering the wonderfulness of life within the secretive, cultish antiquarian book world and the cool happenings at the ABAA-Celebrity Center in New York City. Plenty of vintage childrens books there for Suri to read while Katie and I nuzzle oh-so-close in a nook with a glass of white wine and a fine rare book.

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[SCIENTOLOGY]. Mind Over Matter: The Development and Control of Psychokinesis. Fairhope, Alabama / Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire: Human Engineering, Inc. 1955. First edition. Quarto. 24 pp. Mechanically-produced mimeograph sheets with printed rectos only. Tape bound with stiff blue pictorial wrappers.

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Image courtesy of Between The Covers, with our thanks.
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Bookbinding on Trial in Divorce Case

This week on Booktryst Divorce Court:

For twenty-seven years, Robert Eick, a fifty-seven year old bookbinder in Madison, New Jersey, has been operating as R.A. Eick Quality Bookbinding.

He and his wife divorced in 2007 after twenty-nine years of marriage. He was ordered to pay alimony as well as child support for their two minor children remaining at home.

In 2009, Eick filed a motion to have his alimony and support obligations diminished. Why? His business was taking a swan dive into a shallow pool; bookbinding "has declined drastically, to wit:

"My main customers are law firms. Now that they have access to online research databases their need for my product has diminished substantially. The decline in my business is an industry wide issue... I have been in the book binding business for the last 27 years...

"...My business is extremely specialized. At the time of our divorce, my income from my business was $117,000.00. Defendant was earning $29,000.00 per year. As indicated on my current Case Information Statement [(CIS)], my total business income in 2007 was down to $89,270.00, with an adjusted gross income of $51,692 a reduction of $27,730.00 and $65,308.00 respectfully [sic]. In 2008, my gross business income was only $82,948.00 and my adjusted gross income was approximately $36,783.00. The decline in my business is a result of changes in technology. My customers, who in the past would have bound their books have started to put everything on disks or the internet...

"...The book binding business has decreased rapidly on account of the use of electronic research systems, growth of imported bound printed material and the general downturn in the economy."

The trial judge heard oral argument on July 17, 2009. Eick's motion was denied. The judge stated:

"Certainly it is true that these are economically challenged times. But, again, Lepis [v. Lepis, 83 N.J. 139 (1980)] requires not only a substantial change of circumstance, but a demonstration that those changes are permanent.

"And we can question whether, given the nature of the bookbinding business, the change is in fact permanent. But I certainly cannot take current economic conditions as a justification for reducing the voluntarily agreed to obligations, because these economic conditions, as referred to by the plaintiff, are - one can only hope and anticipate - temporary.

"It is a difficult decision that needs to be left to the courts to make based on a consideration of all of the circumstances. Again, the court recognizes that there may in all likelihood be some impact on the plaintiff's earnings, I should say, income, by virtue of the fact that we are in difficult economic times.

"But given the fact that the issues facing the bookbinding industry in 2007, the prospect of it being a promising business even as of 2007, the court concludes that plaintiff had the same issues that he's looking at now, only further complicated by the fact that we are in economically difficult times.

"So, the changes in the bookbinding business industry from 2007 to today are virtually nonexistent. They are about the same. They are just further complicated by the fact that we have a temporary economic situation that we anticipate will rebound.

"So, based on all of those circumstances, the court concludes that the plaintiff has not met the threshold requirement of demonstrating a permanent and substantial change of circumstances that would warrant modification of either the alimony or the child support obligations."

Eick appealed the judge's decision. The appeal was decided on August 18, 2010.

We will spare you the legal details. Suffice it to say, Eick won this round due to his ex-wife's increased income and the fact that, according to the appellant judge,

"the trial judge did not make adequate findings with respect to whether the reduction in plaintiff's earnings was of a permanent or temporary nature...For example, notwithstanding plaintiff's undisputed allegations as to why his bookbinding business had decreased, the judge found that 'changes in the bookbinding business industry from 2007 to today are virtually nonexistent.' We discern no substantial, credible evidence of record to support that finding.

"The judge further found that plaintiff 'had the same issues that he's looking at now,' as he had in 2007, but acknowledged that those 'issues' were 'further complicated by the fact that we are in economically difficult times.' Notwithstanding this latter finding, however, the judge declined to find that plaintiff had, as a result, suffered a permanent diminution in his earnings; this was apparently the result of the judge's 'hope and anticipat[ion]' that the 'current economic conditions' are 'temporary.'

"In sum, we are satisfied that plaintiff has made a prima facie showing of changed circumstances sufficient to warrant discovery and a plenary hearing."

Good thing. Eick must surely be frustrated, on the verge of cracking his hinges, yet stab-stitching an officer of the court - and, certainly, one's ex-wife - is bad form if not a felony in most jurisdictions across the country.

It is always sad when the ties that bind are broken. Marry that to bindings tied to broken bond and promised bread and you have a situation bound to become another dark chapter in the book of love.

We now await the outcome of Eick v. Eick: Is the Bookbinding Business As Rotten As Petitioner Claims? Is the trade going to hell in a Halifax binding?

Or, the documentary, Mothers, Don't Let Your Children Grow Up To Be Bookbinders, based upon the  hit self-help book for gold-diggers of either sex, Never Marry a Bookbinder (Unless You Want Someone Really Good  With Their Hands).

In the meantime, you, Booktryst reader, are judge and jury. Oyez, oyez, oyez! What say you?

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Full transcript of the appellant judge's decision here.
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