Enemies were unsparing in their denunciations, and friends ridiculed the whole proceeding.

I was constantly called on for a definition of marriage and asked to describe home life as it would be when men changed their wives every Christmas.

Letters and newspapers poured in upon me, asking all manner of absurd questions, until I often wept with vexation.

So many things, that I had neither thought nor said, were attributed to me that, at times, I really doubted my own identity.
However, in the progress of events the excitement died away, the earth seemed to turn on its axis as usual, women were given in marriage, children were born, fires burned as brightly as ever at the domestic altars, and family life, to all appearances, was as stable as usual.
Public attention was again roused to this subject by the McFarland-Richardson trial, in which the former shot the latter, being jealous of his attentions to his wife.

McFarland was a brutal, improvident husband, who had completely alienated his wife's affections, while Mr.Richardson, who had long been a cherished acquaintance of the family, befriended the wife in the darkest days of her misery.