THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

For the first time in over one hundred years, at least one of the old Blue Laws of New Jersey has been brought into action. On Wednesday, in the Warren County court, a wise and enlightened jury tried a citizeness of Phillipsburg, and after twenty minutes of deliberation convicted her of being a common scold.

Immediately thereupon arose an interesting legal point. The old law, still on the statute books, commands that any person so convicted be ducked forth-with upon the town ducking stool. Unfortunately for a strict observance of the letter of the mandate, however, all Phillipsburg's ducking stools were either in museums, which refused to give them up, or else had long since been smashed into kindling wood to light Phillipsburg fires of a winter morning. The Judge was in a quandary. The law commanded him in unmistakable terms to have the malefactress ducked; on the other hand, even a judge cannot duck a lady without a ducking stool; unless he is willing to throw her in bodily--a thing which this magistrate's chivalry absolutely forbade. After hours of mental unrest, he compromised with a suspended sentence of six months in jail, and a fine of three hundred dollars.

Even though the sentence was suspended, the fine appears extraordinarily heavy in comparison with a mere ducking. And not only does it appear unjustly heavy but totally inefficient. For the fiery dame, comparatively, came in to court like a lamb and went out like a lion. While a ducking, if it could have been had, might have dampened her spirits, the only final way of quelling her inconquerable tongue would be to administer the medicine of a certain doctor in Shaw's play. "The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife". It will be remembered that this learned physician unloosed the lady's tongue, and since from then on it was never still, the brow-beaten husband had the doctor tie it up again. But such benign doctors only lived in the Middle Age or in Shaw's imagination. Therefore the one hope remaining to Phillipsburg is that tht Damocletian sword of suspended sentence will shortly fall and that the minions of the law with cotton-stuffed ears, will hail this Xantippe to some wild and lonely tower.