Possessed Of An Evil Spirit

POSSESSED OF AN EVIL SPIRIT

Milan Man Thus Charged His Wife in Court

HE OFFERED TO PRAY

A Peculiar Scene Enacted in Judge Kinne's Divorce Court Today

"My wife is nothing but a noble woman, and I have nothing but love for her," declared Thomas Richards, of Milan, in the circuit court Tuesday morning in one breath.

And then a moment after he arose from his seat and declared excitedly: "But she is possessed of an evil spirit and if you will let me I will kneel right down here and pray God that she may be delivered of it."

But Judge Kinne's court was not enlightened by this kind of a scene.

The case was a divorce suit in which Elsa Richards charged her husband with acts of cruelty. She was 28 when she married him and he was 59. She is now 46 and he is 74. It was another case of May and December. Their temperaments were incompatible and after seventeen years of married life their troubles got into the divorce court.

She claimed that she had to support the family by raising chickens and selling milk. She also claimed that she was obliged to do a hired man's work on the place and that he would not furnish her with money to buy her clothes. She said he was quarrelsome.

Mr. Richards acknowledged that he was worth about $7,000, but denied that he had been cruel. He said that hey had not spoken to each other since last June. He said she was quarrelsome.

"If we spoke it would be to quarrel and I didn't want it said by the neighbors that Richards and his wife were fighting," he declared.

The parties lived in the same house and their 14 years old boy was used as the means of conversing any conversation between the.

After the testimony was in, Judge Kinne told the attorneys that it was no use of the parties trying to live together. "And I don't think Christianity admits of anything but a separation," he said. "Mr. Richards says she is possessed of an evil spirit. He believes it. And she cannot live with him when he entertains that feeling. I think she is a good woman and he a good man. But they should not be compelled to live together."

The court then asked the lawyers to agree upon a division of the property and they came to this agreement, but the case was held open until Friday so that the titles to the properties could be looked up. On Friday the divorce will be granted.