San Antonio Daily Light

KING OF BIGAMISTS.

Walter L. Farnsworth, of Chicago, Claims the Title.
Yet He Calls Marriage a Failure—Policemen Insist That He Has Forty-Two Wives—Some Philosophic Reflections.

Walter L. Farnsworth, alias Bradford, who the Chicago police assert has been wedded 42 times, pronounces marriage a failure.
"Still, while there's life there's hope," Farnsworth philosophized, as he stuck his feet up on the bars of his cell and softly whistled a bar of "The Girl I Left Behind Me."

Farnsworth is now comfortably installed in the Cook county jail awaiting trial for marrying Mrs. Mears, of Chicago; Mrs. Pippinger, of Elkhart, Ind.;

WALTER L. FARNSWORTH.

Mrs. Kiefer, of Peoria; a fourth woman in Little Rock, Ark., and Mrs. Ayres, of Galesburg, without the formality of a divorce from any of them.

"I told Mrs. Mears and Mrs. Pippinger and the rest of them that they ought to get divorces from me," Farnsworth explained in an injured tone. "I told 'em what they ought to do, and they wouldn't do it; too stingy of their money."

Mr. Farnsworth considers himself a martyr. He says he has been a model husband, who married for the sake of a quiet home. Now he finds only contempt and abuse where he had looked for troops of friends and wads of money.

During the course of his eventful matrimonial career he has accumulated a store of philosophical reflections. To a reporter for the Sunday Inter Ocean, who visited his cell, he imparted a few nuggets of wisdom on matrimony and life in general.

"They say that marriage is a lottery. It ain't; it's a three-card monte."

"If I had to marry again I would be very careful."

"A woman will let you take her pocketbook, and say nothing. It's trash to her. But when it comes to trifling with her affections she blocks the game."

"If a man tries to be loving and kind to everybody he gets into trouble. It's the selfish chumps who never look beyond their own firesides that women like."

"When a man is sure he understands feminine nature, right then that man is on the high road to the Cook county bastile. Pride goes before a fall."

"Do you know what I'd like to do? I'd like to bet that I could walk out of here to-morrow and marry again under the name of W. L. Farnsworth. Good men are scarce, and I'm no slouch when I have a clean collar on."

"Any man feels cheap when a woman hauls him over the coals in the presence of company. That's been the most mortifying thing about this trial."

FARNSWORTH'S IDEA OF A HOME

"Have you really been married 49 times?" asked the reporter.

"No, upon my honor, only five times," Farnsworth said, straightening up. "My first wife was a lovely woman. I disremember just now when we were married, but it was sometime in the '80s, I think; can't remember her name, either. But, as I say, we lived together happily. I was always home evenings, never touched a drop of whisky, and never raised a row about a dressmaker's bill in my life. I've paid for hats, too, lots of times, and never said a word. But she died, and I was lonesome.

"The next one was Mrs. Callie Pippinger, who had a little millinery store down in Indiana. Lord, what a fool I was. Just married her for accommodation. She was lonesome, and I was lonesome, and I allowed my sympathies to overcome my judgment, and I married her. Why, at one time I bought that woman two dozen hats for her millinery store and sent'em to her from Chicago. Two dozen hats! picked 'em out myself. Sometimes now I have a faint feeling when I walk by a milliner store. Well, I had a terrible time with her, and one morning I picked up my hat and walked away; just packed my trunk and never came back any more. After I got over the shock of the separation I married Mrs. Mears."