There are two well-defined forms of the "matrimonial agent." The one
is the man who openly runs an agency, who advertises "golden-haired
young ladies, worth half a million dollars," "blue-eyed widows of
languishing temperaments" and "wealthy farmers." It is through
this class of "bureau" that the great crimes of the matrimonial
business have been engineered. Hoch, Mrs. Gunness, Holmes and other
arch-criminals made good use of this type.
The other type is just the plain swindler. The man who works along
the secondary lines, as they may be called, would scorn to be a
matrimonial agent. He is either a reverend gentleman of the cloth,
a minister to whom some languishing widow is looking for spiritual
direction, and he thinks that she "needs she should get married," to
quote the East Side phraseology; or he is a lawyer who has a wealthy
client, who, not being a business woman, is incapable of running her
own affairs, and he again thinks of marriage as a solution; or, again,
he is "an employment agency." This secondary type is generally a cheap
sort, grafting on the gullible for five or ten dollars, or even as
high as $100.