Letters were offered in evidence which were alleged to have come from
Mrs. McDonald to women friends. Some of these are said to have been
signed Mrs. J. Moysant, and to have been partly in the handwriting of
Mrs. McDonald and partly in the handwriting of Moysant. These letters
are said to have shown that Mrs. McDonald had a knowledge of the
divorce suit pending against her.
An attempt was also made to prove that Mrs. McDonald was deeded
certain property by McDonald in connection with the divorce
proceedings, and that she negotiated and disposed of that property in
part, thus, acquiescing in the terms of possession and establishing
the legality of the divorce.
Mrs. Mary McDonald, now a white-haired woman upward of sixty, declares
that she has brought suit to establish her legal status as the widow
of "Mike" McDonald for the sake of her two sons, Guy and Cassius, for
whom she desires to clear her name of any stain. Her petition for an
injunction restraining the trustees of the estate from paying to Mrs.
Dora McDonald any money as dower rights was heard by Judge Barnes on
November 18.
The contest was long and bitter between the attorneys. Crimination and
recrimination flew thick and fast. In the end, however, Judge Barnes
decided that the divorce of Mike McDonald from Mary Noonan McDonald
was legal, that the law could not go back of the records, and that,
therefore, Mary Noonan McDonald was not entitled to any share of the
McDonald estate.
But the sordid contest over the ill-gotten money of the gambling king
was not yet at end. Dora McDonald failed to pay her attorney's fees,
and the estate was again brought into the courts on an injunction
obtained by James Hamilton Lewis, who threatens to throw the estate
into involuntary bankruptcy.
Thus the long battle over tainted gain goes on. Let those who think
gambling an easy way to wealth and power read aright the lesson of
the life of Mike McDonald; one continual tissue of law-breaking,
imprisonment, divorce, scandal upon scandal, murder, adultery, leaving
a name covered over and associated with all vileness, all the mud and
slime of society, to go down to the grave with a broken heart. Is that
an alluring spectacle? Is such a life worth living? Who would emulate
it?
[Illustration: The DEVIL and THE GRAFTER]