"Margie's all my own, my blessed, beautiful, beloved, dear, dear little love, my adorable sweetheart!!!!!!!!!!!"

To call "Magie's" love for "Margie" superlative would be an understatement: his writing in this journal is comprised of verbose expressions of fondness and adoration for her, "the only blessed, wonderful, loyal, fine, sweet, true, adorable, lovable, precious, beautiful, altogether lovely incomparable, perfect little woman in God's great universe whom I ever have, ever can really love!!!!!!!!!" Magie's enthusiasm even bleeds into the margins of some leaves, where he has written additional missives around the main text.
Who is the lovesick "Magie," the author of this manuscript journal that positively oozes with pent-up emotion, and who is the "Margie" for whom he so desperately pines? Magie's remark that "our marriage [...] will be so far different from the marriages we knew, that they will seem like a bad dream" as well as several references to the day when Margie will be "legally free" to "give and receive" love indicate that both parties had been married previously, and that Margie was likely still in the divorce process or the remarriage waiting period when this journal was written. The US divorce rate in 1917 was just 1.2%; this borderline-taboo action often had dire social consequences for the parties involved, particularly the women, and a state- or self-imposed period of waiting before remarriage was not unusual. Magie apparently spent this separation in varying degrees of agony, emptying his (evidently very full) heart into this journal almost every day from May 28th to July 22nd.
The lovebirds remain somewhat elusive in official records, despite several tantalizing pieces of information nestled within Magie's lovelorn ramblings: references to "this fearful year" (which in addition to a mention of a state military census pins the date of this journal pretty convulsively to 1917) which was "three quarters of the way through" by July 19th, his occupation as a lawyer, and the address 302 N. Cayuga Street (a location Magie calls "our office"). That address is sometimes listed as the location of a local Ithaca restaurant (The City Cafeteria), but more frequently as the longtime residence of prominent citizen (and noted Wordsworth collector — her collection was donated to Cornell) Cynthia Woodward Morgan St. John. Her son Edward Morgan St. John (Cornell 1911, Cornell Law 1913) did work as an attorney and in the records of his 1919 marriage to Ruth Cronk he lists at least one (and possibly two) previous marriages (though we find only a 1910 marriage to Lena Marie Smith). Cronk, however, does not. Which suggests, perhaps sadly, that "Margie" if she existed at all, did not get her happily ever after. Nevertheless, a compelling document overall and a vivid vernacular portrait of limerence.

Read more: "Take Depositions in the Boyer Divorce Case," The Ithaca Journal 27 December 1916.