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Newspaper Page Text
yVVVw. SHOULD A MOTHER SMOKE CIGARETTES? ; HUBBY SAYS HE DOESN'T THINK IT'S itlGHT Apparently it was simply a ques tion of whether children should be taken from a mother who roomed with a woman who is alleged to smoke cigarettes. The attorney for Jess Lasswell, the husband, who lives at 31 N. Curtis st, had witnesses testify, in lowered rtones of voice, that once on a time some one of them had seen Mrs. Ida Meyers, the "villianess" in the story, smoking a cigarette and that she had smoked it as though she was used to smoking. - And then the lawyer permitted -Jesse to unwind hifmself. The law yer did try to limit the unwinding, but once Jesse got started it was too ilate. "The trouble began this way. One morning I had to have my breakfast da. a hurry as I had a job, and my wife was cooking the breakfast when there came a rap at the door. I could have gone to the door and she could .have kept hustling with the break .fast, but no, she goes to the door and lets my breakfast stand. "'Who was it?' says L She says .it was a boarder. 'Don't let that hap .pen again,' says I, 'I won't stand for it. Boarders should have keys.' She refused to make any change in the arrangement and she was saucy to me. On Saturday I packed up my .trunk and moved away and that night I went back and gave her $2. "Two weeks" later I gave her $10. Was she grateful? She was not. She ays 'Huh! Is that all you're going to give me?' "I told her I wanted her to move ,out of the house because I didn't like 3eorge Gifford, the boarder. I found him lying on my bed once. She re cused to move. . "I went to see her next week and she was in a bad temper, so thinks I after 1-go and eat my supper she may lie feeling better so I goes back when she didn't expect me and I goes into the kitchen and what do I find? A lovely supper being cooked for one and coffee on the stove and neither of us drank coffee. She was lying down on the couch with her head propped in herhand, so she wouldn't muss her hair, and I told her she was waiting for that boarder." The lawyer for Jesse tried to stop the unwinding, but it was too late. Jesse told how his wife said she had been put out by the landlady and had gotten rooms with the said Mrs. Meyers; of how he had peeped in the window one night and caught his wife and George Gifford, a brother of Mrs. Meyers and another man playing cards. Of how he had taken his children to the nickel shows and tried to quiz them. Of how his wife had refused to live "on the dirty West Side." Of how he went to the sa loon where the said George Gifford, boarder in question, works "as sort 'of porter," and, found his wife and" .Mrs. Meyers in the ladies' room, and 'Jesse made the spectators roar with his imitation of lie alleged effemin ate greeting of Gifford. Jesse even told hom he had invad ed Mrs. 'Meyers' home and she had called "George" and George came out with his fist in his eye and Jesse quickly subdued him with harsh and angry words, but the whole plaint was that Mrs. Meyers smoked cigar ettes. "She does not," said Mrs. Jesse Lasswell. "I've lived there three weeks and never saw her smoke, but even if she did, you know your three sisters smoke and one smokes a pipe, so you shoudln't say anything about anybody else." Mrs. Jane Barnett, juvenile worker, who had investigated the Meyers' home and Mrs. Lasswell's care of her children, gave a clean bill of health to both, and the talkative Jesse was ordered to pay $8 a week for the sup port of his children. Intr rfnnir- "xfrrtw n i i nnf ixwipfl wfmmmi