A Mother Fights for Her Children—and the Court Hears How She Wore Men's Clothes to Save a Timber Claim

The Shaffer divorce and custody case is again before Judge Langley. The habeas corpus suit was revived, and Mrs. L. L. Shaffer's petition to vacate the judge's final order and take the children from her husband, Adalbert W. Shaffer, on the plea that she was not given an opportunity to tell her story, is being heard. The case was tried partially yesterday, ran on, and will go on again Monday.

The testimony was not far removed from being racy yesterday, but it was not so regarded by the neighbors of the couple who were in the courtroom. The first thing done was to read Mrs. Shaffer's petition filed last week, in which she alleges that when she went away and took with her her little girls she did not mean to disobey the order of the court, and that when Judge Langley granted her husband a writ of habeas corpus she was not served with a notice to appear and deny the charges made against her, with the result that she lost the children by the husband's decree. To support this claim a large number of witnesses testified. F. M. Sheldon, who knew the Shaffers, and I. A. Nelson, who lived next door to them when they were living on Ninth Street, both testified that Mrs. Shaffer was a good, industrious woman and kept the little girls looking neat and clean; also that she was of good moral character and fit to have the custody of the children. Mrs. Shaffer's fellow lodgers at the River State lodging house, kept by her stepmother, Mrs. S. W. Clark, testified to the same effect. Then more witnesses were called to prove that Shaffer himself was all that his wife wasn't, but the worst about him was that he once admitted to one of the witnesses that he had visited a low resort, and that he was accustomed to swear and kick the chairs about when he got mad.

Mrs. Shaffer's last witness was her stepmother, Mrs. Clark. She swore that Mrs. Shaffer was the best mother she ever saw; she would work the hardest and ask the least complaint of any woman she ever saw. She testified that after Mrs. Shaffer was compelled to abandon her husband's home because he wouldn't pay the rent, she worked as chambermaid in the River State lodging house. This last statement led Shaffer's attorney to cross-examine with regard to the husband's statements at the former trial that his wife was loose in her conduct with some of the lodgers, especially H. L. Sharp, and would visit their rooms and eat her meals with them there. Mrs. Clark said that it wasn't true, for her stepdaughter never was in the rooms except in the daytime, when she was about her work, and when she went with her children and other third parties to visit in the evening and take supper.

She also denied Shaffer's statement that last summer his wife put on men's clothes and went out of the lodging house on Third and University streets, paraded all one evening on Pike Street. The fact was, Mrs. Clark said, that Mrs. Shaffer was about to go with Mr. Clark up to Skagit County, where she had a timber claim, and had been told that the trail was so rough that she could not wear skirts. So she got an old suit of men's clothes for the trip, and she tried them on that evening and knocked at the front door of the lodging house to 'fool' Mr. Clark when he opened it. Mrs. Shaffer was not out of the house five minutes. Mrs. Clark said on further cross-examination that Mrs. Shaffer did go up to the claim, wear the clothes, and in the end make several hundred dollars out of the timber.

Two or three witnesses for Shaffer were of the opinion that Mrs. Shaffer was too familiar with a real estate man whose office she visited occasionally, but before any more of them were called Judge Langley adjourned the case to Monday.

Mrs. Shaffer, who is a tall, rather pretty young woman with blue eyes and light brown hair, a thin nose and a determined-looking mouth, paid close attention to the testimony and was constantly giving her attorney 'pointers' as to questions he should ask witnesses. Shaffer is a good-looking young man with a shock of yellow hair, but he has too much of the determined look of his wife. The little girls, who are the unwitting cause of all the trouble, are also pretty and intelligent.