A Public Separation on the Courthouse Steps

The sight of a man and two women quietly sitting on the courthouse steps in the bright and bracing weather of yesterday afternoon was enough to inspire poetry, but the trio was in communion with the tragic muse, for the conference on the steps amounted to nothing less than a mutual endeavor to break up a once happy home. The persons participating were Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Parker, of Tacoma, and Mrs. Parker's married sister. They had been seen on Columbia street, between Front and Second, engaged in an animated conversation, ending in a turbulent arena in which the husband seized the wife by the arm and attempted to drag her off up the hill. She is a strong, muscular woman, and held back until he had to let go his hold, after which she went along demurely enough. From fragments of their conversation, it became evident that the man and wife were trying to arrange a settlement and a separation. Judge Humes had left for the day, and hoping that he might return, they waited on the courthouse steps. Parker, a medium-sized man of swarthy complexion, with a black mustache, calmly smoked a cigar and trimmed his fingernails, while his spouse sat quite removed from him close to the side of her sister. When asked why they didn't just get a divorce, they both chimed in, 'But we don't want a divorce. All we ask for is a legal separation.'