Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1913 — POVERTY PARTS AGED PAIR [ARTICLE]

POVERTY PARTS AGED PAIR

Couple Wedded Fifty Year* Tearfully Separate After a Technical Charge of Abandonment la Heard. Chicago.—A thread of romance, spun fifty years ago between the lives of John Goode and his then girl bride, was broken when the white-haired couple stood tottering before the bar in the court of domestic relations. It was the little, bent old woman who first quavered out her story. "I guess John and I’ve come to the parting of the road," she began. "And —and, judge, we—we were married fifty year ago—fifty year ago.” The o|d man raised his head for a moment. He looked at Judge Gemmill with apology. “You see, judge,. I am a poor man, now. I sell chewing gum on a street corner and business is poor. I —can't buy her very much, any more, and you know how it is with women; they need mor’n a man." The aged man and woman looked wistfully into each other’s eyes. "I did my best, Margaret," the man whispered across to his wife, and the old woman blinked and whispered back: “I know you did, John; I know you did.” But the story that the court listened to was not a perfect story, for the broken thread of romance was not to be mended. Although the technical charge of wife abandonment brought against the man was dismissed, the husband and wife parted In the courtroom, each to go a separate way for the remainder of life. “It isn’t that you haven’t been good to me,” the aged woman said as she hobbled from the room, "but—you know how it la with you a-selllng gum." The old man looked after her and called out his good-by answer: "Yes, Margaret, I know.”