MILLIE’S FIVE CENT PIECE.
While looking over his exchanges the other day THE NEWS editor clipped
from the Switchellville Recorder a two-column article with five headings,
the first of which was “Kidnapped,” in flaring letters. The article,
dealing as it did with an erring woman, who had fled to the city, seemed
to him to touch in some way or other the night side of city life, and
in that connection interested him. It led off as follows: “Man is
born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, but few are called upon to
bear as much trouble as our wealthy but unfortunate fellow-townsman,
Mr. Switchell. All will remember when he brought home to his handsome
residence a beautiful wife. None will forget the advent of his little
daughter. Everyone was sorry when he was prostrated with fever, and
recovered only to find himself almost entirely deaf, or “very hard of
hearing,” as the phrase goes; but the climax of sympathy was reached two
months ago, when his young wife, after eight years of married life, grew
tired of her deaf husband and eloped with Dr. Clarke, a man who has only
been known to the people of this village one year, but who in that time
has contrived to swindle almost every one of them. But a still greater
blow has fallen upon him. His little daughter Millie, who had all her
mother’s beauty combined with her father’s integrity, and a certain
sweetness of her own, has disappeared. The neighboring country has been
diligently searched, without result, and the conclusion is inevitable
that the child has been kidnapped by her
BEAUTIFUL, BUT ERRING MOTHER.
No one who knew Millie will wonder at it. The only wonder is how the
mother could have lived so long without her; but the sympathy of all will
be with the deserted husband and lonely father. Poor little Millie! The
villain Clarke will soon desert her mother whom he has already debauched,
and she will drift into a life of still deeper shame. Pure as Millie is,
she cannot but suffer from contact with such associations. It is this
thought that has almost driven her father crazy. Oh, if men and women,
before yielding to evil impulses, would remember that the little children
must suffer for it, what a different world this would be.”
The article was continued to much the same effect through two columns.
As the NEWS editor finished reading a letter bearing the Switchellville
postmark was handed to him. It was from THE NEWS correspondent at that
place, and read as follows:—“Read the Recorder for big sensation. Since
the Recorder was printed a domestic in the employ of Mr. Switchell has
confessed that she bought a ticket for Toronto at the request of the
child, who was determined to go off in search of her mother.” THE NEWS
editor said to himself “If the wanderings of that child could be followed
up they would make an interesting addition to the gaslight scenes.”
* * * * *
“Whatcher cryin’ about, little girl?” said a red-haired, freckled-face,
ragged boy, with a bundle of papers under his arm as he looked
sympathetically at a well-dressed little girl who was wiping away with
her handkerchief
THE TEARS THAT HAD ESCAPED
from her eyes despite a brave effort to keep them where they belonged.
“Whatcher cryin’ about, is yer lost?” “No, I’m not, but my mamma is. A
bad man lost her, and I’m trying to find her for my papa and me, ’cause
we’re homesick without her.”
“Where do yer live?”
“Away, way off. I took my money from my little savings bank, and Mary
bought a ticket to bring me to Toronto. She said everybody came here, and
she guessed my mamma was here. I’ve just got five cents left.”
“Bully,” said the boy, “that’s just enough. If you want anything you can
get it by advertising in THE NEWS for five cents.”
“Where’s that?”
“You just go down that street there until you come to the winder where
all the picters is, and that’s THE NEWS.”
* * * * *
“How many papers do you want, little girl?” said a clerk in the business
office of THE NEWS, as he put his head through a wicket to take a
five-cent piece which a child was holding up.
“I don’t want any papers. I want my mamma,” said the child.
“Your mamma isn’t here, little girl. What is your name?”
“Millie Switchell, and I come to Toronto to find my mamma, but it’s so
big I’m almost lost myself.”
“So you want to put an ad in THE NEWS, do you?”
“Will that find her?”
“Perhaps so.”
The news editor had entered the room while this dialogue was going on and
he
RECOGNIZED THE CHILD.
A dispatch was sent to her father, and before he arrived Millie was
persuaded that the better way would be to allow some one well acquainted
with the city to continue the search. The father on his arrival said: “It
may be asking too much, but I wish you would suppress the names. If you
must tell the story call me Switchell and the village Switchellville.
The people in my neighborhood will understand the case just as well with
those names, and very few of your other readers will know that the names
are incorrect. I am sensitive enough myself, but would ask no favors
were it not that the publication of names might have a bad effect on the
child’s future.”
Sympathy got the better of journalistic instinct, and the real names do
not appear.