The social worker, at this supreme moment in his recital, paused, and
with a weary but reassuring smile, as who should say such adventures
were diurnal monotonies in his life, remarked: “with no damage,
however, to anything but the furniture and the woodwork.”
But he had the girl in his arms, and, thrusting aside foiled madame
and the inmate, bore his charge downstairs, snatched a raincoat from
the hall rack, wrapped it about her, called to the father to come, and
escaped into the street.
After the rescued girl had been restored to her home, and sufficiently
recovered from her terrible experience to give a connected account
of herself, she related the following incidents: Leaving school on
that night she had started for the home of the girl whom she was to
visit--the girl not having attended school that day--and while passing
a house in a respectable residential district, about five o’clock of
the winter evening, darkness already having fallen, a woman came to the
door and in great distress told the girl that a baby was sick, that she
was alone, and implored the girl to come in and care for the baby while
she ran for a doctor. The girl complied, and on reaching the door, was
immediately seized, drawn into the hallway, her cries smothered by a
hand in which there was a handkerchief saturated with chloroform, and
she knew no more until she regained consciousness in the place where
the social worker had rescued her.
Here his direct recital ended. I put to him two or three questions:
Who is the girl? Where is she now? Where is the house into which she
was beguiled? Where is the brothel in which she was imprisoned? He had
answers for all these. The girl’s name could not be divulged, even in
official confidence, for the family could not risk publicity; the house
where she had been summoned to care for the ailing baby was the home of
wealthy and respectable people, who had been out of town at the time,
and their residence had been broken into and used temporarily by the
white slavers. As for the brothel, the social worker, by methods he did
not disclose, had compelled the proprietress to leave the city, and the
place was closed.
Such was the amazing adventure of the social worker. It was easy to
imagine the effect of it when related to neurotic women, to prurient
and sentimental men, and in country churches to gaping yokels curious
about “life” in the city. It was easy to understand the effect it
would have on minds starved and warped by Puritanism, ready for any
sensation, especially one that might stimulate their moral emotions,
and give them one more excuse for condemning the police. No wonder
certain of the elect brethren in gratitude for having been told just
what they wished to hear had contributed hundreds of dollars, that the
“work” might go on!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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