New York (State) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
The two old Thropps stood staring at each other and the unfathomable
New York, while the impatient chauffeurs squawked their horns in angry
protest, and train-missers with important errands thrust their heads out
of cab windows.
The officer led his bewildered charges to the sidewalk, motioned the
traffic to proceed, and beckoned to a patrolman. “Tell your troubles to
him,” he said, and went back into his private maelstrom.
The patrolman heard the Thropp story and tried to keep the crowd away.
He patted Mrs. Thropp's back and said they'd find the kid easy, not to
distoib herself. He told the father which station-house to go to and
advised him to have the “skipper” send out a “general.”
Thropp wondered what language he spoke, but he went; and a soft-hearted
walrus in uniform sprawling across a lofty desk took down names and
notes and minute descriptions of Kedzie and her costume. He told the two
babes in the wood that such t'ings happened constant, and the goil would
toin up in no time. He sent out a general alarm.
Mrs. Thropp told him the whole story, putting all the blame on her
husband with such enthusiasm that the sympathy of everybody went out
to him. Everybody included a number of reporters who asked Mrs. Thropp
questions and particularly desired a photograph of Kedzie.
Mrs. Thropp confessed that she had not brought any along. She had never
dreamed that the girl would run away. If she had have, she wouldn't have
brought the girl along, to say nothing of her photograph.
The amiable walrus in the cap and brass buttons recommended the Thropps
to a boarding-house whose prices were commensurate with Adna's ideas and
means, and he and his wife went thither, where they told a shabby and
sentimental landlady all their troubles. She reassured them as best she
could, and made a cup of tea for Mrs. Thropp and told Mr. Thropp there
was a young fellow lived in the house who was working for a private
detective bureau. He'd find the kid sure, for it was a small woild,
after all.
There was a lull in the European-war news the next day--only a few
hundreds killed in an interchange of trenches. There was a dearth of
big local news also. So the morning papers all gave Kedzie Thropp the
hospitality of their head-lines. The illustrated journals published what
they said was her photograph. No two of the photographs were alike, but
they were all pretty.
The copy-writers loved the details of the event. They gave the dialogue
of the Thropps in many versions, all emphasizing what is known as “the
human note.”
Every one of them gave due emphasis to the historic fact that Kedzie
Thropp had been spanked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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