The story
“She was a sweet, charming girl, and always obeyed her dear papa and her mama. But finally a crisis arose, and what could the poor girl do? Here is the problem she had to solve: Dear papa told her that he wanted her to marry his junior partner, a ‘perfectly delightful’ lawyer. Mama at the same time trotted out a candidate who was a member of one of our first families, and could lead a cotillion beautifully. Mama said that Pa’s candidate was ‘an old fogey.’ Pa called the society man ‘a dude with one half the brain of a mud hen.’ If she married either one she was sure to mortally offend one of her parents, so she went out on the front steps and wept bitterly. In the midst of her grief, a young newspaperman she knew happened along, and being a good newspaperman, inquired the particulars. She confided in him, and he told her how to solve the problem. ‘Don’t marry either of them,’ he said, ‘marry me. Then each of your parents will be so pleased that the other was fooled that they will forgive you.’ The girl, in the meantime had agreed to elope with both the other men, to oblige Pa in one case, to make Ma happy in the other. The reporter convinced her that his suggestion was best, but she did not know how to get rid of her other suitors, who were due to help her down a ladder that night. The reporter solved the puzzle. He called in a policeman pal, and had the suitors arrested as burglar suspects. Then he eloped with the girl quietly, and visited her parents, calmly, and was forgiven without any fuss whatsoever, just as he had expected.”
Summary from The Moving Picture World · 21 September 1912
