The story
“First, there was the manicure girl. Anyone who saw her polishing away at the Grand Scrumptious Hotel knew in a minute that she ate only at cabaret restaurants and had bushel baskets of diamonds. The fact was that the moment her day’s toil was over, she hustled out to Bronxville, where her mother had a tiny chicken farm, and the two lived there very happily together. Secondly, there was a boy. He was the regular rah-rah type, and persons frequently pointed him out as a gridiron star, or celebrated pitcher, when the fact was that the longest time he had ever been in college was two weeks. Third, there was ‘dad,’ father to the boy. Dad had oodles of money and a sad face, whereat everyone talked of his blue blood, and how an ancestor came over on the Mayflower. The facts were that ‘dad’ himself came over on the Cunard Line steerage, but he knew how to make money and save it. Fourthly, there was ‘ma,’ who lived in the country. No one ever suspected for a minute that she was the mother of a manicure girl. The girl polished the boy’s nails, and he told her that she had won his heart. He proposed, she accepted, but the boy was afraid to tell dad, fearing he might object. So the young couple ran away, and sent dad a statement that the girl’s mother was a ‘countess,’ which was a lie. Dad didn’t object to marriage; in fact, he didn’t give a hoot about the title and the family, but he was glad his son had settled down. Besides the girl seemed all right, and he grew quite fond of her.
“When the young couple were on their wedding trip, dad went out on a rural tour in his auto. As he traveled along, a chicken tried to demonstrate the old question, ‘why does the chicken cross the road?’ In this particular case the answer was ‘to get killed.’ Dad was very sorry, of course, and offered the owner, an elderly woman, money to pay for it. She refused at first, but finally accepted, on condition that he take the victim with him. There were more or less arguments, and finally the woman agreed to cook chicken for him. The chicken tasted pretty good to dad, and he felt more at home every minute. Then the postman arrived with a card from the woman’s daughter, who was on her honeymoon down South. Proudly she showed it to her visitor, and he recognized the pictures of his son and the son’s bride. Also he realized that the comfortable old countrywoman before him was the much maligned ‘countess.’ He was mighty glad she was not a countess, for if she had been, she never could have cooked chicken so divinely, he reasoned. Dad decided that it was about time that he had settled down, too. There was a rapid fire courtship, and when the young people returned they found that ma was no longer a ‘countess,’ but something far more important. She was boss, for she and dad were married.”
Summary from The Moving Picture World · 29 June 1912
