She took her life.
Rissa was 14 years old. The divorce decree that robbed her of a home was less than a week old. It was granted to her mother, Mrs. Mellisa Sachs, by Judge Brentano last Saturday.
When the divorce case was called for trial Rissa found that she would be compelled to testify. Reluctantly she corroborated her mother's story that her father, Benjamin Sachs, had struck Mrs. Sachs. It was largely due to this testimony that the decree was granted and the custody of the child awarded to Mrs. Sachs.
Then the troubles of the girl began in real earnest. She loved her mother dearly. But her father, who had been a companion to her as well as a parent, was equally dear to her.
Both parents pleaded with her. Mrs. Sachs told Rissa she could not live without her. The father told the girl, in a conversation in a downtown hotel several days ago, that he would disown her unless she went to live with him.
Every hour increased the perplexities of the situation for the child. She could not decide to give up either of her parents for fear of offending the other. So she sacrificed her own life and gave up both.
Thursday evening, on returning from school to the Sachs home at 4529 Racine avenue, Rissa talked long and earnestly with her mother. Then she retired to her room, turned on the gas and, clothed, lay down upon her bed to await death and relief from troubles that have driven older heads to despair.
At the inquest yesterday afternoon the grief-stricken mother told the story of her daughter's difficulties. She said that Rissa had declared she could not live if compelled to give up either of her parents, but added that she never had believed it.—Chicago Record-Herald.
This is a pathetic human interest story in that it attempts to give the human significance of an incident which in itself would have little news value. Perhaps, in the matter of words, there is a slight straining for pathos. The form, it will be noted, is decidedly different from that of a news story on the same incident and, although the timeliness is given in the first line, there is no attempt to present the gist of the story in a formal lead. The source of the news is indicated in the last paragraph.
2. Humorous Story.—Another kind of human interest story is the humorous story. Its humor, like the pathos of a pathetic story, does not come from an attempt to be funny, but from the truthful presentation of a humorous incident, from the incongruity and ludicrousness of the incident itself. The writer tries to see what elements in a given incident made him laugh and then portrays them so clearly and truthfully that his readers cannot help laughing with him. The subject may be the most trivial thing in the world, not worth a line as a news story, and yet it may be told in such a way that it is worth a half-column write-up that will stand out as the gem of the whole edition. But after all the effectiveness depends upon the humor in the original subject and the truthfulness of the telling. The following humorous human interest story, which occupied a place on the front page, was built up out of an incident almost devoid of news value: