Ruth Camilla Fisher knew a country wherein her beauty was specie of the realm. It was bounded by the ninth and twelfth birthdays. Its inhabitants consisted of Fritz, an adoring dachshund; "papa," who was a member of the school board and a great man; and innumerable gruff little boys, who, ostensibly ignorant of her observation, spat through vacant front teeth and turned gorgeous somersaults for her admiration. She was happy and the jealous green complexion of the feminine part of her world bothered her not at all.
And unsuspectingly Ruth came singing across the borders of her ain countree to the alien land of knowledge and disillusionment. Though she knew she came from God, it was gradually borne upon her that her girl-mother wandered a little way on the path of the Magdalenes.
She was an interloper who had no gospel sanction in the world, no visible parents other than a foster-father and a foster-mother. Perfectly respectable little girls began to inform her so with self-righteous airs and with the expertness of surgeons to dissect her from the social scheme that governs puss-wants-a-corner with the same iron rule that in later life determines who shall be asked to play bridge and who shall be outlawed.
"Your parents aren't your own," was the taunt that Ruth heard from playmates. Some of the little girls added the poison of sympathy to the information. And Ruth Camilla Fisher at 12 found herself a stranger in a strange land.
She extradited herself Tuesday night with a revolver shot in the temple. In the yard back of her foster-parents' home at 5319 West Twenty-fifth Street, Cicero, with one arm around the loyal Fritz, she put the revolver to her head and pressed the trigger....[48]
[48] Chicago Tribune, November 25, 1915.
CROOK LISTS DANCERS' NAMES
The modern dance craze has brought a lot of informality into a heretofore very proper Chicago.
Women whose husbands work during the daytime have considered it not at all improper to flock to the afternoon thé dansants in many downtown cafés, there to fox-trot and one-step with good-looking strangers whose introduction—if there was an introduction—was procured in a sort of professional way.
Probable Effect