Dumb Princess Etiquette Lessons

 Schooling the police in etiquette? She may not be that dumb afterall...
A search of the records was made this morning, but there was no report found of a missing girl answering the description of the one the police call “the Dumb Princess." 

Maid of Mystery Gives Policeman a Lesson in Etiquette — Whimsically Maintains Refusal to Reveal Identity; Has Authorities Puzzled

The mystery surrounding the identity of the beautiful girl arrested early yesterday morning on a charge of violating the curfew law became deeper this morning, when all efforts of Juvenile Officer, Leo Warden, to learn her name proved fruitless. A search of the records was made this morning, but there was no report found of a missing girl answering the description of the one the police call, “the Dumb Princess." 

So far as the police have been able to learn, she is a little mite of stubborn and beautiful femininity all by herself and with no home ties through which she could be traced. “Won’t you please tell me your name?” Officer Marden said to her this morning. “What?” she replied, arching her eyebrows. “Do you mean that you are asking me that question again? Why don't you say, ‘Now, Miss ______ ’ and then wait for me to fill in the name? Then say, ‘When do you wish to go home? I will call a machine for you.’ You see, if you say it that way I might forget and tell you my name, but you say ‘Wot’s yer name,’ then glower at me as if you were going to eat me up. That’s no way to learn something from a lady.” 

“Now, look here, Miss, if you will write out the particular form of etiquette you want me to go through, I will be willing to read it to you, but you know I am first an officer and I have lost my book of rules.” “My, how common!” she replied, looking down upon him. "Do leave me.” This is as far as the police have got. 

She insists that she is 19 years old, and Officer Warden declares she is not a day over 16, and perhaps not that. Unless she tells today who she is she will probably be taken to the Juvenile Court to afford the judges an opportunity to question her.  

Do You Know Her? This Is the Girl of Mystery Whose Fair Face Haunts the Police. They Can’t Tell Who She Is. Can You?

She has hazel eyes, dark brown hair, slightly curly, fair complexion, very regular features and firm white teeth almost mathematically arranged. She is about five feet, five inches, tall and rather slender. With her hat, as she wears it,  she might be taken for 18 or 19, but with it off, the very girlish face is apparent. An effort was made to identify her through a school teacher who had a young girl missing from a class in Vernon, but it failed. — The Los Angeles Herald, 1912

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Moderator and Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia