Also Directed by Bannister Merwin
In the first scene we see a group of children at a window waiting for the arrival of their father. Following this we learn that the little family lacks a mother. The next scene brings us to a theater-box party. The father of the little family meets another woman. It soon becomes evident that he intends to marry again and at last he brings this other woman to the house. While he is present, she seems to be fond of the children, but once he is out of the room we see that her fondness is hardly skin-deep. Soon the mother's picture is removed from over the fireplace and evidently the new wedding will take place. Little Margaret, taking care of the children, finds them hard to amuse one day, and going up into the garret, finds some old clothes, in which they all dress. By chance she puts on the very costume which was used when her mother posed for the big portrait, now absent from its place over the mantel, and so it happens that when the father comes home at night.
Mary is as stage actress preparing for opening night. Her part calls for her to shoot a Union soldier being played by her beau. Unknown to Mary another spurned suitor replaces the blanks in the prop gun with real bullets hoping to kill her beau.
Two of the workmen, Tom and Jim, whose fists are as hard as steel but whose hearts are of sterling worth, are in love with the same lady. Tom believes that Jim is the successful one and though hard hit, takes the blow like a man; but the supreme test of friendship comes when Jim, who has a quarrel with a truck driver on the top of a huge sky structure, is knocked unconscious and is hung out over the sidewalk twenty-two stories below. The slightest move one way or the other and he is dashed to death, and when Tom is called upon to save Jim's life at the risk of his own, it is a fest that proves the mettle of the man. There they swing in mid-air, Tom and Jim, clinging together at this dizzy height. A thriller, a supremely dramatic moment in the motion picture art. The rescue and the winning of the girl by Tom gives a sweet touch of human nature to the close of this exciting picture.
William Thompson slips away to New York, leaving his wife and daughter to shift for themselves. He obtains a station and finally becomes head waiter in one of the gay restaurants of the Great White Way. As years slip by his daughter becomes star-struck. Harry Valentine, the manager, notices her pretty face and tries to take her from town with him, although he has no position in the company to offer her. This she declines, but when he later writes her that he will marry her if she will come to New York and will also place her on the stage, she decides to leave her mother and accept the offer. Of course, Valentine has no intention of marrying her and when he meets her in New York he takes her for a little supper at the restaurant before the supposititious wedding ceremony and thus Thompson is brought face to face with his daughter.
