George Hennessy
Ruth Hiatt is the object of Raymond McKee's affections, but her mother, Sunshine Hart, and a bogus Baron, Kewpie Morgan, are providing him reasons to be uneasy in his courtship. Most of the action is set around a swimming pool on a ship.
Bob Taylor was a valuable man. Talbot, his employer, told Miriam as much, showing his daughter the good round sum which his new clerk had handed him that evening for a real estate deal he had made in Talbot's absence. It was after banking hours and Talbot slept with the money under his pillow. The next morning he went off in a tearing hurry and forgot the roll of bills.
Rose and her cousin Mary dwell in the land of romance, but real Romeos are scarce in this prosaic age. Yet Rose, in spite of a gay young Lothario who steps in the way of her own true love, finds her way to love-land. That was where Mary's perfidy came in. It showed up Lothario's true character, while at the same time it brought Mary back to her own determined young lover.
Just before she dies, an elderly married woman stashes the horde of money she's secretly accumulated beneath the false bottom of an old shipping trunk. After her death, her husband, believing himself penniless, has to leave their old home and move in with his son's family, where he's treated with no respect or consideration. Also on the scene is a newly-hired kindly young housekeeper. She and the old gentleman become close friends and eventually run away together (taking the old shipping trunk with them).
Elusive as is the pursuit of pirate gold it is found in this picture and brought to the ship by the very mutineers themselves. Here fate intervenes with justice and the miscreant mate after a series of exciting adventures is outwitted through his own weakness.
A careless nurse girl allowing the child to wander away, made the mother realize the poignancy of the little verse: "If we knew the baby's fingers / Pressed against the window pane / Would be cold and stiff tomorrow, / Never trouble us again, / Would the bright eyes of our darling / catch the frown upon our brow, / Would the prints of rosy fingers, / Vex us then as they do now?" But a higher destiny watched the child and saw it safely home.
The young lover leaving home at the opening of the war to join the Confederate Army, tells his brother to take care of his fatherless sweetheart during the perilous times which are to follow. But the brother weakens and fails to be true to his trust. He permits her to believe that her lover is dead. Caught in the neighborhood, however, between the lines of the enemy, the brother appears before them at the crucial moment. In retaliation the false brother turns informer. Both forces are aroused to arms and during the attack upon the girl defending her wounded lover and family alone in the negro's cabin retribution comes in the form of a stray bullet.
Roy Norris, a young author, proposes to pretty Mary Ford and is accepted. The first year or more of their married life is one of bliss, made all the sweeter by the arrival of their first-born. The little trio, father, mother, baby, are bound together by love, until unreasonable jealousy possesses the young couple. While at work in his studio, the young author is visited by his wife just as he is complimenting his stenographer on her valuable aid, and from this the wife sees grounds tor suspicion. On the other hand, the young husband, seeing his wife talking to a stranger, becomes suspicious.
The representative of an American Syndicate comes to Mexico to look over some land. While there, he pays considerable attention to the little Mexican girl, at whose home he is a roomer. The girl falls deeply in love with the American, who wins her absolute confidence. When the time comes for his departure, he of course cannot take her with him, and when he says goodbye, she realizes how false his promises were. Her love for the American now turns to bitter hate, so she agrees to marry her erstwhile sweetheart, whom she threw aside for the American, if he will avenge her wrong. This he consents to do.
An elderly actor who lives with his wife and daughter is dismissed from his acting job because he is considered too old. On his way home from the theatre he panics at the thought of telling his family the bad news and decides to disguise himself as a beggar. His daughter's beau accidentally gives him a five dollar gold piece, thinking that it was a smaller coin. A chase ensues with a policeman, the daughter, and her beau in hot pursuit. When caught he is recognized by his shocked daughter, but is quickly forgiven by all. Meanwhile the actor hired to replace him has already been fired and a messenger is dispatched to rehire the Old Actor to the delight of his wife, daughter, and fellow actors.
Griffith intercuts between the lives of two couples married on the same day. One couple is rich, the other is poor. Time passes, and in desperation over joblessness, the poor husband attempts to burgle a home, only to be captured a gunpoint by the mistress of the house. It is the home of the rich couple. While holding the poor intruder at gunpoint, the rich wife accidently discovers evidence implicating her own husband in a bribery scheme . . .
A lonely old widower arrives in town and seeks out a pleasant boarding place. The house he selects may be pleasant and homelike, but most of all it is owned by a widow, and managed by her daughter. The widow and the widower are impressed with each other at first sight and a romance is imminent. However, the widower realizes his hair is both white and scant and feels that unless he looks a little younger, his chances with the widow are slim. He writes to a hair tonic manufacturer for aid. While trying to keep the letter hidden from the widow, she becomes suspicious and imagines it is from another woman, so she turns about to make him jealous. Eventually a unique trick of fate smooths out all their misunderstandings.
When the suitor of the daughter of an apparently wealthy widow finds out that the oil stocks, in which her late husband's fortune is invested, are worthless, he finds the daughter less attractive. The widow's broker has a wealthy friend, who becomes very interested in the girl, although he is twice her age. He proposes marriage, believing that he can win her love through kindness. The girl, for her mother' sake accepts and they are married. Despite his great love he is unable to overcome the great difference in their ages, so he buys the worthless oil stock so that she may be independent, and he then leaves her to go back to his oil fields. His sacrifice arouses the girl's love and she follows him to tell him of her awakening.
Dick Logan, a young writer, stops at a little border town and takes lodging at the Mexican Inn. Two tramps see the amount of money he has and plan to steal it. In the town he befriends a Mexican girl by stopping her uncle from beating her for having broken a water jar. Retiring to his room, he is awakened by the two tramps breaking into his room. He steals out and gets lodging at a nearby house, which happens to be the home of the Mexican girl and her uncle. The tramps follow him and try again. The girl, however, saves him from harm, and it looks as if Dick had found a real heroine for a real romance.
A lonely widower living in the Italian quarter of the city, whose only solace since the death of his wife is his little child, is reluctantly a member of a secret society existent among his countrymen. The active members of this society have observed the success of another Italian and feel that they should share his wealth. They send him a demand for $5,000, ostensibly to pay for the expenses of their society. The rich man is defiant and consequently the society decides to kill him, electing the widower to do the deed.
Walter Miller loves Mary Pickford, but he is very shy and doesn't dare to speak up, so she prefers Bobby Harron. All perfectly natural. But one morning when he is nursing a hangover, Elmer Booth and Harry Carey break into her apartment and threaten her, until Walter rushes in to her rescue.
Nine-year-old Nedda is a direct descendant of the Trevors, a family that can trace its roots back to the reign of King Charles I. Alas, the Trevors suffer severe financial reverses, and Nedda is yanked from the luxury of her ancestral home in Britain to be raised on New York's Lower East Side. Ten years later, the grown-up Nedda stands accused of the murder of her mother.
Set in a tenement boarding house, a lonely confirmed bachelor occupies a room across the hall from a dour spinster. Children run amok in the hallways playing pranks. Believing the bachelor perpetrated one particular prank, the spinster woman enters his room to confront him. She is followed by a neighbor child. Meanwhile, the other children have stolen a scarlet fever quarantine sign and posted it on the bachelor's door.
Papa becomes so miserable over his bad luck as a fisherman, it causes him to reject Harry, his daughter's sweetheart, who tease him about it. The next day he starts out with the hope of better luck, and the young couple sees a chance of getting back at him. Their scheme succeeds to such an extent, that Papa is forced to accept Harry as his future son-in-law.
Thieves follow a doctor as he takes home a large sum of money. Later, when they break into his house, the doctor's wife and daughter are trapped. One of the thieves has jilted his sweetheart, who tells the doctor of the robbery, and helps him save his family.
Mr. Nelson is a "newlywed" and carries his darling wife's picture with him always. However, he almost falls for the temptation to go to the mask-ball, inviting an erstwhile lady friend to go with him, telling her that he would dress as a pirate and she to go as a Spanish gypsy. At the sight of his wife's portrait, however, he realizes his intended wrong-doing and changes his mind, asking a friend to go in his stead. The office boy mixes the letters and wifey gets the one he intended for the girl, and she goes to catch her erring hubby. So while hubby waits at home, wifey is keeping her eye on the bold, bad pirate she believes to be her husband.
