Jennie Lee
Terry Dunniva, a retired sea-captain living in Marblehead, Massachusetts, adopts two children, Chrystal and Ned. As the girl grows to womanhood, Terry realizes his fatherly-love had grown to something stronger. He asks her to become his wife. Chrystal, who is in love with her foster-brother, consents rather than destroy Terry's happiness. On the day of their marriage, Ned returns from a long voyage with the intent of making Chrysal his wife. And, he, too, rather than destroy the happiness of his adopted-father, leaves to embark on an Artic voyage that might mean his death. When Terry learns of the sacrifice both Chrystal and Ned are making on behalf of his happiness, he takes Ned's place on the voyage and gets both to pledge that if he does not return, they will marry each other.
On a steamboat heading North, where his brother has struck gold, Mike Dane falls in love with Estelle MacDonald. When he arrives at the Canadian trading post, Dane learns that his brother has been murdered and his partner sentenced to death as the killer.
Buck, who is preparing to enter a theological seminary, aids his brother and some friends who are fleeing from justice, and thus implicated he is sent to prison for 2 years. There he meets again Hope Standish, a Salvation Army girl who had interested him. Returning home, he meets the old district circuit rider and promises to continue the circuit rider's work when he dies. The brother escapes from prison and is converted by Buck, who falls in love with Hope.
A 1917 film directed by Elmer Clifton, Joseph Henabery, and Dorothy Gish.
Nina, a blind girl, lives with her grandmother, who has taught her to make artificial flowers, which she sells at a flower-stand. Nina, and Jimmie, a crippled newsboy who sells papers on the same corner, are sweethearts. Nina's grandmother dies, and she turns to Jimmie. One day Jimmie has a fight with another newsboy, whom he thinks is hanging about Nina's stand too much, and the other boy is soon begging for mercy. Miss Fifi Chandler, an artist, happens to be passing, and becoming interested, she accompanies Nina and Jimmie to their rooms, and is surprised to find that Jimmie is an artist, having made a beautiful plaster cast of Nina. Fifi brings Jimmie and his protégé to the notice of her fellow artist, Fred Townsend, who falls in love with Nina.
The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.
Dottie gets a job in a small show as "side kick" of a famous knife thrower. The "Angel" is a nice boy who is backing the show, and who is too modest to declare his love to Dottie. She can see no one save the great, handsome "Strong Man." The knife thrower gets drunk, and the "Angel" forbids Dottie to do her act. The "Strong Man," however, locks up the "Angel" and bids the knife thrower go on with the show. Dottie, terrified but helpless, has risked her life a half dozen times from the carelessly thrown knives, when the "Angel," bursting out of his prison, rushes into the ring and flings himself between her and the weapons. He is seriously injured. At the hospital, Dottie and the "Angel" pledge their troth.
Marie is a village girl, very religious. Her mother, fearing some man will make her unhappy (as she had been made by a man) made her promise on her deathbed that she would enter a nunnery. Marie considers that promise sacred and will allow nothing to interfere with her keeping that promise.
Molly Kite, the neglected child of a drunken father, rouses the sympathy of the minister, Mr. Shipton, who also teaches the school at Dead Tree. The minister-school-master persuades some of his parishioners to give the girl decent clothes, and he coaxes her into attending school. At first unruly and sullen, she gradually comes to feel that the minister is her best friend. One day she happens to see him meet a strange girl on the street. Apparently overjoyed, he kisses the stranger. Molly rushes into the house, tears off her new clothes, and vows she will never go to school again.
May and Annie work in a fashionable millinery store, where the buyer, struck by May's beauty, advances her to a position among the models. She gets a little money, but finds that she is obliged to wear better clothes, which she has a hard time getting.
The hardship of earning an existence for the family made it impossible for the mother to approve the little pretty things which her daughter liked. Lack of attention made her son dissolute, but later the sturdy stock of his mother showed in him and the cozy home he provided for dad and sister made them forget the past.
The young authoress had come to the edge of the desert for her mother's sake. There she met the two young prospectors and a romance began. But the men were about to go across the desert, where they had heard rumors of gold. They decided to play square and before going determined to let the coin decide who should ask the young authoress the all-important question. The flip of the coin decided the older should try his luck first. He learned the girl did not love him. But the other she promised to marry when he should return from the gold lands, and the care of her sick mother, who would then be restored to health, should no longer interfere with her happiness. The young partners soon reached the other side of the desert, where success came to them far beyond their expectations.
Behold in this film the Uplifter, a peculiarity of the human species, quite convinced that all that is, is wrong. Forth to the uplift he minds everybody's business but his own, until that business is as clean, pure and spotless as himself. Verily in these later days is there no school of art named, "Minding One's Business."
The orthodox mother's indomitable will dwarfed the child's individuality, defeating the very purpose it would attain. The girl ran away with an actor and the fearful prayer, "If I ever speak to that man again, may God strike my mother blind," was fulfilled, but in the end the woman was saved from herself.
