The Ex-Convict's Plunge

Granny Willard, seeing the end of her days approaching, begs to leave her bed and sit in her old armchair, the bumble throne about which three generations have assembled. Her favorite grandson, Tom Willard, has come in from the farm with his buxom wife to visit. So the strong arms of youth carry old age gently to the armchair in the sunlit room for a last meeting with all her kith and kin. There came the rural types known to that modest old cottage, and then that more sacred circle of grandsons with their wives and little ones.

Madge Nelson is ordered to move to the countryside for health reasons, but her finances prevent her from making the move from the city, so she answers an advertisement for a mail-order bride for miner Hugo Ennis in Nevada.

Veteran postman Bob Morley and his son Johnnie are honored for their service to the U. S. Mail Service. When Johnnie takes a position on the Enterprise, he is falsely convicted of theft and murder when the cargo is stolen and the ship's officer is shot.

A minstrel troupe is embarking for a tour of the South. Henry Clay appears on the scene wearing the frayed coat of a Confederate General. He borrows a guitar from one of the minstrel men and begins singing "Way down South in Dixie," and the story unfolds.

The poetic and sentimental theme of the old Southland song is the moving crux investing an interesting story of love and comedy daring the reconstruction period, south of Mason and Dixon's Line.

George Walters is a youth who is dominated by Bleary, a heartless bully, who forces him to pose as the son of millionaire George Warring, kidnapped as a baby. The missing son had a twin brother who had recently died, but a painting of the shadow of the late son is on one wall. Walters' shadow matches this painting perfectly, establishing him as the missing son to the Warring family. Walters falls in love with Warring's daughter Lucia and finds that the family attorney Glaxton is slowly poisoning the old man.

Bill Williams, a poor inventor with a large family, suddenly comes into great wealth through the sale of an invention. Sudden affluence turns his head, and he changes at once from the plodding mechanic of the dingy shop into an ultra-fashionable man of the town.

Tom Walker, a miserly man, is much beaten and bullied by his Amazonian wife, Dame Walker. The action of the piece takes place in New England, early in the eighteenth century, when the Puritans were still in power.

To spite her domineering father, Eastern girl Lucy Fox pursues an unsuitable suitor to a small Western hamlet where she obtains a job as a manicurist. A local rancher (Buck Jones), who has fallen for the girl, does his best to persuade her not too marry the bounder.

Jacqueline Floriot is driven from her home by her husband Louis, a deputy attorney of Paris, because of his unjust suspicions regarding her relations with another man. Floriot forbids Jacqueline to see her baby boy, who is dangerously ill, and when informed that the boy believes her dead, she attempts suicide.

The story concerns the difficulties of a clerk in the war department, betrothed to the daughter of an ambassador, who loses his position by the change of administration.

When John Conroy's wife takes his infant son Jack and runs away with another man, Conroy becomes a tramp and goes to Alaska. Fifteen years later, he returns and learns that his son Jack is being coerced into marrying Edith Wyatt, the daughter of a congressman, in order to further the political ambitions of his stepfather, Mayor Horace Manners. Conroy makes friends with the boy, who is unaware that the congenial tramp is actually his father. Jack loves cobbler's daughter Beth Stafford, and when Conroy discovers that Manners plans to frame Jack for the loss of city funds and thus scare him into marriage with Edith, he intercedes and insures that his son receives both his rightful inheritance and the woman whom he loves. After securing the boy's happiness, Conroy slips away without revealing his true identity to his son.

A good mother, dying, bequeaths to her daughter a well-worn Bible, beseeching her to follow its teachings day by day. Her father, a brutal inebriate, comes home and finds her reading the old book, snatches it from her, stamps upon it, and falls to the floor in a drunken fury.

Katherine Trowbridge, a rebellious young orphan, lives with her aunt and uncle, the Curtises, who desire a match between Katherine and Weathersbee but pretend to oppose the union, knowing she will be the more likely to accept it. Accidentally discovering their trickery, she leaves home and determines to marry the first man who will have her.

Aspiring author Johnny Rutledge believes in taking things easy. When he gets evicted for giving his last $10 to a fellow writer, Anne Travers, he sets out on a wild mission to stop her from marrying a fraudulent suitor and win her fortune.

Coddled by his maiden aunts and apparently unable to make decisions, Oliver Wendell Blaine signs up for a mail-order course in "Success." Oliver follows the instructions step by step, builds his self-confidence, and proves himself a hero when a log jam threatens the town. He is made river boss and marries Phyllis Thorpe, daughter of the owner of the lumber-mill.