Author Archive: Retro

The station at Lonedale is in charge of an old operator and his daughter. The young engineer who makes the run between Lonedale and civilization is the sweetheart of the operator’s daughter, and upon receiving his call on this particular day he escorts her to the station, where, finding her father suffering from a nervous headache, she takes his place at the key after bidding adieu to her engineer sweetheart as he mounts into the cabin of his engine and rolls away. As her father leaves he discovers that his revolver is out of order and takes it with him to fix it. The old operator has forgotten, however, that this is the first of the month, on which a large sum of money is expressed to the station from the city office of the Lonedale Mining Company for the payroll. The train pulls in and she receives the express bag of money. Two tramps [...]

Free adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s powerful novel. The subject opens with the return home of Prince Dimitri, who meets the maid Katusha, a little peasant girl, and is instantly charmed with her beauty. Young, artless and innocent, as pretty as a rose, she unwittingly fascinates the prince. His noble bearing likewise impresses her, and his little attentions flatter her, until at length she is unable to resist his advances. The poor girl is meted the usual fate. An alliance is out of the question. The disparity of their ranks even forbids it, and soon the prince must cast her aside. Five years later we find that the girl, who is now a loathsome sight, has learned the bitter lesson of the eternal truth, “The wages of sin is death.” It is death to the soul at all events. She has gone down to the lowest depths and is arrested in a low Russian tavern. As [...]

A young woman who is engaged to a millionaire she doesn’t love meets and falls in love with a rough sailor.

A thug accosts a girl as she leaves her workplace but a man rescues her. The thug vows revenge and, with the help of two friends, attacks the girl and her rescuer again as they’re going for a walk. This time they succeed in kidnapping the rescuer. The girl runs home and gets help from several neighbors. They track the ruffians down to a cabin in the mountains where the gang has trapped their victim and set the cabin on fire.

A king exacts vengeance upon his faithless mistress and her lover.

Set in an early cinema house, this comic short illustrates the problems with the gals’ hats obscuring the movie patron’s line of vision.

A young woman’s peaceful existence is shattered when she is abducted by the crew of a boat of smugglers, who then also turn against their captain.

The young village minister was not quite as discreet as he might have been in fulfilling the strange trust left by the dying mother, but it certainly worked for the common good. By the bequest the mother desired that her daughter possess some of the finery previously denied her. As a result the minister and Mary were linked in a scandal, with the church board in judgment. Gossip received the laugh, however, as it generally does, while the minister assumed a trust quite unexpected.

Two young couples, upon their wedding, vow to follow the straight path. One is in ordinary circumstances, the other a little better off. Later on the poor young man is thrown out of work and he and his wife are in sore straits, but the other being a power in politics, is in a decidedly improved condition. We see him offered a bribe of $1,000 to vote for the passage of a franchise in favor of the Street Railway, with a promise of more if it passes. This he hides from his wife for although he considers it a business transaction, he is loath to let her know, for fear she will not understand. She makes the discovery, however when the poor man, driven to despair by poverty tries to steal this money. Her eyes are opened when she reads the letter accompanying the money and instead of allowing her husband to call the police, [...]