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- The scene opens with an assembly of citizens who are harangued by one of their number, whose words have great weight with the crowd, and their attitude of approval shows that Roman misrule in Jerusalem has reached its climax. Heralds now approach and Roman soldiers beat back the crowd to make way for the approach of the Roman Procurator. The scene changes to the home of Ben Hur, who is seen with his sister and mother on the house top. The cavalcade of Roman troops approaches, and to get a near view Ben Hur leans from the coping and knocks down one of the stones thereof onto the shoulder of the Procurator. This is seen and misconstrued by the Governor, who orders soldiers to arrest the inmates; they, after ineffectual pleas and struggles, are carried off. Ben Hur is consigned to the galleys, where he is loaded with chains. Here he signalizes himself by saving the life of Arrias, who publicly adopts him as his son and proclaims him a Roman citizen amidst the acclamations of the assembled crowd in the forum. Now comes the scene in the games where Ben Hur is challenged by Messala, and accepts it, to the great delight of the citizens. The chariots and athletes parade before the dais and in due time are arranged, and the chariot race commences. Three times 'round the ring dash the chariots, and at the fourth turn Ben Hur comes out the victor and is crowned with the wreath, to the great, chagrin of Messala, who is borne on a stretcher, wounded to death.
- A convict morphs into different forms to escape from prison.
- A young female boarding house tenant becomes an unwanted object of male attention.
- The Chinese Slave Smuggling scene opens up in the midst of a wood in which a shanty is hid; there appears upon the scene a Chinese Potentate, who is stealthily drawing nearer to the door of the shanty, and knocks in a peculiar manner. Lieutenant Manly, who has had his suspicions aroused, appears at this moment, peering around the corner of the shanty, and sees the Chinaman admitted by the captain of the sloop, after which Lieutenant Manly comes forward and looks through an aperture, and, seeing them about to reappear, he hides again. The door then opens, with the captain of the sloop and the Chinaman dragging a Chinese girl between them. At this point a controversy takes place between the Chinaman and the captain of the sloop, about the money to be paid for smuggling the girl, but the captain refuses to allow the girl to go unless he is paid in full. They re-enter the shanty and settle this matter, leaving the girl alone. At this point the lieutenant, seeing the coast clear, runs up to the girl and informs her that he will render her assistance. The two captors then re-appear upon the scene, and Lieutenant Manly again hides. They now drag the girl away, but they are followed at a distance by the lieutenant. The scene is now changed to the Coast Guard Station, with a coast guard performing sentry-go. The lieutenant rushes up and explains to the sentry his errand, and goes into the station, and, calling his comrades, he explains to them what he has discovered, and soon re-appears in the disguise of a common seaman. The next scene is aboard the sloop, and the men are seen quarreling amongst themselves. The captain and the Chinaman are seen coming along with the Chinese girl between them, and the sailors assist in getting the girl aboard. Just as they are about to sail, the disguised lieutenant springs aboard, and after a little parley is engaged as one of the crew. As soon as this matter is settled, orders are given to sail. While they are busily engaged, the lieutenant advances to the girl, tells her to be of good courage, but in this act he is observed and is felled by the marline spike of the captain; he lies on the deck in a swoon while the girl is beaten. The information given at the Revenue Station has caused the officers to bring out the cutter and they give chase to the sloop. We see them gradually drawing nearer, but as yet they are not observed by those on the sloop. The girl, turning to her rescuer, tries to revive him with cold water, bathing his face; this soon revives him from his swoon. Hearing steps, he feigns unconsciousness again, and the girl assumes her attitude of dejection. The Chinaman then appears and offers his attentions to the girl, but she repulses him, but he calmly smokes his pipe and puts his arm around her waist. At this moment the revived lieutenant strikes the Chinaman, and gives him a dig in the arm with his knife, and then lies back in a supposed swoon. The Chinaman then calls the captain of the sloop, and, with his marline spike, attempts to strike the prostrate form of the lieutenant, but the girl interferes and prevents the blow. The revenue cutter is now seen drawing nearer and nearer to the sloop, and the revenue men are seen training their guns upon the sloop. This takes the attention away from the couple, and they prepare to fight off the onslaught of the revenue men, but the men on the sloop are soon over-powered by the revenue men, who take charge of the sloop and rescue the girl and Lieutenant Manly. -- The Moving Picture World, October 5, 1907
- On a dark and stormy night, a traveler takes a room at a spooky hotel in the forest. As soon as the proprietor leaves, the room comes alive with ghosts and poltergeists who torment the man as he tries to unpack, eat, and go to sleep.
- In the opening of the story we find Mr. Gay at breakfast, served with coffee and rolls from the fair hands of a pretty petite French maid, whose cherry lips like rose leaves seem tacitly inviting and he proceeds to accept the invitation, when Mrs. Gay appears. "The venom clamors of a jealous woman poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth," and a fury of furies rage as Gay escapes and the maid is discharged. At the office, as his typewriter, is a veritable Andromeda, whose radiant beauty makes him her sycophantic Perseus, and often while her lithe digits are galloping swiftly over the ivories of the keyboard he cannot resist seizing them, and the trend of his dictation becomes a mellifluous flood of "silly nothings." It was during one of these effervescent ebullitions that Milady Gay enters the office. Convulsed with rage, she goes for the indecorous couple, throwing Gay into his chair; and driving out the pretty typist, hurling her cloak and hat, with execrations, after her. Poor Gay. Explanations and excuses are futile. The Mrs. will engage the next typewriter, and at out she goes in quest of one to her own fancy. Gay takes advantage of her absence to meet the evicted charmer and together they go to a lobster palace to soothe their ruffled nerves with a cold bottle and a hot bird. But unelusive wifey is on their trail, and he has barely time to get under the table when she rushes in. His hiding place is discovered, and sardonically brandishing a huge china plaster, she brings it down upon the shell of his cerebrum with a jolt that loosens his teeth and raises an excrescence the size of an egg. Meanwhile the cause of the trouble has flown, and Gay is led crestfallen back to the office, where the new typewriter awaits him. Merciful heaven! What a sight. Hecate, the witch, is a nymph of loveliness compared to her. A fact that is an affliction and a figure like a Chinese idol. Installing her in the position, Mrs. Gay, with an air of satisfaction departs. Gay makes an effort to tolerate her presence, but it is simply impossible, so dispatching his office boy to the costumer's to procure the ugliest mask in his stock, he persuades the new amanuenses with a generous bribe of bank notes to go; go and never return. The modern feminine Eumenides, quite overcome by this magnanimous munificence, accepts the money and is off. The boy arrives with the mask, and a message is sent for the charmer, who returns and dons the mask during wifey's calls, which scheme works like a charm. Mr. Gay next visits his favorite manicure shop, and while the pretty manicurist is polishing his nails, persists in playing the game of "holding hands." His advances are mildly repulsed by the maid, and during this little pleasantry Mrs. Gay enters and at once recognizing the voice of her hubby, climbs upon a chair to peer over the top of the screen that separates them. The sight she beholds throws her into a frenzy of passion, which causes her to fall from her perch, entangled in the screen and chairs, fighting, fuming, struggling, screaming termagant from whom the trembling Gay and poor manicure girls cower in abject terror. Upon his return home in the evening, he is just in time to see a gentleman, with the courtly bearing of an Italian nobleman, effusively received by Mrs. Gay and invited to her boudoir. Gay's erring soul is torn with jealousy, and seizing a revolver resolves self-destruction, but his courage fails him, and upon sober second thoughts, decides to put his apparent rival out of existence. So following on to his wife's apartment he finds, much to his chagrin as well as relief, that the imagined Barbarello is but an Italian barber, who has come to dress his wife's hair. Sheepishly he retires from the house and an attack of acute dipsosis seizes him. He arrives home in a potulent, boozy condition to find Mrs. Gay, though in bed, is awake to fling at him a most loquacious tirade. Nothing can stop her nerve-racking harangue, until a bright idea strikes the bibulous Gay, and he shuts her up in the folding bed, effectually drawing the curtain over her curtain lecture, and at the same time dropping the curtain on a film story, that for bright, telling comedy situations has never up to date been excelled. -- The Moving Picture World, December 21, 1907
- Vesta Victoria sings "Poor John."
- Seven toy teddy bears of varying sizes suddenly come to life, getting in all sorts of merry misadventures.
- The life of Jesus Christ. The film is believed to possibly be a US re-release of Alice Guy's The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ (1906).
- An illustrator draws some sketches at lightning speed. He first illustrates how he can turn a written word into a sketch of that word. The first word he writes is coon, which he transforms into a sketch of a black man. The next word he writes is Cohen, which he transforms into a sketch of a Jewish looking man. He is then visited on set by another man, who makes a smudge on the drawing surface. The illustrator turns that smudge into a sketch of that visiting man. And finally, he draws a drinking glass, a bottle of milk and a bottle of seltzer which take on lives of their own.
- A woman goes to the dentist for a toothache and is given gas. On her way home on the subway she can't stop laughing, and every other passenger catches the laughter from her.
- Old farmer Brown is a widower with two children, a pretty daughter and a hobbledehoy of a boy. The daughter has a sweetheart, who is every inch a sailor. We know he is a sailor, "for he wears a sailor hat," Papa objects to the invasion, and as he leaves for a visit in town, warns her, uttering a quos ego as he departs. Hal ha! but what care we? No sooner is papa put of sight than pulchritude Polly gives the signal; and Jack, her amphibian lover surreptitiously appears. However, this bliss is of short duration, for punctilious Phineus, the quiescent Quaker, one of Polly's many rural admirers, is seen coming down the lane, arrayed in his best bib-and-tucker, and armed with a bouquet, of flowers as big as a barrel. An idea! Jack climbs up into the tree, and from this altitudinous ambuscade, watches the proceedings. Phineus enters, and going quietly to the bench under the tree, on which his charmer is seated, places the bouquet beside her, kneels, pouring forth his soul's longing, and hands her the bouquet, it is now a monster head of cabbage, which Jimmie, the kid, has slyly put in its stead. This is received in derision, and a volley of apples, not impelled by Newton's law, drives him disgruntled from the place. He is hardly out of sight, when along comes radiant Reggie, the Lord Foppington of the village, all rigged out in a new check suit. He considers himself the "one best bet" m the race for Polly's hand. He starts his little love story, and Jack, with a fishline, hooks his wig and draws it up into the tree, leaving him as bald as an egg. Ah-h, but he is too intent on the object of his visit to notice this trifle, and Jack at length utilizes the utilitarian apples, one striking him on the head, raising a bump as big as his fist. So away goes he of the tesselated trousers to seek the aid of a surgeon to remove this protuberance from his shining dome of thought. Jack is about to come from his hiding when another suitor appears. This time it is supercilious Samuel, a regular devil among the women. Self-esteemed and haughty, he starts his verbose harangue. Down come the apples, until a furious fusillade is pelting him, but they have no effect, when the ominous Jimmie comes on the scene with a toy balloon, apparently made of stouter stuff than rubber, and soaking him on the cranium, causing him to see a corona of stars, knocks him out. Polly, Jack and Jimmie carry his inanimate form off the place. Rastus, the colored farm-hand, pays a call to Hannah, the housemaid, and while they are engaged in a little love scene beneath the tree, the Widow Jones calls to see the Widower Brown. Oh, merely on a business matter. Rastus runs away and Hannah goes into the house to call Mr. Brown, who, of course, is out Brown returns, and seeing the winsome widow seated 'neath the tree, takes a seat beside her. The overpowering influence of the Ephesian tree and the widow's charms are irresistible, and he is about to make a decoration, when the calling of Hannah attracts him to the house. While he is away, the widow strolls off with Jack and Polly, who have just entered, and Hannah takes her seat on the bench. Brown re-enters, and mistaking Hannah for the widow, sits down and continues from where he left off. The widow now returns, accompanied by Jack, Polly and Jimmie. Oh, horror! Horror upon horror! Caught with the goods! Consternation! Collapse!
- Jack and the daughter of a horse trainer are in love, but her father disapproves. preferring another suitor. They arrange a race to win her hand. But Jack's rival proves to be unscrupulous and will stop at nothing to be successful.
- The opening shows a colored nursemaid in the park with baby carriage, and seated on a bench receives the attention of several smart colored men who admire her greatly and endeavor to make her acquaintance. But the dusky belle is coy and declines to make the acquaintance of any of them, until one more fortunate than the rest is invited to a seat on the bench with her, and a most pronounced flirtation takes place between the lady and her beau. The course of true love seems to run smoothly, and we are next introduced to the lady's home, where the young man is paying a visit and is introduced by the girl to her, father and mother, typical old darkies of before the war time, and several funny scenes follow in which the kid hint her plays a prominent part. The coon favors his girl with many presents and lavishes attentions upon her, although it cannot he said that the courtship proceeds altogether without incident. A rival appears on the scene, razors are drawn and finally a duel is arranged, at which both suitors, accompanied by their seconds, appear on the field of honor and exchange shots at thirty paces; one of the combatants is carried off the field, while our original hero remains the master of the situation, and the girl, arriving at the moment, is so pleased with his valor that arrangements for the wedding are made at once. The happy climax is reached at last and the marriage ceremony makes the two coons one and ends the "wooing" in a wedding. Next is seen the home of the young couple, but quite a change has taken place. No longer does the colored gallant overwhelm his lady with presents and similar attentions. Put the familiar sign of "Washing Done Here" is apparent, and while the woman toils at the wash tub the married coon smokes, drinks and enjoys himself at his leisure until he decides to go out and enjoy the sights and pleasures of the town. In turn he visits a trap game and several other gambling scenes, not forgetting various saloons, at which he accumulates a very perceptible package. His gambling experience has been unsuccessful and he loses not only his money but his clothes as well, and finally is compelled to rob a scarecrow in order to get clothes enough to get home again at all, which he finally gains in a very disheveled and ragged condition. The unfortunate coon has not been home long before he is attacked by imaginary foes as the result of his drinking bout; seizing a broom he gives battle wildly but is surprised by his wife, who, disgusted with the condition in which her husband has returned, attacks him viciously and gives him the beating he so richly deserves and ends by throwing a tub of suds and dirty water all over him.
- A tramp on roller skates.
- While in a park, a young woman sees her fiancé being quite affectionate with another woman. When she calls him on the telephone to demand an explanation, he tells her that it was his sister. She is not satisfied, and insists on coming over to meet his 'sister'. As the young man broods over how to get out of trouble, an old college friend comes over, and he offers to pretend to be the sister. At first this works, but soon it has created even more complications.
- Chollie and George compete for a young woman's affection, using trickery and sabotage.
- A darkey finds it impossible to keep his feet still whenever he hears the sound of music. Sam is enticed from his home by hearing the sound of mouth harps played by two of his friends; out of the window he comes. He then gets a job to carry a trunk, an organ-grinder starts his feet a-going; he gets a job as waiter, the orchestra does the balance. Then he becomes a porter, the Dutch band finishes him with this position; then a barber, an artist's model and other positions, from all of which he is promptly fired because he can't keep his feet still when the strains of music float in the air.
- Energetic man steals kisses from passing ladies, until bystanders give chase.