A Pair of Boots

The teen-aged daughters of the house flee in terror! A tramp has entered through the front door. He eats their breakfast -- including a dozen doughnuts, which he carries on a walking stick -- drinks the port and tries on their father's new boots in this short Selig Polyscope comedy.

Frank Clark as the tramp -- I think that's Mr. Clark -- is fine in the role, but the half-witted behavior of the actresses who play the daughters is off-putting. They are supposed to be timid creatures, too timid to lock the front door with a ruffian on the porch or pick up the telephone and call for help. More than a century later it's hard to say whether they were simply setting up the situation without much forethought or satirizing the middle-class anxieties of films of the previous decade.