The story
“He was a gallant young man. He met the girl on a train. She had forgotten to bring money, so he paid her fare. They met again when he called on business at the office where she was employed as typist. This was the beginning. Eventually he proposed, but she referred him to father, who incidentally was a wild animal trainer. Father said, ‘Yes, if you will tame this wild elephant.’ The young man thought the girl was worth the effort, so he got them to take the animal to a quiet place, and then started experimenting. The elephant didn’t take kindly to the new trainer, and in consequence our hero felt very sore in places where the animal had put marks of his displeasure. A rival animal trainer was nearly bankrupt. He had a little girl, to whom he was much attached. She was roaming around, and through a knot-hole in the fence viewed the amateur’s efforts to tame the elephant with a great deal of amusement. When he had given up the idea she approached him, and the result of it all was that he offered her father a good sum of money to do the job for him. This being accomplished very successfully, he called the father of his girl, gave an exhibition of what could now be done with the animal, and, of course, won his suit. (Released April 6th. Length 1,016 feet.)”
Summary from The Cinema · 12 March 1914
Another synopsis, from Reel Life · 27 December 19131 min
“The young broker fell in love at first sight with his pretty stenographer. Before she could marry him, the girl said, he must get her father’s consent. So Jack Crane took the first train to the little town in New England where Ben Matthews lived, expecting to return the next day and claim his bride. However, father’s consent was not so easily won. He proved to be an animal trainer, and an erratic old gentleman. Conducting his would-be son-in-law to a remote paddock on his animal farm, he pointed to an elephant grazing therein. ‘Tame that beast,’ said he, ‘and my gal is yours.’ Jack did his best. But the elephant was a fierce one—and at last, he was giving up in despair—when a little girl came to his rescue. The money Jack paid Helen’s father to buy him a new elephant of tractable disposition, and to exchange it, unknown to Matthews, for the untamable one, was indeed a fortune—but it saved the little girl’s father from bankruptcy—Matthew succumbed, and Jack married Belle.”
