The story
“Elsie Plush was a dime novel fiend—Laura Jean [Libbey] kind, you know—and it was her boast that there wasn’t a thriller published that she hadn’t read. In the present Thanhouser picture she purchases a copy of Miss Libbey’s A Great Hero and instantly falls in love with the hero in the book. She forthwith proceeds to measure up the abilities of George Mild, her beau, with those of the Libbey hero, and finds that George falls short. When George proposes, Elsie so far forgets the Libbey hero as to accept George. Then the Libbey hero recurs to her—and it is all off with George. She tells him that he is a worthy enough young man, but he isn’t a hero. He is unromantic and ordinary and she knew she couldn’t live ‘happily ever after’ with anyone but a full fledged hero—like the one in Laura Jean’s book.
“Then Elsie meets her hero. He is the handsome military man, resplendent in gold lace and lofty airs. Elsie was pleased to take a stroll with him. He seems all that a hero should be until Elsie falls from a bridge into dangerous depths, when the bold soldier—calls for help! So when an athlete responds and rescues Elsie, she scorns the unheroic man of war and gives the athlete her arm.
“But the athlete has his weak points, and one of them is inability to manage a horse. Hence when he tries to drive Elsie’s horse the animal promptly runs away! Luckily an expert horseman happens along, stops the horse—and basks in Elsie’s smile. HE is a REAL hero! Elsie ignores the athlete. The clever horseman takes the seat the athlete has vacated and guides the horse to Elsie’s home. But while handy with the reins the horseman is unhandy with his fists, and in an altercation with the pugilist is pounded and pummeled to a finish—right before Elsie’s astonished eyes. Leaving the horseman rubbing his bruises, the hero-seeker marches off with the victorious shoulder-hitter.
“An escaped lunatic enters on the scene and the pugilist loses his nerve. Fleeing, he leaves Elsie at the mercy of the maniac. Suddenly she observes a frightened look in the maniac’s eyes and turns her head to see a hypnotist approaching and cowing the lunatic. The hypnotist succeeds in leading the maniac back to the asylum, and then joins Elsie, who invites the professor to escort her home. The man of the powerful gaze carefully accepts and Elsie is sure that she has found the perfect hero until a footpad sticks a revolver under the professor’s nose and snarls, ‘Everything around yer!’ In vain does the professor exert his hypnotic power—the gun continues in dangerous proximity, and the man behind it means business. So the hypnotist shells up like an ordinary mortal and Elsie loses another ideal—and her jewelry! The policeman who frightens off the highwayman is a sure-enough hero—but investigation shows a wife and five youngsters at home! To add to her troubles, Elsie’s pocketbook is lifted by heroic-looking Hamlet who needed the money. Elsie concludes that no hero is perfect and that book heroes are fake, so when plain, ordinary George swings by in his new Sunday suit, she tells him he’s good enough for her, and he slips a gold band on her shapely finger, and—well, what more do you want?”
Summary from The Moving Picture World · 30 April 1910
