Volume II: Filmography

FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES

June 24, 1913 (Tuesday)

Length: 1 reel

Character: Drama

Cast: Peggy Reid (the wife), William Garwood

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture World, June 28, 1913:

The young telegraph operator had for many years been a faithful employee of the railroad, but one day when word was brought to him that his little daughter was dying he left his post and hastened to her bedside in time to kiss his child before she died. When the grief-stricken father returned to the station, a stern-faced man sat at the telegraph desk. It was the superintendent of the railroad. He listened contemptuously to the telegrapher's explanation, then told him curtly that he was discharged, saying that 'family troubles' did not concern him. The other railroads did not care to employ the disgraced telegrapher, and the position he was able to secure did not pay sufficient money to enable him to properly care for his wife. Grief for her child and privation did their work, and the man found himself alone in the world, with a bitter and implacable hatred toward the man who had caused him so much suffering.

Several years after the operator was discharged, a train dispatcher made a blunder which gave the right of way to two trains going in opposite directions on a single track division. The dispatcher telegraphed to the station where the trains would meet, but received no answer. Finally, after repeated calls, he received a response. The operator was the discharged telegrapher, now a homeless wanderer, who had entered the station to find the operator in a drunken stupor. The superintendent, who had been waiting impatiently, pushed the dispatcher aside and answered the call himself. He instructed the man at the other end of the wire to switch one of the trains to a siding and avert the collision. To his horror the answer came that the operator was drunk, and that the man sending the message was the discharged telegrapher that he would do nothing to avert the threatened wreck. The superintendent, terror-stricken, doubly so because his wife and daughter was on one of the trains, pleaded with him, but the discharged man would not listen. But the memories of happier days came back to him, he seemed to see his little daughter as she said her prayers, and remembered the words 'Forgive us our trespasses.' His anger and resentment faded away. He ran to the nearby switch, just in time. And many lives were saved because of the prayer of a little child.

REVIEW, The Morning Telegraph, June 29, 1913:

The theme of this story teaches forgiveness. A good double exposure scene discloses what is in the mind of the discharged telegrapher, who, happening in a station when the operator, drunk, is unable to receive a message which neglected will cause a frightful collision, dismissed the desire to revenge himself on the man who wronged him and whose wife and daughter are on one of the trains, takes the message and rushes to the switch himself in time to prevent the accident.

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, July 5, 1913:

There is one very good situation in this, where the tramp telegrapher tells the dispatcher he will not sidetrack the train on which the latter's wife and child are riding. Later, his better nature asserts itself, but not before the dispatcher had learned what it means to suffer. This is not a well-rounded story and is poorly developed in places, but it has several points of interest.

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