Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1924-Jan 1925)

A Week of Temptation Is the Second Instalment of The Girl Who Couldn't Be Bad B9 HENRY ALBERT PHILLIPS flAJrCORNtUA 0WRi' The lights were lowered and Orkney seized his opportunity in the shape of Hope's trembling hand TTOPE BROWN, lovely and seventeen, J^l lived in Pocustown, California, with her brother Hank, her parents and her Aunt Charity. Her parents practised the severities of the prophets: long prayers, longer faces, drudgery, constant punishment. Hope came to hate the things that are called "good" ordinarily. She determined to run away and be "bad." In this mood and with her hawk-eyed parents in 'Frisco, she met Miles Orkney, a former resident returned to the little town besmeared with the vices of a big city. NOW, Mr. and Mrs. Ezekiel Brown were in no sense hypocrites. Dont get that idea for a moment. They were zealots, that's all. They overemphasized one very essential part of our human make-up and almost totally neglected several other equally essential parts. Furthermore. Mr. and Mrs. Brown — like an appalling number of their fellow creatures — had no sense of humor. Life has its little jokes as well as its funerals. They could not see them. But the Browns enjoyed working in their chosen field — even if they didn't laugh over it now and then — just as we all enjoy doing the thing we want to do, whether we rob banks or undertake at funerals. That man is a failure who does not enjoy his work! The Browns enjoyed their work immensely and could not, for the life of them, see why all the rest of the world did not go and do likewise. From which it may be seen that you cant discuss such good people without immediately catching the preaching habit yourself. Be it said also of the Browns, that they were consistent. They did not confine their inhuman piety to hardening the bosom of their family. To the contrary, they were inde fatigable outside workers to the end that none should wilfully escape the wrath to come. They pointed their persuasion by giving the wayward a liberal foretaste of what awaited them. Xew laurels had fallen — tho not unexpectedly — upon the frowning brow of Ezekiel Brown, when he had been elected Moderator — for the whole state — of the newly organized Liquor Extinction League. Sarah Brown — thru the same coincidence of influence — was made the state head, or overmother, of the Society for the Guidance of Wayward Girls. Now, as leaders of good causes, they had established a record that would probably stand for years. Personal love, however, does not enter their religion, so we find them quite devoid of sympathy for those who transgress, which gives them something more of the spirit of exterminators of the wrong side, rather than one of propagating the right side. So when they are not engaged in torturing the modern-minded Hope and her brother at home, they are neglecting them — in the voracious pursuit of their vocations as reformers. With all these attributes and accomplishments in mind, it was not in the least surprising when Mr. and Mrs. Ezekiel Brown were appointed — unanimously ! — delegates-at-large to the Federated Convention of Righteous Causes ! The ultragood Ezekiel and Sarah left Pocustown after invoking austerity on both Hope and Hank and then trusting them both to the kindly care of Aunt Charity. II There was one moment when Hope Brown was quite overcome by her parents' parting from her — particularly her mother. She would have given anything in the world at that moment to have had her mother take her in her arms and But she didn't and instead of all things in her heart being changed for the better they became a trifle worse. Mother and father bade their children a perfunc 45 PAG t