Photoplay (Jan 1921)

w Mary! Mary! By OLGA PETROVA Mary: Name of a thousand dear women that have passed out and beyond .the confines of this eternally revolving ball. Mary ! Name of a thousand sweet souls that still tread its age-worn paths, what memories you conjure up. what fancies you weave from out the past and from within the present ! Mary! Your very name is a caress. It rolls lovingly from the tongue. It is a smile and it is a tear. It is a title and it is a reproach. It is a guerdon of peace and it is a battle cry of war. Out of the dim distance I see you queen and splendid courtezan; Mother of God and the lowly servant at His feet. I see you. young and tender and beautiful, shut in among the frowning walls of dark Hollywood and the still darker brows of those that guard you. I see you again upon a throne. The ministers that stand at your side, glance at you with furtive eyes. Outside in the streets the crowd shouts your name. They call you Bloody Mary. Once you had a little lamb. I remember that very well. The village crones used to peer at you over the geraniums in their window boxes, as you trudged to school one sweet May morning, the lamb in constant attendance at your side. They used to smile and nod at you and you used to shake your locks out of your eyes and laugh an answering greeting. You are indissolubly associated with gardens, where lily bells and cockle shells are waited upon by tall slim girls dressed as Quaker maids, while you. high priestess of them all, wander up and down the lily paths, your hands white as the butterflies that flutter about your sunny head. Again I see you as empress. A diadem wreathes your royal brow. They call you Queen of England, and many wait upon your word. Coming from so high estate to one less haughty they call you "Duchess of Suds." And yet of all these shades I know you best and love you best in your garden, the garden that you have brought to the glory of fruit fulness from out a weedy waste that erstwhile stretched itself beneath a pitiless sun. It is hard to realize, looking at this reclaimed desert, that so much care, so much labor and so much love have gone into its soil to nourish and bring it to fertility. It looks so neat, so immaculate, that one might easily believe that it had ever been so. But we that work in other gardens, know the toil, the unrelenting care that are necessary to get even one blade of grass to grow in stark and barren spaces and how much more toil and how much more care to keep that blade from being scorched by the sun. or eaten up by the weeds, and the insects that menace its very being. Yes, you have worked long and hard in the garden, Mary. You have not worked with a union card in your pocket and one eye on the clock. From early morning until late at night you have hoed and tended and weeded and watered. And at night when the darkness has set in you have pondered and planned and hoped, for your blossoms on new and splendid blooms that you may bring into being even though they may need the fertilization of your tears. And yet many that pass your garden see only the tilled and fertile soil. It is hard for them to believe that you have done this, made this out of your own personal toilings and strivings. They say, "It is easy for this gardener to have a good garden. She has a wonderfully efficient staff of undergardeners," forgetting that it is the head gardener that after all must be responsible for the final results be they good or bad. They say "It is easy for this gardener to have a good garden. Look how abundantly everything grows. The soil is perfect. The irrigation system is furnished by nature. Any fool could obtain the same results with the same equipment." But it is they that are the fools, for they can only grasp the effect and not the cause thereof. Xor can they reason that the same soil after it has been brought to bear flowers and fruit in abundance will bear an equal crop of weeds and other parasites that flourish only in lush and pleasant places. Nor do they know of the maurauders that have broken in by night, rifling your fruit trees and trampling upon your lily beds. Looking over the hedge of your garden one is somewhat surprised to note your choice of flowers, for most gardeners believe that they are obliged to cultivate many species for their patrons for which they have no personal affection. No trailing passion flower winds its coils around the rooftree of your gardener's hut. No black and purple orchids sway in the breeze that fans your daffodils, whispering of strange and fetid swamps where men have died in their quest and left their bodies to stink in the sun. No blood red poppy drowses its poppy life away No vine hangs heavy, pregnant with purple grapes. I see mignonette and hollyhocks and snowdrops and tall lily bells. Close to the earth, the good clean earth. I see violets. Their perfume is clean and sweet and nauseating to none. But of all your flowers it is your pansy beds that intrigue my fancy most. There are pansies of every shape and size and color, pansies of velvet and pansies of soft silk that throw out a faint warm odor as I turn my head to the breeze. As I draw nearer to them I see that they have faces. They are really little people. Here is a tiny white b'ossom. It has queer little crisscross lines about its mouth. I know this face. It is the face of poor, wizened world-weary Unity Blake. Close beside it I see one of braver hue. It looks up at me with the whimsical smile of "Amarilly of Clothesline Alley." while on the very edge of the bed facing it. grows a pansy of rich deep purple. This bears the lineaments of "The Poor Little Rich Girl," pitiful for all her purple panoply. And so on through the pansy bed I recognize people that I know. Raising my head I see in the distance tall blustering sunflowers. They too have faces. This one rollicking with mirth, shaking its bourgeois sides with merriment, speaks to me of "The Hoodlum." Perhaps (Concluded on page ioq)