Picturegoer (1921)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

EBRUARY 1921 THE PI CTU REGOE-R 35 (Specially written for " The Picturegoer," by the author, this story of the film appears by permission of Messrs. Constable and Co., publishers of the play, " Hobson's Choice," and of the novel of the play, " Hobson's.") ■ HOBSONS CHOICE A avo (Author oj " The Marbeck Inn," etc. man may mingle relief with other more confessed emotions when (la. wife who has kept a tight fihand upon him is taken from ill earthly cares, but Mr. MHenry Horatio Hobson, boot^jtnaker by trade, Burgess of Salford by the accident of [birth and by unchallengeable [conviction, reckoned without his daughter Maggie when he [Saw in the death of his wife an opportunity to go his fleshly Rfiray without domestic interference. He had three daughters, and, as he put it to his friend, Jim Heeler, " The dominion of one woman is Paradise to the dominion of three." " It sounds a sad case, Henry," sympathised his friend. " I'm a talkative man by nature — you know that." Mr. »|Hobson aired a grievance. " You're an orator," the admiring Heeler emphasised. [' I doubt John Bright himself is better gifted of the gab ((than you." That dates this story : call it roughly forty wears ago, when the circular absurdity called crinolines had jfeiven place to the semi-circular absurdity called bustles, md when a woman with a vote or a woman on a jury would ■lave seemed simply irreligious. But that only meant that vomen had other ways of asserting themselves ; it didn't jjnean that women did not assert themselves ; nothing ever • means that — not even heavy-handed parents of the type of i[-ienry Hobson. " A woman's foolishness," asserted Hobson, " begins . vhere man's leaves off. I've lifted up my voice and roared it them. I've tried all ways, and I dunno what to do." " Then you quit roaring at 'em and get 'em wed," suggested |im. " Men's common enough. Are you looking for ingels in breeches ? " j He hadn't looked at all, but now that he came to think of t, Victoria and Alice, his younger daughters, ate a lot, and Host ^10 each a year to dress, without being of great service »jn the shop. Maggie was useful, and there was no question 'j>f Maggie marrying. She was thirty. But he made up lis mind that he would offer a choice — Hobson's choice — .0 Alice and little Vickey. Either they could stop objecting 0 their father's habits and manners, or he would find some louse Henry Horatio Hobson, Bootmaker by Trade. other man to look after them. One would do to begin with. " Get one wedding in a family, and it goes through the lot like measles," he thought. Barring Maggie, of course. Maggie was safe from infection, because Maggie was thirty and the manager of the shop. Several points did not occur to Mr. Hobson. One was that Alice and Vickey might have initiative of their own in the matter of finding husbands. And another was that husbands, however found, would expect settlements when they married the daughters of a warm man like Henry Horatio. As a matter of fact, Albert Prosser, a smart young solicitor, was the moth that fluttered round the light of Alice's eyes, and Vickey's flirtation with tall Fred Beenstock, whose father was an eminent corn-merchant, was a going concern. Maggie knew all about it, and had no objections to her young sisters' sweethearts so long as the sweethearting was kept in its proper place ; but the shop was an improper place, and the moth, Albert, fluttered to his flame in business hours more frequently than Maggie approved. He came in, on the morning after Hobson decided to reduce his daughters to humility, and went across to where Alice stood behind the counter. She warned him that her father hadn't gone out yet (he went out every morning, early, to the Moonraker's Inn), and Albert turned to go, but found an extremely businesslike Maggie standing in his way. Maggie was tired of his turning the shop into the scene of his courtship. " What can we do for vou, Mr. Prosser ? " she asked.