Hope
Directed by Colin CampbellThe sunshine of Poverty Flat is Hope Anderson, an unsophisticated young girl, who disseminates joy and consolation among the neighbors, and in the darkest hours of her own discouragement she is happy. She lives with her decrepit father, a composer, who ekes out a scanty existence by teaching music. To the neighbors afflicted with poverty, she soothes and elevates their spirits by the songs coming from the harp her father has taught her to play. Although she is successful in ministrations to the poor, fate has decreed for Hope an abundance of trouble. One by one some of the strings of her harp break, and almost simultaneously with the severing of each, bitter disappointments and sorrow fall upon Hope. The breaking of the first string brings disappointment that she is unable to dispose of her father's latest composition; the second string snaps and with it comes the death of her father; then she loses her lover, whom she had saved from a drunkard's grave, and finally she becomes blind. The young man that had won her heart, Tom Franklin, through his former dissipated habits, is killed by the police. Hope still continues to be a messenger of peace and solace, and many a poverty-stricken home has found pleasure in listening to her songs. She contracts, in her ministrations to the sick, a malignant fever, from which she never recovers. As friends place in her dying hand the harp, the last cord snaps.
