The Courage of the Commonplace
Directed by Rollin S. SturgeonWhile plowing his fields one day, farmer John Cameron notices that his horse Jerry looks sick, so he stops work and takes the team up to the barn. He looses Jerry and lets him go into a loose box while he puts his other horse into his stall as usual. Cameron finds that Jerry is in bad shape, and at once he sets off to see a veterinary surgeon who gives him medicine, but doesn't come to see what's actually wrong with Jerry. That same morning, John's daughter Julia receives a reply from the principal of the School of Arts and Sciences to a letter she had written, asking the cost of a course she wishes to take. She has long hoped to get something better than a college education, and has been saving all the money she could make on her chickens so she can afford it. Her frivolous-minded older sister Bessie already attends the school, but their parents who also have several younger children, cannot afford to send Julia as well. Julia has invested much work and self-denial to save what she has, and now she's overjoyed to learn hat she has just enough to put her through. t That night, Jerry dies. Cameron despairs because Jim, Jerry's teammate, is old and not strong enough to plow alone. Unless Cameron is able to get his seed into the ground and reap the harvest, he will be unable to meet the mortgage payment that is due in the autumn. Both he and his wife are greatly distressed, for it looks like their work of years in improving the farm will all be wasted. Knowing this, Julia decides to forego her college course and offer them the money so they can buy a new horse. This is difficult; she has long dreamed of her new life. The sight of her frivolous sister, who does not seem to realize what opportunities she has, only makes her loss more painful. At first her father will not accept the money, knowing of the dream of his daughter's heart, but at length she persuades him to do so, all the time wearing a smiling face as though it means nothing to her. Truly it is such commonplace sacrifices as these that demand the highest courage.
