The First Settler's Story
Directed by J. Searle DawleyThis tale is filled with human love and tenderness of the hearty frontier man for his girl wife and shows the tender struggle of the woman to be a helpmate to the man she has followed into the wilderness, where together they build their little home and fight that awful struggle of isolation and loneliness, where it means miles and miles to their nearest neighbors. Together they fell the first log of their little home and so on with patience and love each one carries out his daily work, and at eve by the campfire with the wife's head resting upon the husband's knee they talk and plan of the future of their little home, which is in the building. At last it is finished and the rough interior is made beautiful in a simple way, by the hands of the woman. Never a cloud has entered their lives until one day the cows go astray. The husband comes home wearied with his daily toil, harsh words are spoken, supper is eaten in silence; it is their first quarrel. What a tragedy it is to those who love. So through the long night and at the breakfast table the silence between the two continues and when John leaves with never a good-bye kiss the wife's heart is wrung and it is little that John knows that it is the last chance that he will ever get to kiss the woman he loves in life. That eve when he returns from work he finds a tender little note saying the cows have gone astray again and that she had gone to bring them home. A fire breaks out in the forest and so through smoke and flame and burning brush she searches and finds the stray cattle and brings them home, but when he finds her she cannot answer to his call, nor feel the kiss that she so longed for at the morning hour. The flames had done their work; the cattle were safely home and the dead body of his young wife lay cold and still in his arms and so the picture ends with the First Settler telling his tale of tender human pathos.
Where to Watch The First Settler's Story
