d how any producer
could bring himself to debase so great an art, and Tessie wondered
if she hadn't, in a way, been aiming over the public's head with her
scenarios. After all, you had to give the public what it wanted. She
began to devise comedy elements for her next drama.

But The Hazards of Hortense came mercifully to soothe their annoyance.
The slim little girl with a wistful smile underwent a rich variety of
hazards, each threatening a terrible death. Through them all she came
unscathed, leaving behind her a trail of infuriated scoundrels whom she
had thwarted. She escaped from an underworld den in a Chicago slum just
in the nick of time, cleverly concealing herself in the branches of the
great eucalyptus tree that grew hard by, while her maddened pursuers
scattered in their search for the prize. Again she was captured, this
time to be conveyed by aeroplane, a helpless prisoner and subject to the
most fiendish insults by Black Steve, to the frozen North. But in the
far Alaskan wilds she eluded the fiends and drove swiftly over the
frozen wastes with their only dog team. Having left her pursuers far
behind, she decided to rest for the night in a deserted cabin along the
way. Here a blizzard drove snow through the chinks between the logs, and
a pack of fierce wolves besieged her. She tried to bar the door, but the
bar was gone. At that moment she heard a call. Could it be Black Steve
again? No, thank heaven! The door was pushed open and there stood Ralph
Murdock, her fiance. There was a quick embrace and words of cheer from
Ralph. They must go on.

But no, the wind cut like a knife, and the wolves still prowled. The
film here showed a running insert of cruel wolves exposing all their
fangs. Ralph had lost his rifle. He went now to put his arm through the
iron loops in place of the missing bar. The wolves sought to push open
the door, but Ralph's arm foiled them.

Then the outside of the cabin was shown, with Black Steve and his three
ugly companions furtively approaching. The wolves had gone, but human
wolves, ten thousand times more cruel, had come in their place. Back in
the cabin Ralph and Hortense discovered that the wolves had gone. It had
an ugly look. Why should the wolves go? Ralph opened the door and they
both peered out. There in the shadow of a eucalyptus tree stood Black
Steve and his dastardly crew. They were about to storm the cabin. All
was undoubtedly lost.

Not until the following week would the