Frank Borzage and Ann Little in The Demon of Fear (1916)

James Oliver, has a delicate little wife about to become a mother. Their family doctor advises Oliver that he must not become engaged in any physical encounter or get hurt in any way or it would kill her. Soon thereafter Oliver is...

The Demon of Fear

James Oliver, has a delicate little wife about to become a mother. Their family doctor advises Oliver that he must not become engaged in any physical encounter or get hurt in any way or it would kill her. Soon thereafter Oliver is at the bar when a rough patron of the place invites him to drink. Oliver declines and on insistence by the rough, asks for soda water, which the rough throws in Oliver's face in disgust. Forced to fight or acknowledge himself a coward, Oliver admits cowardice. They all jeer him, when an old man a quiet spectator of the scene, tells the following story visioned in and out in pictures. He takes for his text the statement that, "No man who will admit that he is a coward for a principal is one. He depicts the story of a young man, Thomas Marsh by name, who had a feeling of fear born in his physical being. He met a girl Anna, with whom he fell in love. One day he recoiled like a child from the sight of a snake which his sweetheart bravely killed. Another occasion he shook off her timid grasp and ran for safety from a threatening bull, leaving Anna to faint dead away in the path of the animal. Anna thought she never could forgive this, but seeing in it the fear of a child, she overlooked it and married him. Later, living by the sea, a dreadful storm arises. She looked out and saw two fishermen wrecked and clinging to rocks. She urged Marsh to go to their rescue but he hung back afraid. She launched the boat herself while he buried his affrighted face in the sand. Suddenly the boat capsized and Anna was cast helpless into the waves. With superhuman courage Marsh plunged in, rescued her, placed her on the sand, and burning with the mad desire to earn her praise, plunged in again and brought back the men. Free at last to go to Anna's side, he found her dead. God had given him back his birthright of courage but had taken the love of his life forever. As the old man finishes his story with tears in every word and a sob of loneliness and pain at the end, the loafers interpreting its meaning, file out one by one. Oliver takes the old man's hand, presses it and departs. The stranger had told his own heart story to prove his point.

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The Demon of Fear

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