The Old Country

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

A beautiful little play, strong without violence and sentimental without sentimentality, the combined characteristics for which one would look in the work of a descendant, on the one side, of Dion Boucicault, on the other of John Clayton. The story originally, and I think more happily, Christened "Buying a dream is that of the scheme of Fountain, an illegitimate son who with his injured mother has been banished to America and has made a fortune there, to bring her back in triumph to "the Old Country" as the mistress of the Hall and and owner of the village out of which she was hounded years ago when her unknown seducer left her to ruin. With this set purpose of revenge the young millionaire has kept in touch with his birthplace by posing as the nephew of two dear old ladies living there - a waster, now dead, whom he met and befriended out west. He has sent all sorts of munificent donations to the village of his supposed boyhood, and has paved the way for his reception as a local hero on his reappearance. In the meantime he has secretly bought up the mortgages on the Squire's heavily encumbered estate, and his notion is to turnout ignominiously all the worthy folk, the parson, the doctor, and so forth, who helped make his mother an outcast. His plot, so far as he and his money can control it, succeeds to perfection: but it breaks down at the critical moment through the influences of charity and love. In the first place he loses his heart to a girl who is shocked by his vengeful scheme of which he is so proud. Then he discovers that the Squire when he is dispossessing is none other than his mother's former lover, against whom she cherishes none of the bitter feeling entertained by her son. Lastly he realizes that God's way of righting bygone wrongs is better than man's; and, rewarded by the love of the girl who has the courage to rebuke him, he goes away to bless where he had meant to stay and curse. Ernest A. Bendall.