Her Vocation

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Mrs. Wallace receives word from a magazine editor that he is anxious to publish a paper she has read at a meeting of the Colonial Association. The letter indicates that the editor feels that she possesses considerable literary talent, and fired by reading it, she decides to drop her routine of social duties and amusements and devote herself to fiction writing. Her first short story is returned with a letter from the editor in which he states that her ignorance of underworld life and conditions make the manuscript unavailable, and he suggests that she try to get a first-hand knowledge of anything of which she may write in the future. She thereupon starts out to "do" the Tenderloin, her trip ending abruptly when she is sent home with her husband, who has been summoned by a policeman after his wife had got into a mix-up with a couple of street loafers. Mrs. Wallace, thereupon, after much persuasion, induces hubby to invade the Tenderloin in search of "local color" which she can use in her writing. In the "Silver Star," a notorious café and dance saloon, he meets Jean Halliday, "special" writer for a metropolitan newspaper. She, too, is after "atmosphere," having been assigned to do a story of night life in the city for the Sunday edition. At midnight everything is in full swing at the café, but at about that time Mrs. Wallace, greatly worried over the lateness of the hour and the knowledge that hubby is in a very "lively" locality, sets out to find him. Knowing that he has gone to the "Silver Star," she follows him there, and when admittance is refused, she proceeds to call a cop and have the place "pinched." In the excitement, her husband and the girl reporter escape through a back window, but are picked up on the outside by one of the reserves. At the station, Mr. Wallace calls his house on the phone, but is told that his wife has gone out. Miss Halliday, too, is unable to get in touch with her sweetheart, a young artist, he also having gone to the café to make sure that she was all right. The artist and Mrs. Wallace reach the police station shortly after the husband and the girl reporter have been brought in. The cop, whose beat is in Mr. Wallace's neighborhood, is called in and clears matters up by explaining how he had directed him to "The Silver Star," and a few days later, after Mrs. Wallace has abandoned literature as being too strenuous an occupation, they receive a telegram telling them that their friends of the "Silver Star" adventure, the girl reporter and the artist, are to be married.