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Cilda Varesi and Effie Shanon In "Children of bPrth"
New York, Jan. 23. Winthrop
Ames, has produced "Children of
Earth," by Alice Brown, which was
the -winning play in his recent $10,000
prize contest.
In this drama of New England life
Broadway fiinds something vastly dif
ferent from any other production of
the season a grim story which stirs
the emotions at their deepest sourc
es and leaves its impressions grooved
into the mind.
The heroine, played by Effie Shan
non, is an elderly spinster who has
lived a gray, bleak life under the
domination of a puritanical father.
The love of her youth has been de I
nied her; she has known nothing but
self-sacrifice and repression.
After the death of her father the
tragedy of her life comes home to
her in all its bitterness. At the same
time the lover of her youth returns
to the village a mean, mercenary
old man. With this final dashing of
her hopes she gives up all thought of
self and agrees to marry this old man
to save the farm of a neighbor who
has been good to her.
Then comes an odd turn in the
story. This neighbor confesses that
he has loved her for many years. He'
has a. wife, a woman of foreign birth,
who is a victim of drink a charac
ter wonderfully depicted by Gilda Va
resi. A strange meeting of the three
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