Summary
A heartsick clerk, George, skulks along the boardwalk sketching macabre blueprints of his own extinction after Lillian’s brisk dismissal; each hypothetical demise—laudanum in a teacup, noose of laundry twine, plunge from the pier—collapses into farce under Chlorine’s sun-dappled laughter when she emerges from the surf like a nereid on holiday. A telegram meant as balm—“taking Chlorine instead”—mutates into poison in Lillian’s imagination, summoning a phalanx of frantic girlfriends and, by glorious misprint, a Doctor of Divinity clutching a prayer book instead of a stethoscope. The corpse-to-be, penniless and half-dressed, snores through the uproar until the wedding bells ring out, transmuting suicide pantomime into matrimonial carnival.
Synopsis
George is seeking divers ways of committing suicide because his sweetheart has given him the mitten. While attempting to find a painless way of ending his life, he encounters a bathing girl by the name of Chlorine who soon makes him change his mind about wishing to leave this wicked world. Just to relieve his former sweetheart Lillian's mind, he sends her a wire which reads that he is changing his mind and taking chlorine instead. Then George walks home, having in his despondency given away his money to a beggar. Too weary to disrobe, he falls asleep on his bed. When Lillian receives the telegram, she thought chlorine meant poison, so with a bunch of her girl friends, she goes to George's home to inspect the remains. She finds him "dead to the world" but alive. She wants a doctor so she telephones to a "Dr. Hitchem." While waiting for the physician, Lillian regrets that she hadn't accepted the supposed suicide. Soon the doctor arrives with prayer book in hand, for it is a D.D. instead of an M.D. to which Lillian has telephoned. The wedding is held immediately.
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