Summary
A vibrant Broadway chorine, Jean Crosby, journeys to the seemingly tranquil Murphysburg, only to confront a stark tableau of provincial duplicity. Her arrival immediately unveils the financial dereliction of her brother-in-law, Lysander Sprowl, who has squandered her hard-earned remittances, plunging her sister into a precarious domesticity. More jarringly, the town's self-proclaimed moral arbiters, members of the sanctimonious Purity League—men who once courted her attention in the uninhibited metropolis—now recoil from her gaze, their feigned piety a flimsy veil over remembered indiscretions. Undeterred by their hypocrisy, Jean, with the astute collaboration of local newspaperman Toby Caswell, orchestrates a shrewd counter-maneuver. Through the anonymous serialization of her own candid life narrative within the town's daily gazette, she masterfully exposes the collective vulnerability of these self-righteous figures. The ensuing panic among Murphysburg's male elite manifests as a desperate offer of "hush money," a transparent attempt to silence the uncomfortable truths she has so subtly broadcast. Jean, however, scorns their paltry bribes, her objective far loftier than mere financial recompense. Before departing Murphysburg, she and Toby secure a binding pledge from these chastened gentlemen: a definitive cessation of their draconian campaign for restrictive "blue laws," thereby dismantling the very edifice of moral suppression they had sought to erect.
Synopsis
When Jean Crosby, a Broadway chorus girl, visits her sister in Murphysburg and finds that not only has her brother-in-law, Lysander Sprowl, squandered all the money she has sent, but the leading male citizens, all members of the Purity League, who once were friendly to her in New York, will not now give her a second glance. With the help of newspaperman Toby Caswell, however, she anonymously publishes her life story in the town newspaper, thus frightening the men into offering Jean "hush money." Jean refuses their bribery, but before she and Toby leave town they get the gentlemen's promises to end their push for blue laws.
