I Would Like To Share With You This Morning, A ...

I would like to share with you this morning, a brief description of a Charlie Chaplin’s movie, "City Lights". Chaplin plays a little vagabond tramp who opens himself to anyone who opens their door to him. He becomes a vehicle for salvation for both a poor blind girl and a rich man. The rich man is bent on drowning himself. Charlie befriends him and the rich man, who is drunk at the time, takes the little tramp home with him for dinner. When the rich man. sobers up he rejects the little clown and even accuses him of stealing money which the rich man in his drunken stupor had given him. Fleeing the police, the little clown manages to get the money into the hands of a poor blind girl for an operation she desperately needs to restore her sight. Then, he is arrested and imprisoned.

After serving a sentence in prison, the little tramp emerges shabbier than ever. The blind girl had imagined the one who thrust the money in her hands to be a handsome, wealthy young man. Now that her sight has been restored via surgery she does not recognize him.

As the little tramp forlornly shuffles by the window of her new floral shop, which she had bought with his money. she ridicules him. The pathos and tragedy become intense as the shop owner heaps scorn on the very one who had gone to prison for the money which had made her what she is. Only in the final scene of the film does she discover that the shabby little tramp was her benefactor. She touches his arm and his face once again. exactly as she did in that moment of blindness. As she realizes what has happened, she whispers, "You!"