Is Matrimony a Failure? (1922)

Mr. and Mrs. Amos Saxby's silver wedding anniversary is interrupted by the surprise elopement of their daughter Margaret with bank clerk Arthur Haviland. Law student Dudley King, and rival suitor for Margaret, announces that the marriage-license clerk is on vacation and that the license obtained by the elopers is invalid; he wires the proprietor of the lodge where the couple plan to spend their honeymoon, and Arthur and his wife indignantly return home. Demanding an explanation from the assistant clerk, Arthur learns that all marriages processed in November for the past 30 years are void because the clerk had not then been sworn in, and in consequence many households dissolve. But the husbands do not relish their newly-gained freedom, and when the license clerk returns, he declares all the marriages legal. Arthur rescues his bride just as King is about to carry her off, and the matrimonial routine begins.