The Little Fellow finds the girl of his dreams and work on a family farm. He helps defend the farm against criminals, and all seems well, until he discovers the girl of his dreams already has someone in her life. Unwilling to be a problem in their lives, he takes to the road, though he is seen skipping and swinging his cane as if happy to be back on the road where he knows he belongs.
Charlie is released from prison and immediately swindled by a fake parson. A fellow ex-convict convinces Charlie to help burglarize a house.
Walking along with his bulldog, Charlie finds a "good luck" horseshoe just as he passes a training camp advertising for a boxing partner "who can take a beating." After watching others lose, Charlie puts the horseshoe in his glove and wins. The trainer prepares Charlie to fight the world champion. A gambler wants Charlie to throw the fight. He and the trainer's daughter fall in love.
A shipowner intends to scuttle his ship on its last voyage to get the insurance money. Charlie, a tramp in love with the owner's daughter, is grabbed by the captain and promises to help him shanghai some seamen. The daughter stows away to follow Charlie. Charlie assists in the galley and attempts to serve food during a gale.
Mr. Pest tries several theatre seats before winding up in front in a fight with the conductor. He is thrown out. In the lobby he pushes a fat lady into a fountain and returns to sit down by Edna. Mr. Rowdy, in the gallery, pours beer down on Mr. Pest and Edna. He attacks patrons, a harem dancer, the singers Dot and Dash, and a fire-eater.
Edna's father wants her to marry wealthy Count He-Ha. Charlie, Edna's true love, impersonates the Count at dinner, but the real Count shows up and Charlie is thrown out. Later on Charlie and Edna are chased by her father, The Count, and three policeman. The pursuers drive off a pier.
It is windy at a bathing resort. After fighting with one of the two husbands, Charlie approaches Edna while the two husbands themselves fight over ice cream. Driven away by her husband, Charlie turns to the other's wife.
Charlie and his boss have difficulties just getting to the house they are going to wallpaper. The householder is angry because he can't get breakfast and his wife is screaming at the maid as they arrive. The kitchen gas stove explodes, and Charlie offers to fix it. The wife's secret lover arrives and is passed off as the workers' supervisor, but the husband doesn't buy this and fires shots. The stove explodes violently, destroying the house.
A tramp steals a girl's handbag, but when he tries to pick Charlie's pocket loses his cigarettes and matches. He rescues a hot dog man from a thug, but takes a few with his walking stick. When the thief tries to take some of Charlie's sausages, Charlie gets the handbag. The handbag makes its way from person to person to its owner, who is angry with her boyfriend who didn't protect her in the first place. The boyfriend decides to throw himself in the lake in despair, so Charlie helps him out.
Mother, father and daughter go to the park. The women doze off on a bench while the father plays a hide-and-seek game with a girl, blindfolded. Charlie leads him into a lake. Both dozing ladies on the bench fall for Charlie and invite him for dinner. The father returns home with a friend. Charlie rushes upstairs and dresses like a woman, shaving his mustache. Both men fall for Charlie.
When one of the actors on a movie set doesn't show up, Charlie gets his chance to be on camera and replaces the actor. While waiting, he plays in a dice game and gets on many people's nerves. When he finally gets to act, he ruins his scene, accidentally destroys the set, and tears the skirt of the star of the movie.
A gypsy seductress is sent to sway a goofy officer to allow a smuggling run.
After a visit to a pub, Charlie and Ben cause a ruckus at a posh restaurant. Charlie later finds himself in a compromising position at a hotel with the head waiter's wife.
When a couple of scammers hold young Alice Faulkner against her will to discover the whereabouts of letters whose dissemination could cause a scandal affecting the royal family, Sherlock Holmes decides to take over the case. (Considered lost, a copy was found in 2014, in the vaults of the Cinémathèque Française.)
A grouchy landlord discharges a kind-hearted rent collector for failing to collect the rent from an impoverished widow. After dreaming that he himself is experiencing the sordid experiences of being destitute, the old man sees the error of his ways and becomes suddenly charitable.
The wife and mother, in love with her local instructor, places her husband's revolver and a note to "get rid of him" in her lover's coat pocket. The professor telephones to the husband to meet him and is about to shoot when the husband, in a small table mirror, sees the action and wheels on the music teacher. In the struggle, the professor is killed, but before dying he gives the husband his wife's note. The husband is arrested for the murder, but for the sake of their little daughter, hides the note in a secret drawer of his desk and keeps silent about his wife's connection with the slaying. Fifteen years later he is pardoned, but his wife orders him from the old home. He gets the note and when he shows it to the wife, she craves his forgiveness.
Old Carl Stockdale is an habitual drunkard and the cause of much unhappiness to his daughter, Marguerite. Broncho Billy meets Stockdale's charming daughter and becomes very much interested in her, and realizes the sad state of affairs in the home on account of the father's failing.
A rough criminal gets a second chance at life thanks to a kindly (and wealthy) lady saloon patron. But he hasn't gone straight yet, as he and a partner attempt to rob the home of a rich homeowner-- whose wife is asleep in the next room.
The entire town is terrorized. Broncho Billy has again been drinking and is shooting at everything in sight. After "shooting up" a saloon and grocery store Broncho goes to his cabin where he falls asleep. The sheriff and his men arrive, and after a fierce struggle overpower him. The man stationed outside suddenly rushes in and informs them that Broncho's mother has arrived to pay him a visit. The news quickly sobers Broncho, and the sheriff seeing his distress, pins his star on him, and himself dons the handcuffs. When his mother enters she thinks Broncho is the sheriff, and takes pity on the prisoner.
He was too big for this world when a Phrenologist told him he was a modern Napoleon.
