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.
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 gypsy seductress is sent to sway a goofy officer to allow a smuggling run.
Charlie is released from prison and immediately swindled by a fake parson. A fellow ex-convict convinces Charlie to help burglarize a house.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In this instance Hank and Lank step into good fortune quite by accident. Pausing in front of a bargain dry-goods store, a young lady rushes up and asks Hank to hold her baby while she goes inside to make a few purchases. Shortly after she returns and liberally tips the little man for his services as nurse.
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.
The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket is a 1915 silent film directed by Richard Foster Baker. Gloria Swanson made her first credited appearance in this film as Farina.
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.
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.
The Busy Business Boy lands at his desk like the Early Bird with the intention of tearing off a week or two of correspondence in an hour or so. But the Napoleon of finance reckons not with the Man with the Funny Puzzle, the Fruit Vender, the Insurance Agent with the Flowing Vocabulary, and last, but not least, with Rube.
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.
Dan Warrington, an outlaw, is captured by the sheriff, after the former had held up a stagecoach, and is sent to jail. After the sheriff has placed his captive under guard he goes home and is welcomed by his little daughter, a child of five. Not long after the sheriff is notified of the escape of Warrington
Bart McGrew, a rascally schemer, endeavors to secure an old Indian chief's signature to a deed that will give him thousands of acres of valuable land owned by the tribe. Laughing Fawn, the chief's beautiful daughter, suspects Bart of treachery and takes her father away before he signs.
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.
Ernest Coppie, an author, was trying to grind out something that could be sold for enough coin to buy himself a good square meal. He dashed off some sentimental guff called, "When Willie Came to Say Good-Night," and it was punk. He threw it in the wastebasket but when his friend came in he discovered it and set out to sell it. He finally found a magazine editor who gave him a check for $500, and it was like picking money off a bush. The author, who was an old bachelor and a kid hater, was tickled to death to get the dough, but when letters came in congratulating him on his excellent poem and sympathizing with him, he was bored to death.
The Fable of the Kid Who Shifted His Ideals to Golf and Finally Became a Baseball Fan and Took the Only Known Cure is a 1916 American short comedy silent film pertaining to baseball.
