Kathy, a young child, has befriended the elderly miser who lives on an upper floor of the building where she lives. Today, while playing outside, she also makes friends with Jules, a homeless petty thief. Later, when she is in the miser's apartment, two violent criminals break in. They tie a rope around Kathy and dangle her out of a window, threatening to let her fall to the ground if the miser does not give them the combination to his safe. Outside, Jules sees her in danger, but to help her he must risk dealing with the police.

When her father becomes ill, a young woman takes over the telegraph at a lonely western railroad station. She soon gets word that the next train will deliver the payroll for a mining company. The train brings not only the money, but a pair of ruffians bent on stealing it. All alone, she wires for help, and then holds off the bad guys until it arrives.

Winsor Z. McCay bets another cartoonist that he can animate a dinosaur. So he draws a big friendly herbivore called Gertie. Then he get into his own picture. Gertie walks through the picture, eats a tree, meets her creator, and takes him carefully on her back for a ride.

Coke Ennyday, the scientific detective, divides his own time in periods for "Sleep", "Eat", "Dope" and "Drink". In fact he's used to overcome every situation with drugs: consuming it to increase his energies or injecting it in his opponents to KO them. To help the police he discovers a contraband of opium (which he eagerly tastes) transported with "Leaping Fishes", and the blackmail of a mysterious man who wants to marry the "fish blower" girl. Will Coke be able to free the girl ?

In a strange grotto deep in the bowels of the earth a coffin uprights itself, dances, then opens, and out steps a demonic magician with skeletal face, horns, and cape. He wraps two women (who appear to be in a trance) in fabric, levitates them, and causes them to burst into flames and disappear. As he gathers their ashes in a pitcher a Good Spirit [a young woman who resembles Peter Pan] appears, shakes her head No, and reveals the "souls" of the two women in a secret compartment deeper within the cave. The Good Spirit vanishes in a puff of smoke. The magician then produces 3 glass bottles on pillars, takes them downstage close to the camera, and reveals 3 tiny women in them; one woman beats a tambourine while the other two sway. The magician pours ashes (?) into the bottles, but the Good Spirit reappears and makes these trapped figures disappear in a flash, angering the magician...

Dr. Henry Jekyll experiments with scientific means of revealing the hidden, dark side of man and releases a murderer from within himself.

Buster is playing golf with Sybil when he gets knocked out. An escaped prisoner changes clothes with him. Buster goes to prison and learns that he is to be hanged. He changes clothes with a guard just as prisoner Roberts attacks all the guards.

Buster's handmade boat, The Damfino, is finished and is, of course, too large to get through the basement door. When he drives off with it in tow, the side of his house, then the whole thing, collapses. At the harbor he rides the boat out only to have it sink beneath him. The rest is a series of adventures he and his family have with the restored boat.

Roscoe flirts with a girl in the park. Later he takes his wife and mother-in-law to the movies only to see his flirtation showing on the screen.

A young woman has a peaceful existence, living near the sea and enjoying a romance with a simple, hard-working fisherman. But she finds herself in sudden danger when she happens upon the crew of a boat while they are ashore in the act of smuggling. She is abducted and forced aboard their boat. While the fisherman races to organize a rescue mission, the crew of the boat decides to seize her from the captain, in order to have their way with her.

Cartoonist Winsor McCay agrees to create a large set of drawings that will be photographed and made into a motion picture. The job requires plenty of drawing supplies, and the cartoonist must also overcome some mishaps caused by an assistant. Finally, the work is done, and everyone can see the resulting animated picture.