An inventor and his accomplice plan to rob a ship carrying gold bullion by using a submarine. A waiter overhears their plans, buys himself an admiral's uniform, tricks his way into command of the sub and plots to take the ship himself.

Charlie dreams he is in the stone age. There King Low-Brow rules a harem of wives. Charlie, in skins and a bowler, falls in love with the king's favorite wife, Sum-Babee. During a hunting trip the king is pushed over a cliff. Charlie proclaims himself king, but Ku-Ku discovers the real king alive. They return to find Charlie and Sum- Babee together.

The plot is a satire derived from Hugh Antoine D'Arcy's poem of the same title. The painter courts Madeleine but loses to the wealthy client who sits for his portrait. The despairing artist draws the girl's portrait on the barroom floor and gets tossed out. Years later he sees her, her husband and their horde of children. Unrecognized by her, Charlie shakes off his troubles and walks off into the future.

Charlie pretends to be a dentist though he is only his assistant. When a patient can't stop laughing from the anesthesia Charlie knocks him out with a club. He is sent to the drug store, gets in a fight with a man who (after a brick in the face) becomes another patient, and pulls the skirt off the dentist's wife (who is out walking). At one point Charlie pulls a tooth (the wrong one) using enormous pliers.

Charlie and his partner are to deliver a piano to 666 Prospect St. and repossess one from 999 Prospect St. They confuse the addresses. The difficulties of delivering the piano by mule cart, and most of the specific gags, appeared later in Laurel and Hardy's "The Music Box".

Charlie and another waiter must become bakers when the regular bakers go out on strike. The strikers put dynamite in a piece of bread which is delivered to the cake counter. It winds up in the oven and explodes.