Nellie Wayne, a retired Broadway actress, has a small dog named "Chum", who is part of a vaudeville act and is the sole support of the family.

Laura tells her companions at Miss Syntax's seminary that Jim, her sweetheart, is to visit her that afternoon. Shortly afterward, Jim climbs the fence surrounding the school playground, and after greeting the them girls, shows a copy of the "Grouch Chaser." The girls get a great laugh out of "Silas Bunkum's Boarders Picnic" in which Silas, his wife and their three guests spend a lively day in the country.

Dora Perkins is a country girl who runs away to New York City. She gets work as a nurse and marries Dr. Howard Fleming, a famed brain surgeon. Supposedly she dies in a fire, and some time later Fleming takes a vacation in the country, where by some odd coincidence he winds up meeting Dolly, Dora's sister. Without realizing her relationship to Dora, he marries her. Soon Dolly is expecting, and not long after, Dora pops up -- she survived the fire, but has been left hopelessly insane.

Mark Sabre hires young Effie Bright to keep his snobbish, cold-hearted wife Mabel company while he goes off to war. When he returns home from the front wounded, he finds that Mabel has fired Effie, who shows up at Mark's door with her baby, having no place to go. Mark takes her in, but Mabel leaves him when the town shuns him for what they believe is going on with Mark and Effie. Matters are further complicated when Effie, driven to desperation, commits an unspeakable act that results in Mark having a nervous breakdown--and then things get worse.

Donald and Eleanor are in love, so that Jim realizes it is up to him to pick a peach for himself. There is only one room left at their country boarding house and Jim wants to make sure that no one but the proper peach rents it. In order to keep the proprietress busy while he interviews the applicants for the room, Jim gives her the animated picture book to look at.

A bank clerk forges a check to help his girlfriend's father. He's found out, but instead of being arrested he becomes a member of a gang of forgers.

While waiting on a New York park bench for the return of her friends, country girl Jeanne Sterling meets Forrest Chenoweth, a rich young wastrel who, while drunk, registered for a marriage license with fortune-hunting Helen Dorr. Enchanted with Jeanne's innocence, Forrest proposes to Jeanne, and they are married by an alderman friend of Forrest's with the license that Forrest had taken out with Helen. That night Forrest drinks too much, falls in his room and kills himself. The scandal appears in the papers, forcing Jeanne to confess the marriage to her sweetheart Robert Pitcairn. However, Helen, in an attempt to acquire the Chenoweth fortune, claims to be Forrest's widow, thus disgracing Jeanne.

To receive the $5,000 promised in her Uncle Stephen's will, Dulcie Culpepper must live with her Uncle John in New York for six months so that her father, a Confederate colonel, will be reconciled with his brother whose marriage to a Northern woman long ago caused a breach.

Charles Stoddard is a poor artist living with his wife and two children in Greenwich Village. Destitute after his wife dies, he is forced to sell one of his children to a childless rich woman. He soon comes his senses however, and tries to back out of the deal.

The romantic escapades of two couples at the beach form the framing story for four animated cartoons.