Edward J. Laurie

COMEDY. Ben Turpin as a small town bar pianist, and later, a big city conductor. (ftvdb.bfi.org.uk)

The gentlemen of a fashionable social club become annoyed when their guest, Ben, has their wives entranced with stories of his bravery battling outlaws in the wild west. They decide to teach him a lesson by having a club worker disguise himself with a bear skin rug and sneak up on Ben. (imdb)

Ben, the butcher, is in love with a girl who does not reciprocate his affections. He falls asleep and has a dream in which he threatens to foreclose the mortgage on the home of the girl he loves. He also makes a regular crook of the girl's brother by having his safe robbed and the money placed in the brother's pocket. Ben is aroused from his dream by his partner, who is beating him over the head with a slab of meat.

A businessman's jealous wife suspects he is running around with other women. The tables are turned when a friend of the family involves her in a stock scheme. Her husband begins to suspect that she and her "partner" are involved in more than just business, not knowing that the scheme has gone bad and she has lost all the money she invested.

Squire Laurie, the village skinflint, takes a circus tiger as security for a loan. Arthur, who loves Lillian, the old man's daughter, hates tigers, having bucked them, but when Laurie's tiger dies of despondency Arthur skins it, so that Ben, the keeper can pose in its skin before the half-blind miser and save his job, while Arthur warned off the premises by old Laurie, turns tiger occasionally so that he can sit in the cage and make love through the bars to Lillian, despite her hard-hearted Pa.

Unknown to Kelsey and Ryan, two prominent actors, the show troupe to which they are sent by their booking agent, was driven from town by the Constable and his deputies. While waiting for their train the two actors stepped into the depot lunchroom and are seen by Rube and Ben, both out of employment. Rube and Ben steal the actors' suitcases, their wallet containing two dollars, their railroad transportation and their contract to join the troupe for which they are leaving.