The Tramp interferes with the celebration of several kid auto races in Venice, California (Junior Vanderbilt Cup Race, January 10 and 11, 1914), standing himself in the way of the cameraman who is filming the event.
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.
A derelict, huddled under the steps of a missionary church, feels enlightened by the sermon of a passionate preacher and infatuated by the beauty of the congregation's pianist, in such a way that he tries to improve his life of poverty by becoming a policeman. His first assignment will be to patrol along Easy Street, the turf of a vicious bully and his criminal gang.
This early Chaplin film has him playing a character quite different from the Tramp for which he would become famous. He is a rich, upper-class gentleman whose romance is endangered when his girlfriend oversees him being embraced by a maid. Chaplin's romantic interest in this film, Minta Durfee, was the wife of fellow Keystone actor, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.