The love for the gildings and trimmings of life, the desire for things that are fair and that that wear the brand of costliness, induce the wife of a poor laborer to burden himself with the added expense of bills for goods bought on the installment plan, One day the husband returns home and, brought to an unpleasant frame of mind from contemplation of his unhappy lot and the irony of his mismanagement, he decides to return all the knick-knacks that his wife's vanity had suggested. After a heated discussion they both go their own ways, the wife taking along the little baby girl. The husband goes far away in the north, and by dint of perseverance and the struggle and strife that is part of it, he amasses a fortune. He yearns for his wife and daughter, and advertises in countless ways for them to return to him. At last his daughter, who has become a concert singer, sees outside of the concert hall the placard in which he appeals to his wife and daughter to come; she gets in touch with her mother, and they return to him to forgive and forget all their woes and their follies, and to live in the manner described in fairy books after the strife of hearts is over.