This subject tells the simple story of a boy with a longing for knowledge and the better things of life which education brings. His father, a plain man, is content with an ordinary school education for the boy and puts him at work in spite of the protests of the school principal, who even offers him an opening by which the boy may work during the day and attend school at night throughout a season. Consequently the boy's natural bend towards mechanics is frustrated and he is forced into drudgery which takes the heart out of him. Throughout the picture as he grows older before our eyes, we see that he has not lost sight of the man he might have been and the things he might have done. But he travels the wrong road and goes from hopelessness to recklessness, reaping the reward of the latter in an unhappy marriage instead of winning the sweet girl whom he loved as a boy.