When Rupert's uncle tells him he must quit his writing and offers him a real job in his tannery, the young man rises in his wrath and dramatically leaves his uncle's home, saying that he will go forth to the big city and carve out his fortune with his pen. After many hardships and cold rebuffs from the cruel publishers and editors he begins to despair, especially when he has to give his landlady his watch in lieu of rent money. By a most peculiar accident, one of his rejected stories falls into the hands of I.S. Skinnem, a get-rich-quick schemer, and Rupert, on the strength of his flowery style and phraseology, secures a good job with him as an "ad" writer. He gets along very well and, although he feels he is "crucifying" his art, has sense enough to know he is making his bread and butter. He realizes there is some crooked work going on, but keeps his mouth shut, and all goes well, until one morning he arrives at the office to find the place has been raided and cleaned out by the authorities. Then he goes into the depths of despondency for fair. While all looks blackest, the landlady shows him a personal in the newspaper to the effect that his uncle has died, leaving Rupert his heir, and the lawyers want to get hold of him as soon as possible. Rupert is filled with joy and starts for home in great anticipation. He meets the lawyers and, after the necessary red tape, the papers are turned over to him. He goes through them eagerly and finds that the comfortable fortune of $50,000 is well invested, in the "Mexican Rubber Plant Company," for which Rupert had worked and which had gone to the bad. Weakly dropping into a chair, poor Rupert slowly tears the worthless stock certificates into bits. Wending his way back to the tannery he applies for the job he had despised.