Overview

Herbert Kalness loves his family dearly, works hard to provide for them, but forgets that his children are no longer babies, and feels he must rule and guide them as he did when they were small. Moreover he prides himself on being a plain man and imagines that he lives plainly, though his devoted and charming wife who loves his virtues and smooths over his faults, has modernized and decorated their home quite successfully, albeit she has never been able to banish the awful crayon portrait of Grandpa Kalness, nor the big brass cuspidor two objects which her husband insists are proper to the family living room. The day arrives when the daughter of the house becomes engaged, and at a dinner to celebrate the event, Herbert, who has been upset and worried all day about business, has a great big tantrum which even his wife can't excuse. So, the next day, when he proposes to bring his best customer and his wife home to dinner assuring them that he is a plain man his wife turns the house plain to the nth degree and serves them a plain dinner in the plainest of ways. In a final riotous scene Herbert realizes that he is not so plain, and that his life will be happier if he is more of a father and less of a tyrant.