First, I must tell you that I think Ben Turpin is one of the unfunniest screen comics in the history of the cinema. There are screen comics -- Larry Semon, for example -- who are complete nullities so far as I am concerned, but Ben Turpin's screen performances go beyond not funny into the realm of active terror. In the 1920s, when he had developed his cross-eyed gag, he was invariably cast in some horrific role, armed with a shotgun or performing delicate surgery. Some people must have thought it was funny, but it makes me want to flee the scene of the coming crime.
However, even Ben Turpin had to start somewhere, and this is near the beginning of his on-screen career. He plays a young dandy in a world populated by women, all of whom he wants to tap on the shoulder and all of whom retaliate with traditional comic attacks, often involving seltzer bottles. There is little ornamentation of this basic gag and it goes on for the longest two or three minutes I have ever spent in a theater.
Today he would be subject to a class action suit for sexual harassment. Too bad an audience has no such recourse.