THE IDLE CLASS features Chaplin in dual roles as the familiar Tramp character and as a heavy-drinking wealthy man whose wife is feeling badly neglected. The Tramp and the Wife arrive in Miami on the same train (she in a coach, he under it). Upset that her husband has forgotten to meet her train, she moves out, telling her husband he must stop drinking before she returns. That afternoon, while causing mayhem on a nearby golf course, the Tramp spots the Wife and falls in love with her from afar. Running from the law, the Tramp ends up at the Wife's costume party. She mistakes him for her husband, preferring the gentle, attentive man to her true spouse. Mistaken identity forms the basis of the party sequence's comedy before everything is sorted out.