It's a fact that early filmmakers would film anything that moved - as this 1904 film very clearly demonstrates. There's probably a film somewhere of an early traffic light changing colours at a deserted intersection or a trash can toppling over in a stiff breeze. Here we have a couple of portly gentlemen and a dog on a jetty. One of the men descends a ladder on the side of the jetty presumably to be rowed to a yacht in the background. That's it. I don't know who Judge Alton B. Parker is, and I don't know who Mayor McClellan is. I don't even know where Esopus is. So the question has to be asked: why am I watching this...?