The fathers of Isabel Channing and Howard Billings were good friends until they had a falling-out over a horse and swore to be enemies forever. Years later, Howard is seen returning from college and Isabel, who has lost her,is working hard to keep the old homestead (and stables) together. Thornhill is trying his best to cheat her out of everything. Howard takes a hand.
The daughter of a count and the son of a shoemaker, both Hungarian, fall in love in America. As they're about to marry, the young woman is called back to Europe. When her betrothed goes after her, difficulties ensue.
Mr. and Mrs. Caspar, home-loving, industrious people, long for a little one to bless their lives and their home. Their hopes are not in vain. One night, when they are sitting in the quiet, they hear the voice of a baby. Mr. Caspar, opening the door, finds a deserted child lying on the door-step. Tenderly lifting it in his arms, he brings it to his wife, who cares and nurtures it with a mother's love. Their adopted child is just one year old when a son is born to Mrs. Caspar, and an added joy comes to bless their union.
You would think that the death of his wife through his dissipation and neglect would have brought Jack Moreland to his senses. Instead he is more dissipated, and deserts his child, Clara, who is taken by her uncle, Harold Moreland, and brought up in ignorance of her father's existence.
Just previous to his departure for South Africa and the Boer War, Gordon Frazier, a young officer in the English Army, bids an affectionate farewell to his fiancée, Gladys Mayford. In Africa, engaged in battle, Gordon is rescued from death by a young soldier, with whom he formed a slight acquaintance.
During Nick Austin's imprisonment, his wife passes away. Before she dies, she writes a note to her husband, asking him to put her little girl in the care of an orphan asylum. Mrs. Downes, while bringing some of her dead daughter's clothes to the asylum, takes a fancy to Nina Austin and adopts her.
Morganson's Finish was inspired by the Jack London story of the same name. The hero, Dick Gilbert is in love with wealthy Barbara Wesley but he is disgraced in her eyes through the underhanded machinations of his rival Dan Morganson.
In Paris an Apache dancer weds his ex-fiancée's sister for revenge but learns to love.
To start a little in advance of our story, Lord Rintoul, of the English nobility, finds a little Gypsy girl three years old, who had been deserted by her parents. Fifteen years later, Gavin Dishart, the Little Minister, receives an appointment, his first, at Thrums, Scotland. This was made possible through the self-sacrifices of his widowed mother, to educate him for the ministry. The community of Thrums is made up of weavers, who work hard, have little and accomplish much. They are ultra-religious and look upon their pastor with such reverence that he is a little lower than the angels. While naturally intelligent, they are grounded in dogma and intolerance. Just after the Little Minister takes charge of the "Auld Licht Kirk" and the Manse, the weavers resent a reduction, by the manufacturers, in their pay and a strike is declared.
Pinky Cochrane is one of a trio of starving artists: the other two are Sam Wellbridge and Mac MacTavish. When one of their favorite models dies, the three heroes take charge of the woman's infant son Victor. Once the boy has grown to manhood, his three foster fathers decide to choose a likely wife for their "shared" son.
John Hampstead gives up his career as an actor and his actress sweetheart, Marian Dounay, to become a minister in a western town. Marian appears, and failing to win him back she tries to ruin his reputation. Hampstead is accused of stealing some jewelry though actually he is protecting the scapegrace brother of his current sweetheart, Bessie.
Glory Moore, a young girl, finds herself left unprovided for after her father's death, as the farm has to be sold to pay his debts.
A Faust-like meringue involving a wealthy Count who enters into a deal with the Devil: for every soul he delivers to Satan, the count will be granted an extra year of life. One of the count's victims, an artist named Rodolphe, dedicates his life to punishing the nobleman, a mission he accomplishes with the help of the beautiful Fairy Queen.
To receive the $5,000 promised in her Uncle Stephen's will, Dulcie Culpepper must live with her Uncle John in New York for six months so that her father, a Confederate colonel, will be reconciled with his brother whose marriage to a Northern woman long ago caused a breach.
Jan Saxe and Peter Harlingen, two young men from Holland, arrive in America with little orphan Bertha Kruger whom they have befriended during the trip and whom they both love. Bertha has come to live with her blind Aunt Sophie, and when Jan secretly raises $500 for an operation to restore her aunt's sight, Bertha marries Peter, believing that he was the donor of the "secret gift."
On Wall Street a strong-willed and arrogant stockbroker, one of those successful men who feels no one else knows anything, exasperates his son, a broker as well. The son goes into business for himself successfully. When a panic comes, his father is brought to the verge of ruin by speculating against him driving a further wedge between them. In time a reconciliation is forged by the women in their lives.
Everybody's ordered out on a strike when Benjamin Cohen, proprietor of a sweat-shop, reduces the employees' wages ten per cent. Rebecca Barish, a young Jewess, and her father, reluctantly go out with the rest. Unable to find other work, their circumstances become so reduced that Rebecca is obliged to go to the pawnshop with some of their belongings, and while there, Jacob Stattler, the pawnbroker, takes a fancy to her, and offers her father, through a schatehen, five hundred dollars to give her to him in manage.
In the college play, Tom and his room-mate, "Bunch," take prominent and successful parts, Tom as the hero and "Bunch" as the heroine, in which he is an excellent female impersonator. The day after the performance, "Bunch" makes an engagement to take a real chorus girl to dinner. Unexpectedly his mother comes to college to visit him and he makes Tom take the girl.
Marie, a self-dependent girl, compromises herself by associating with Petro Maquin. She asks him to keep his promise to marry her. He ignores her and leaves the village to join a band of wreckers. The gossips circulate scandal about her, bringing reproach upon her name.
Love is awakened in the heart of Peter Hansen when he sees his name written within the outlines of a heart on the sands of the seashore. Above his own name is written the name of "Norma," a daughter of Gyntsen, the aristocrat of the little village. Norma's father is a widower. He idolizes his daughter. Peter is a quiet, noble fellow, a fisherman, with the instincts of a poet and the rule of a king. He is not given to associating with his fellows, being of a retiring disposition. His natural timidity and shyness forbid him to make known his love for her and he worships her in silence.