A mechanic works for his sweetheart's father, who builds racing boats. He begs for and gets the chance to race a new-design boat, but his rival gets him intoxicated before the race and he wrecks the boat. Now he has to make good and show he has the right stuff.
Broken Fetters
Gabrielle Picard (Elda Hall) and Pierre Dupont (Rupert Julian) are lovers in a small French village in the early 1870s; Gabrielle's brother Anatole (Kingsley Benedict) is Pierre's best friend. The two young men are called to service by their country and go to Algiers. Anatole becomes the bugler and one day when he is commanded to sound the retreat, he sounds for the troops to charge instead. Anatole becomes a hero because of his action, but when the two men make their victorious return home, they find the Picard home ransacked and Gabrielle gone.
Diminutive heroine Ella Hall dreams that she's Cinderella, and that a wealthy gentleman of her acquaintance (played by Leonard) is her Prince Charming. All of this takes place during a musical stage production of Cinderella, a sequence distinguished by its authentic backstage atmosphere.
Olaf writes his memoirs, before his execution. He tells of his life as a struggling farmer when Renie, stranded in the village, stays one night in his home and Olaf falls in love with her.
The Girl of Lost Lake
The Honor of Mary Blake
Maud and Cecil have been in love since they were children in the pre-Civil War South, but Howard, Maud's domineering brother, disapproves of a marriage between them. Instead, he has chosen English nobleman Lord Lovelace as the ideal fiancé for Maud. On the night that the engagement is to be announced, however, she elopes with Cecil. The runaways are caught, though, after which, because of her loyalty to her brother, Maud sends Cecil away. When the Civil War begins, Howard, Lovelace and Cecil all volunteer, and are all soon reported killed in action. Heartbroken, Maud decides to become a nun, and takes her vows just moments before Cecil, whose death was mistakenly reported, returns from the battlefield and comes to the convent to ask her to marry him.
Captain Angus Swope (Noab Beery), known as The Black Yankee, skipper of the Golden Bough, treats his crew shamefully and he treats women no better, as evidenced by his handling of a woman he has abducted, together with her baby daughter, Mary (Sally Blaine), from seaman Newman (Willard Robertson). When the woman dies as a result of his cruelty, he brings up Mary as his own daughter.
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.
Mabel is in love with John, the country boy, but her father wants her to marry a Baron. She is locked up in a room, and her father watches her. John takes a bundle of cloth and makes a big firebrand which he throws into the window, at the same time yelling, "Fire." Dad runs for his life and Mabel jumps through the window into the arms of John, who hurries her to the minister's house. The ceremony is about to take place when Dad and the Baron rush in, and Mabel is led home again.
Si marries a guileless country maid, and receives among his wedding presents a bottle of liquor. The bride samples it in Si's absence, and being unaccustomed to drink, is overcome and falls on the table in a stupor. Si discovers her just as a party of neighbors are coming to congratulate the young couple and hides her in the yard, laying her on a bench. An inquisitive visitor finds her and reports to the constables that Si has killed his wife, and he is apprehended.
Daughter of an Eastern lumber king, Stephanie Trent travels in the guise of a schoolteacher to the logging village of Trentsville to search for "a real man." There she meets Jimmy Raymond, a young novelist posing as a local while writing his story. When Stephanie comes to Jimmy's cabin to report a supposed plot against him, he acts as though he intends to assault her. She nearly throws herself out the window but is stopped by Jimmy, who explains that he is working on a novel and merely wanted to determine a young girl's reactions. In retaliation, she orders that he be kidnapped and held in a nearby cabin, but remorsefully nurses him back to health when he is shot trying to escape.
Will the orphan girl win her hero in spite of scheming relatives who seek to keep her in the background?
The impoverished Harlow family of New England is forced to take in summer boarders. Teenaged niece Tressie welcomes the change and promptly falls in love with a wealthy young guest named Norman Minot. Although Norman returns Tressie’s affection, he is driven away by a fortune-hunting mother who wants him to marry her daughter. Robert Kitteridge, a scheming artist friend of Norman's, takes Tressie on a sailboat outing, during which they narrowly escape death when their boat is rammed by a steamship. After being put ashore the next morning in Boston, MA, Robert takes Tressie to his studio and attempts to seduce her.
Betsy Thorne (Bennett) travels to investigate a missing man where she overhears a conversation between the sheriff and an imported detective that reporters are barred from the house and grounds where the mystery has taken place. She comes across a maid sent to the house from Richmond, and so frightens her that she gains a chance to act in her place. During the first night at the house she is terrified when she sees a ghostly figure come from the grand organ. The house is roused by her screams as she flees the room, and she is forbidden from going back there by the sister of the missing man. During the following night she is locked in her room during a thunderstorm, and while escaping through a window sees the ghostly figure again in the family graveyard. She makes an investigation which starts from a particular chord played at the grand organ. They find that certain keys cause a secret door in the organ to open, revealing a secret passage to a family tomb.
The adopted Irish daughter of the Rosensteins, Second Avenue pawnshop owners, Rose is much sought after by Tim McCarthy, a wealthy Irish contractor many years her senior. Meanwhile, Nat, her adopted brother, is accused of stealing from his firm and is arrested and put in jail; Rosenstein, heartbroken, becomes seriously ill.
Amos Kerran and his wife live a traditional, old-fashioned life on a Connecticut farm, while their son and daughter, Arthur and Maybelle, are successes in New York society. The children want to invite their parents to the city at Christmastime but are ashamed of their unrefined appearance.
Tarnish
Therese Roger, daughter of a West Indian planter, whose parents are murdered while she is a baby, becomes the adopted daughter of her aunt, Madame Roger, keeper of a haberdashery shop in one of the smaller villages in southern France. She grows up with Camille, Madame Roger's son, a sickly, sexless creature, whom she ultimately marries in deference to her aunt's wishes.