The plot concerns a war hero who returns home determined to give up his old ways as a crook. Bud Doyle (Milton Sills) is still being hounded by the cops, and both his wife (Marcia Nanon) and a former associate, a dishonest politician, want to do him in.
A man is shipwrecked on a South Seas island, and although he has a fiancee back home, he falls in love with a Polynesian girl. When his fiancee finally finds him and arrives on the island to take him home, she finds out that he refuses to leave the local girl, who is now the mother of his child.
When elderly Joseph Moreau and his young wife Therese offer refuge to starving young dramatist Paul Savary, gossips begin to spread rumors of a love affair between the wife and the writer. For the good of all concerned, Paul moves into separate quarters. One day Paul overhears the gossip again at a café and challenges the purveyor of the lie to a duel. Moreau, for his own satisfaction, takes Paul's place in combat and is mortally wounded. Moreau staggers to Paul's apartment where he discovers Therese, who has come to beg the writer to refuse to fight.
Jimmy Nevins--once wealthy and now engaged to Doris Standish--is reduced to poverty and jilted by her when he is befriended by Mary Butler, the leader of a gang of crooks.
Seduced and abandoned by the caddish Louis La Farge shepherdess Marie Beaupre is cast out of the village and forced to survive in the mountains alone. Driven mad she becomes known as “the witch woman” until hypnotist Dr. Cochefort and his friend Delaunay encounter her while on a hunting trip, take her to Paris, and effectuate a cure at which time she becomes heir to Delaunay's fortune. All seems clear sailing until Marie is introduced to Louis's twin brother Maurice and mistaking him for Louis sets forth on a plan for revenge.
Sato (Sessue Hayakawa) faithfully works for importer James Thornton (James Neill). When the old man dies, he leaves his daughter Mildred (Vivian Martin) in Sato's care. Sato loves the girl, but as he is Japanese he cannot hope to ever marry her (at least not in the racially prejudiced era of the early 1900s). Besides, Mildred loves Harry Maxwell (Tom Forman), who was raised alongside her.
Tells of Caleb Plummer, his son Edward and blind daughter Bertha, and rivalry over neighbor May Fielding. May's friend Dot weds John Peerybingle; they find a lucky cricket in their cottage. A mortgage and house on fire figure in the story.
Bonnie and Cliff meet cute when she gives him a lift after his car has broken down. Turns out she’s getting ready to open a beauty parlor and bleaches her hair platinum blonde to drum up business much to the chagrin of a local woman’s group. However, when Cliff’s wealthy mother invites Bonnie to be guest of honor at her yacht party things turn around both business and personally for the pair.
The Jewish Nate Cohen and the Irish-Catholic Patrick Kelly are business partners who are constantly fighting. When they find out that Nate's daughter Sadye and Patrick's son Pat Jr. are getting married in Paris, the two and their wives take an ocean liner to France to stop the marriage. When they get there, they find that the situation has radically changed, and not for the better.
Geoffrey Brooke, an African explorer, becomes a friend of Rodney Miller, a struggling young artist. Through his influence Miller becomes celebrated. Brooke is called to the Congo, leaving behind his bride of a few months. Miller is about to despair of finding a suitable model for his supreme artistic effort, a painting of Circe, the temptress, when Cleo, a bewitchingly beautiful woman enters and offers to pose for it.
The Isle of Lost Men is one of those lawless tropical island colonies so beloved of adventure-story writers.
Minister John Hodder becomes rector of a prestigious church in the Midwestern city of Bremerton but finds dissension and malfeasance among his congregation. When he calls it out both tragedy and a way forward are revealed.
In a jealous rage dancer Anna Janssen shoots her common-law husband Alastair De Vries in a cafe when she discovers him with a chorus girl. Fleeing to Tahiti she is tracked by detective Thomas McCarthy who arrests her. On their return journey they are marooned on a deserted island. After 2 years together, they realize their love and take marriage vows, but when a ship is sighted, she insists, against his wishes, that she return to face trial.
Clay Whipple is convicted of murdering the governor following an incident involving a cat's eye pin. Whipple is sentenced to death, but a mentalist named Psychic Jack believes he is innocent since Whipple had been hypnotized at the time of the murder. The psychic persuades the judge to grant the condemned man a retrial, and he sets out to uncover the identity of the real killer, during which time he manages to prevent a second murder from occurring.
Shakespeare Clancy is a jailbird who walks out with a crowd of visitors about the time "Skeeter" Burns, the prison printer, is discharged. Learning that a legacy awaits them in Dodson, the pair depart for the small Western town. Discovering that the bequest consists of a failing county newspaper and a plot of barren land, they hatch a plan to fleece the townspeople by selling shares in a bogus oil well. Problems arise when Clancy falls in love with society editor Alice Whitney. Clancy is conflicted but then they do strike oil! Concluding that his destiny is to be an honest man, Clancy returns to jail to finish serving his term. Slipping into the crowd of visitors, he dons his prison clothes and resumes work as though nothing had happened.
A young English nobleman is sent to Switzerland by his parents, where he meets a mysterious older woman with whom he has a torrid three-week romance.
The Jones Family heads to Gay Paree in celebration of the 25th wedding anniversary of Pa and Ma Jones. It doesn't take long for the Joneses to be victimized by clever Parisian con artists.
Lucy Fay leaves her husband, Richard, a fireman, for a suave politician, Perry Dunn. Richard compensates for the loss by adopting Drina, a baby girl whose mother perished in a fire. Drina develops into a beautiful young lady and becomes a model at a modiste shop owned by Dunn and managed by Lucy. Dunn is attracted to Drina and plots to get her alone by giving her a drugged drink. An untimely fire interferes with his plans, leaving Drina drugged and trapped by flames in Dunn's room, where she is sleeping.
A woman with a taste for expensive clothing has four nightmares. An impoverished disabled girl sells her hair, a trapper finds he has an unfaithful wife, the wife of a dying weaver finds she cannot work the loom, and a model harassed by her boss is driven to murder.
When Jerry Van Dyke, a young debutante, decides to marry Barney, an Army corporal, whom she met at a USO dance, her family objects and consequently, the couple are unable to obtain a marriage license because Jerry doesn't come of age for four days.