During a fashionable country house party, a guest suggests that everyone visit a nearby gypsy camp to have their fortunes told. Jack Harlow, the hostess's son, meets Draga, the gypsy chief's daughter, and immediately falls in love with her. Draga is also attracted to Jack, who persuades her to meet him secretly. Their secret meetings continue, and eventually, Jack convinces Draga to run away with him, despite the significant social divide and the disapproval their relationship would surely face from his family and her community. The plot centers on this forbidden romance and the ensuing dramatic conflict between their two vastly different worlds.
District Attorney Holden and his special investigator Betty Higgins are trying to convict brothers Joe and Lou Manson, silk-racket hoods, after they are indicted for murder.
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.
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.
U.S. Secret Service agent Truxton Darnley attires himself as a sailor and boards a schooner owned by arms smuggler Gus Olsen, who is in the employ of German spy Von Linterman to smuggle arms to German raiders in the South Seas. Truxton learns Gus’s plan to blow up the National Munitions Plant in San Francisco, just before his identity is discovery and he is thrown overboard. Washed ashore on the island of Moana, Truxton meets native girl Lurline. Promising to return to her, Truxton boards a steamer bound for San Francisco to foil the plot and soon afterwards Lurline’s father sells her into marriage with Gus. Escaping to Truxton's steamer, Lurline sails to San Francisco where Gus abducts her forcing her to dance in his Barbary Coast saloon. Truxton raids the bar, kills Gus is killed and the lovers are reunited.
Dr. Stannard Wayne -- like all "good" men of the times -- is a God-fearing soul. He marries the former mistress of his friend, Dr. Arthur Richards, without knowing her past. Richards, an abortionist, resumes his affair with the woman and runs off with her. But before he leaves, he frames Wayne for one of the illegal operations he has done, and the innocent man is sent to prison for five years. When he gets out, Wayne has become angry and cynical.
Gordon Palmer is a lazy and cowardly rich man's son. When he and his fiancée, Aileen Merton, are held up by two crooks, Slug Williams and Beef O'Connell, he passively allows them to take whatever they want. At least he comes to life when they try to steal Aileen's engagement ring -- he scares them into giving that back. Aileen, however, is pretty fed up with him.
Nurse Lucy Weston, seeks revenge and marries a young millionaire she believes is responsible for her father's death.
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.
John Reeves, steel magnate, wagers with his son Chester that he can earn twenty dollars a week and live on it. He procures work in the office of William Hart's steel plant. Against her brother's wish, Hart's sister Muriel adopts a little boy. Hart evens up by adopting John Reeves as his father. Reeves foils James Pettison's plot to ruin Hart. Chester also makes good as a workman and wins the affection of Hart's sister. The father reveals his identity and takes Hart as a partner.
An American Indian child, maltreated by her mother and other tribespeople, accompanies her family to a nearby town to buy supplies. There, local white settlers — a couple and their young daughter — befriend the child and give her a doll, her first and only toy. Meanwhile, another tribesman is wantonly killed by a settler. Enraged, the Indians plan revenge and organize a war-party to attack the town. The Indians also take from the child the doll she was given and smash it. The child mourns her broken doll, and buries it with traditional tribal rites. Alarmed that her new friends will be harmed when the town is attacked, the child rushes ahead of the war-party to give warning of the imminent attack. In the raid the child is struck by a bullet, and makes her painful way to her doll’s burial site. Alone, she dies.
Jack Pickford got his own production company when his sister Mary signed a huge contract with First National, and this was its first product. the story takes place in the Blue Ridge mountains, where the Appersons and the Yartons have an ongoing feud.
Andrew Maxwell is so intent on creating a universal language that he completely neglects his wife, Laurette, and daughter, Ruth. Laurette decides she wants to return to the stage and is encouraged by Charles Prescott, a former suitor. When Maxwell discovers Laurette and Prescott together, he berates her, and she angrily moves out, taking Ruth along with her.
The quiet life style of Ruth Heck and her brother Lem, who belong to a religious sect called the Seekers, is disrupted when a judge imprisons Lem for a crime he did not commit.
Grace Ainsworth wants to return to her career as an opera singer, and her mother-in-law supports her. Grace's husband, Edwin, wants her to stay at home and to convince her, he relates the story of his latest play about a man who allows his wife to return to the stage. Edwin comes to believe that Grace is in love with Harold Chase, a manager, and the couple separates. Edwin has an affair with a dancer, Madeline, and he winds up in a fight with her dancing partner, Vincenti, which causes him to lose his memory.
Jan De Bar, a young French-Canadian, is sent out from the Hudson Bay Company's post at God's Lake to perform the perilous task of burning the plague-stricken cabins of those who have died of the dreaded smallpox. In one of them he finds Jeanette, a little girl, who, by some miracle, has escaped the plague.
The Isle of Lost Men is one of those lawless tropical island colonies so beloved of adventure-story writers.
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.
A young boy aspires to knowledge and higher education but his father, a plain man with narrow goals, is content with an ordinary school education for him and puts him to work despite the principal's protests. The principal even offers the father an opening by which his son could work during the day and attend school at night throughout a season, but the father declines. Disheartened by the life of drudgery, his father’s decision has wrought he travels the wrong road and goes from hopelessness to recklessness, trapped in an unhappy marriage and a life of hopelessness.
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.