The husband of Lady Myra Ingleby is off fighting in the World War. She is devastated when Sir Derysk Brand tells her that her husband has been killed. The War Office gives her the details - Lord Ingleby was killed, not by enemy fire, but because of an error committed by one of his fellowmen, whose name is never to be disclosed. The grieving widow retreats to her Cornwall estate for a rest. Staying at the inn is a man known as Jim Airth, who carries a grief of his own.

Billy Porter sells his ranch and travels to San Francisco to try his hand in the business world. But he's barely off the ferryboat before he gets waylaid by a little newsboy and the boy's pugilist father, "Knockout" McClusky.

Rosalind Joy is a constantly imperiled heiress to a fortune in gold.

John Rand, having lived in a small town his entire life, dreams of possessing wealth and power in New York. Napoleon Bonaparte has long been his ideal, and one day he feels a message from the departed general urging him to take up the fight for world supremacy. He goes to the city ready to begin the battle, and there, aided by his Napoleonic visions, John amasses a great fortune, ruthlessly destroying everyone who presents an obstacle to his lust for power.

During a raging storm, a baby is washed up on shore on an island in Greece and is adopted by the wealthy Stanhopes, who name her Lorelei. Eighteen years later, Lorelei, now a woman, invites her school friends to spend their vacation at her villa. One of her guests, Julie, is insanely jealous of Lorelei. One day Gerald Waldron, a disenchanted society fop, sails by on his yacht, accompanied by his social-climbing friend, Hartley Royce. Seeing Lorelei and her friends swimming, they decide to go ashore. Both Gerald and Hartley fall in love with Lorelei, and Julie rages, finding herself relegated to Hartley. Together Hartley and Julie plot to separate the lovers.

In his will, Mr. Baird leaves his son Arnold just one seven-passenger auto and a hundred dollars to keep it filled up and in good repair. When James Bennett hears of this, he insists that Baird do something to make his fortune before he can marry his daughter Ruth. Bennett begins by using the car to start a jitney-bus line. This is not terribly impressive to Bennett -- who owns a trolley company -- and he decides he would rather see Ruth married to his controller, William Mott-Smith.

Although she is secretly in love with Wade Clayton, Laura Sheldon accedes to the wishes of her parents and marrries George Baring. Soon after, war breaks out between the North and South, and Clayton is made captain of the regiment. The entreaties of Laura prompt Baring to enlist against his will. Seized with fear during battle, Baring attempts to run away but is shot by a comrade and left for dead. At the finish of the war, Clayton returns home and relates how bravely Baring died in action. A few years later, Baring, who had been hiding in Cuba, returns.

Nora Helmer has years earlier committed a forgery in order to save the life of her authoritarian husband Torvald. Now she is being blackmailed lives in fear of her husband's finding out and of the shame such a revelation would bring to his career.

Aside from the fact that Polly had red hair in abundance, she was not otherwise an exceptional child, save for one thing. She was willing to work and slave, if need be, to keep her baby brother, affectionately termed "The Lump," from being sent to the poor house. So she did housework and prepared breakfasts for John Ruffin, an attorney, and Hon. Gedge-Tompkins. John Ruffin's sister, Lady Osterly, has separated from her husband, and he holds their child. When Lady Osterly calls on Ruffin she is struck with the remarkable resemblance Polly bears to her own child. Ruffin and Lady Osterly formulate a plan to come into possession of her daughter, by using Polly as a substitute.

A rancher moves to the city, and finds competition for the affections of an heiress in the form of a doppelganger.

The danger of modern "white slavery" is preached by a minister, who tells a story of one such case in his sermon.

Elspeth Marner is a seventeen-year-old premiere danseuse. Frank Masterson is the most hated as well as the most respected critic of dramatic art in New York. When the story opens, Elspeth, flushed with applause, enters her dressing room where her mother and the maid rush to do her bidding. The next morning, in bed, Elspeth reads Masterson's scathing criticism: that her real name is doubtless Lizzie Schmitt; that she is spoiled and petulant and not at all a lady, etc. Elspeth is furious, hysterical, angry and her mother, after telephoning Masterson to tell him her opinion of him, calls in the doctor.

The owner of a small rustic hotel marries a local widow, whereupon the couple sets up housekeeping with their respective grown sons. The hotelier's son is a budding thief, but it is the widow's son who is blamed for his half-brother's crimes. When the truth comes out, the widow patches up the tattered relationships between the father, his son and his stepson -- and it is the widow who rids the community of the "bad element" who led the thieving son astray.

Against the wishes of Cecelia, his wife, the Reverend Eric Norton leaves his position in a fashionable New York congregation to preach in a poor mining town.

Kate, whose father, a university graduate, died when she was very young, is adopted by her tenement neighbor, Mrs. McMahon, after her mother, a woman of refinement, dies. At ten, the ill-nourished girl, who has grown up watching her drunken foster father fight with her overworked foster mother, goes to work in a factory after Mr. McMahon loses his job. During the next eight years, Kate's stepbrother, Big Bill McMahon, becomes her friend, sweetheart and protector.

The friendship of Damon, the senator, and Pythias, the soldier, is famous in Ancient Syracuse.