John Bronson, Mr. Daly's farmhand, has ambitions and decides to go to the city. He breaks the news to Mr. and Mrs. Daly and their daughter Lottie. They do their utmost to dissuade him from his purpose, but John has made up his mind to go. He gets employment in a department store. Soon he is promoted to a slightly higher position. He has become neglectful of his country friends, and Lottie waits in vain for an answer to her letters.
A simple born man rises to power in Mexico but when the country is torn by war he travels to the US in search of arms to aid the fight. While there he saves Hiram and his sister Rosa with whom he becomes enamored. He feels the pull to stay with her but leaves her with the assurance he will return when the battle is won.
Helen Ross spends her time reading novels. She has made up her mind to marry only a young man whom she can save from something or other, or one who can rescue her in some romantic way.
The son of the sheriff of Arizona Territory is an outlaw. When he's captured and sentenced to hang his mother and two sisters plead with the Governor for mercy.
Ezra Hickman, of Kankakee, is a political aspirant. At a reception in Washington with his wife and daughter Amy he meets the Ambassador of Selim Bey, the ruler of a small European kingdom, Vergania. The Ambassador, seeking an American girl for his ruler, paints a glowing picture of Vergania to Hickman's wife, with the result that she persuades her husband to accept the American Consulate at. Vergania. Amy, the daughter, is enamored of Lieutenant Brice of the U.S. Navy, and reluctantly she agrees to leave him and go with her family.
Ivan Mussak, the head of the Russian secret police, is responsible for the murders of thousands of Jews and the forced exile of thousands more. Isaac Gruenstein and his infant daughter Miriam are the only members of his family to survive one of Mussak's massacres, and Isaac is exiled to Siberia. Miriam, however, becomes Mussak's ward and is raised by nuns in a convent. Eighteen years later Isaac dies in Siberia, but before he does he writes a note to his daughter and gives it to fellow prisoner Rachel Shapiro, who manages to escape and, by chance, finds Miriam. However, circumstances have changed in the past 18 years--and Miriam is now Mussak's mistress.
Reflecting the plot of Charles Gounod's opera, Faust, an old man, sits unhappy in his study. Méphistophélès materializes and offers a devil's bargain - youth and vigor in exchange for Faust's soul. Faust accepts and instantly transforms into a young man. The two go out on the town, and Faust lays eyes on Marguerite, a virgin whose brother Valentin is her protector. Valentin goes to war, leaving Marguerite in the care of his friend Siébel and under the watchful eye of his neighbor, Marthe. Faust courts Marguerite while Méphistophélès chats with Marthe. Seduction, loss of reputation, pregnancy, and tragedy follow.
Mr. Carlson of Arizona comes to New York where he is summarily swindled out of his funds and deserted by all his new “friends.” An anonymous friend out West learning of his plight offers him a position as engineer in a construction camp. After a few more travails he discovers his patron is Agnes, the girl he has come to love, and they are united in wedlock.
The Jordans, Phil and Ruth, accompanied by Philip's wife, Polly, and Dr. Winthrop Newbury, a suitor for Ruth's hand, bid old Mrs. Jordan good-bye at the station of Milford Corners, Mass., and depart for the West, to work over some unredeemed desert land, which was left to the Jordans by their dead father. Arriving in the west, they take up their work, but it proves anything but a success. On the brink of the Great Divide lives Stephen Ghent, an untamed and uncouth man of the West, and on account of his manner is respected by the habitués of Miller's saloon and dance hall in the town, which he and two of his acquaintances in the persons of Pedro, a half-breed Mexican, and Dutch, a brutal type of the West, frequent.
To gain access to a moonshiner, a detective marries the moonshiner's sister. He abandons her after the arrest is made but his conscience haunts him.
As James Abbott, Frank Arthur and Martin Wynne, college chums, are bidding farewell to one another at the commencement ball, James discovers that May Scott, whom he loves, favors Frank. He conceals his disappointment and just before they part, he suggests that each man write on a slip of paper, to be put in the back of his watch, the words "Until we three meet again, Thursday, June 12th, ten years from today."
Little Albert Mills, eight years old, reads in the paper the accounts of the abduction of children and holding them for ransom. He conceives the idea of playing the game on his little sister, Henrietta. He writes a note reading, "I have your children. Put four thousand dollars under the stone on front porch and I will bring them back. They are now hanging by the hair. Blue Beard." He then tells Henrietta to look the other way, and he takes her dolls out of the doll buggy and hides them in the garden. Then he places the note in the rural delivery mailbox at the front gate. A little later a young fellow brings an auto up to the gate and the children plead for a ride. After a little hesitancy he consents and the children are carried away to the park. Mrs. Mills misses the children and finds the note in the mail box. She takes the matter seriously, and gathering a lot of neighbors and a policeman, gives chase to the auto.
