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A young Sherlock Holmes seeks to bring down the criminal mastermind Moriarty as he solves a crime involving a blackmailed prince.

In return for money and medical aid for his invalid mother, struggling author Robert Sandell agrees to subject himself to experiments by Dr. Lamb, who claims he is trying to extend the human lifespan. Despite warnings from the doctor's wife and a hunchbacked assistant, Robert allows himself to be strapped to an operating table, whereupon he learns the true nature of the surgeon's experiments: To prove the theory of evolution by devolving his human subjects into an approximation of their simian ancestors. However, before Dr. Lamb can proceed, the hunchback un-cages another victim, an ape-man, who crushes Dr. Lamb to death.

A deformed criminal mastermind plans to loot the city of San Francisco as well as revenge himself on the doctor who mistakenly amputated his legs.

A young woman hits Hollywood, determined to become a star.

Members of a secret anarchist group take revenge.

When the circus comes to town, the town's orphans are treated to an outing to see the show. The circus troupe's 'Jinx' girl causes so many problems for the performers and performances that, to escape punishment, she must run away. She mingles with the orphans and runs away to join an orphanage.

When circus aerialist Polly Fisher is injured, she is taken to the nearby home of minister John Hartley. The two fall in love and marry secretly. But when the news leaks out, the minister loses his pastorate over disdain by the parishioners for Polly's background as a performer. Polly must decide whether to stay with the man she loves or leave him for the good of his calling.

Paphnutius, a wealthy Alexandrian, is about to embrace the new faith of Christianity, but is persuaded by a friend to first see Thais, the most notable courtesan of her time. He falls in love with her, but is forced to kill a rival and conscience again urges him toward the new faith. He becomes a monk, but leaves the cloister to return to Alexandria to seek to convert Thais. In this he succeeds and she joins a nunnery. He saves her soul but loses his own peace of mind.

A young aristocrat strikes up an affair with a mysterious woman for three weeks.

Badly mistreated by her father, Nellie Horton is taken in charge by Thomas Lipton. She grows up in poverty not knowing her true identity as the heiress to her mother's millions. Upon the death of her benefactor, she becomes a model in a fashionable shop. There she falls into the hands of her mother's unscrupulous nephew, who contrives to do away with her in order to obtain her fortune. His final plan to destroy her is foiled when her lover, Jack Carroll, rescues her from the tracks of a speeding train. Finally, Nellie is reunited with her mother and finds happiness.

Glory and John, sweethearts since childhood on the Isle of Man, go to London, Glory to become a nurse and John to enter a monastery. Instead, Glory becomes a theater star, and John renounces his vows because he cannot forget his love for her. Lord Robert Ure, who has already betrayed Glory's friend Polly Love, incites the London populace against John, claiming that John has predicted that the world will end on the eve of the Epsom Downs Derby. John goes to kill Glory to save her soul, but instead she convinces him of her love. Confused, John wanders into the street, is mortally hurt by an angry mob, then marries Glory before dying in her arms.

Whistling Dick, a hobo known for whistling classical tunes, arrives in New Orleans, Louisiana, to discover that fellow hoboes plan to rob the Lovejoy plantation on Christmas night. Their accomplice is Richmond, a guest and suitor of young Nadine Lovejoy, who loves the overseer, Hunter. On the road, Dick encounters Nadine, Hunter, and Richmond, who offer him a ride and give him a package, which they believe to be a new smoking pipe. After arriving on the plantation, Dick opens the package to find a pair of women's stockings. Richmond's gang of robbers fear that Dick will reveal their plot to the Lovejoys and abduct him. Dick warns his hosts by wrapping a message around a rock, placing it in one of the stockings, and throwing it through a window. It lands on the dining room table during a Christmas dinner party and the plot is thwarted. Dick is welcomed as a guest, given new clothes, and offered a job; but the next morning he resumes his wandering.

Three elderly bachelors adopt a girl who's the daughter of the woman they were in love with in their youth.

The wealthy owner of a railroad is about to be reunited with his daughter, who was kidnapped in her childhood. However, a mysterious figure is attempting to frighten the girl away by having sinister and threatening messages flashed at her via red lights. A detective whose specialty is preventing crimes before they occur sets out to track down the villain, which in turns gets him mixed up in a murder aboard a speeding train.

The czar banishes Prince Sergei to Siberia for marrying without his consent. The wife, Varvara, dies, leaving a baby girl named Vera. Forced to flee, the prince leaves the girl in the care of Vassilly, a friend. Years later, during the Russian Civil War, the countryside is raided by Cossacks. Walter Stanford, an American soldier, saves Vera, now 18 years old, from being attacked by a Cossack chief. The Cossack forces Vera to marry him, then brutally beats her. The soldier returns, claims the girl, and marries her after the Cossack is accidentally buried alive.

Kalora is the "slim princess of Morevana," a land in which fat is prized. This distresses her family, who must marry off Kalora, before her rotund younger sister Papova may wed. To remedy this situation, Kalora's father, the governor general, throws a garden party and disguises his slim daughter in an inflated rubber suit. All goes well until the suit ruptures, deflating Kalora to her normal size. Soon after, she meets Pike, an American, and falls in love. Upon hearing of a cure for slimness in America, the governor sends Kalora overseas where she meets Pike again. He follows her home to Morevana, and once it is discovered that he is wealthy, the governor offers the American his prized daughter Papova, only to discover that it is the slim princess whom Pike treasures.

When a woman friend's jewels are stolen, young Peter Wyndham is too afraid to try to stop the theft. Sickened by his own cowardice, he leaves town and heads west for a new start. There he meets up with a brute named Boone, who beats him in a fight. When Peter discovers that Boone is keeping his young daughter chained up like a slave, he must overcome his own timidity to try to rescue her.

Shane O'Mealia leaves Ireland promising to send for his sweetheart Moyna. In the meantime, the son of the old lady she lives with takes them back to America without telling Shane, who then must explain to them about a girl he's been seeing in New York.

A spoiled young man from a rich family likes to race his car through town and then try to outrun the police who chase him, although he's usually caught. After his latest incident his father warns him to cease and desist, and the man promises to reform. However, he soon goes back to his old ways, but this time while fleeing two motorcycle cops he crashes his car. Thinking he has killed one of the officers, he flees town and winds up penniless in a small town many miles away, but falls in love with the daughter of the local police chief.

Thrown out of her home by a jealous husband, a woman sinks into degradation. Twenty years later, she is charged with killing a man bent on harming her son. The son, unaware of who the woman is, takes the assignment to defend her in court.

Living in a small town, Dr. and Mrs. Anthon raise a large family. Arthur, the eldest, is killed in a railroad wreck; Tom grows up to be a successful lawyer; Kate marries and lives in New York; Frank becomes a gifted artist in Paris; Jim is sent away from home by his father for stealing; Emily, the youngest, goes to New York to visit Kate and gets married. With home ties severed, the children become forgetful of their parents until one day Jim returns for money. The mother dreams that the train on which her son is returning is imperiled by a wrecked bridge, and when she awakens, terrified, Tom arrives with his brothers and sisters to announce that he has been appointed Attorney General of the United States.

An easy-going tramp with a love of food and an aversion to work suddenly gets deeply involved in the life of a farmer and his daughter.

Perla Quaranta, a half-starved "daughter of Little Italy," is given the place in Carlo Bruni's "Butterfly Act" that is vacated by a chorus girl who has grown too fat. Although Perla becomes friendly with Krug, the wire-man, she rejects him as a suitor, and in revenge Krug causes Perla's wire to break, hoping she will be fired for gaining weight. Instead, Bruni thrashes Krug, a felony for which he spends thirty days in jail. When freed, Bruni produces a new and successful dance act with Perla as the star, and the couple marry, each encouraging the other in his struggle against food.

Jim Rittenshaw is happily married to Daisy, or so he thinks. Richard Desborough, Jim's friend from his college days, becomes enamored of Daisy, who leads him on. Desborough lives by the creed "No God. No Sin. No future life." Desborough neglects his own wife and child. His wife Caroline goes to Rittenshaw and tells him what is going on. Rittenshaw then kills Desborough. However, before his spirit can be at rest, Desborough must make right the things he left wronged. He appears in visions to the various characters, even his dog, and one by one they are guided to perform acts that set conditions right. Eventually Flora confesses that she is the reason Desborough was murdered. When Desborough's wife recognizes him, she forgives him, and he is able to depart the earth.

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. They meet again at a hearing in the city, where her father has filed an injunction to prevent publication of Jimmy's novel, and she consents to his proposal of marriage.