A story of duplicity, ambition and misunderstandings when four peoples lives become intertwined in a quest for a political appointment.

A press agent helps a honky tonk spot draw a new elite patronage but a troublemaker arrives on the scene as well and disrupts the romance between the male and female stars.

Set in London (but filmed in New Jersey), the story endeavors to prove that man's greatest enemy is liquor. When elderly tosspot John Warriner is shot for trespassing, Warriner's son holds property owner Sir Arthur Stanton. Thus begins a bitter and deadly feud between the Warriner and Stanton clans, fueled by rotgut booze.

A daughter and devious ex-wife complicate an executive's marriage to his secretary.

The wanton dancer Thais, tries to entice Paphnutius from becoming a monk but fails. He later returns to reclaim her soul and follow in his footsteps. They attempt to live lives of simplicity, but the pull of worldliness is too strong.

A shoe-factory worker puts a note in a shoe box offering to marry the lucky buyer. As a result, she is dismissed from her job, but her employer finds her so attractive that he suggests a new job for her, as his wife.

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.

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.

Seven years after the death of their first child, a couple has grown apart and decides to divorce. Their second child asks a question about who will keep the first child's most cherished toy after they separate. This leads the couple to reconsider their actions.

Hidalgo offers his daughter's hand in marriage when he can't repay a loan to Manuella. But when Manuella overhears the daughter bidding farewell to her lover, he is so moved by their devotion that he cancels the debt.

Tim spends his days running with a railroad gang which frustrates his struggling parents. When his father falls ill Tim reluctantly gets a job begrudging being forced into that position, but when events take a tragic turn he realizes the need for him to become a responsible adult.

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.