Ludwig "Old Dutch" Streusand and his daughter Violet live in New York, and after years of hard study and labor Old Dutch completes his invention: the "teloptophone," a device which, when attached to a telephone, enables the speaker to see the party at the other end of the wire.

Betty Brown is an egregious coquette and flirt. She fools a pair of lovers, and her indecision lands her in a pretty mess at a Hartford hotel, where she is cajoled into passing herself off as the wife of a man whose real wife is on her way to meet him. Betty just butts into a sea of trouble, for the man and his wife are to receive some money from the former's uncle on condition that the wife meets with his approval. The general mix-up at the hotel caused by the meeting there of all these opposing interests is the cause of a great deal of fun and confusion, the central figure of which is always Little Miss Betty Brown.

A young man brings his new worldly Parisian wife back home to Pennsylvania.

Discovering that her husband is a bigamist, Nan returns with her child to her Puget Sound logging town. She is treated as an outcast by all save Donald, her childhood sweetheart, the son of a millionaire....

Three men in London compete for the love of a dance-hall girl.

Doris Moore is a country girl who is conned by two crooks, Harry Leland and Pop Clark. They convince the naive girl to come with them to New York City and play the badger game on William Lake. But the intervention of Kate Fallon, who runs the gang's New York home, saves the innocent and traps the guilty. Instead of tricking Lake, Doris marries him.

A young Englishman falls in love with the children's governess in his step-sister's home. His step-sister, however, cannot abide the class differential in the romance and sabotages it. The young man, in a state of boredom and depression, begins to invite into the house anyone who happens to pass by in the street.

Enemy agents under the leadership of "Emanon" conspire with pacifists to keep the American defense appropriations down at a time when forces of the enemy are preparing to invade. The invasion comes, and New York, Washington, and other American cities are devastated.

Young William Burroughs comes from wealth but not nobility, so despite his income he is not welcomed when he pursues Lady Elizabeth Galton, and indeed he is not only beaten by her cousin but thrown out by his own father for the disgrace he has caused. He travels to the United States where he becomes a champion prizefighter. Upon his return to England, he finds circumstances quite changed for Lady Galton and he sets out to change her circumstances further.

Cousins Jim and Ned Thorpe are best friends, but that comes to an end when they both vie for the affections of Eve Marsham, and Ned wins her. Jim leaves for South America, but when he returns some time later he finds that things have drastically changed--Ned is now a hardened criminal and, in addition, is badly mistreating his wife Eve.

King James I gives his consent to the marriage between Lord Carnal and Lady Jocelyn Leigh. Lady Jocelyn, however, does not want to wed the evil Lord Carnal, and makes her escape on a bridal ship headed for Jamestown, VA. When it lands, a ruffian tries to take Jocelyn as his bride, but Captain Ralph Percy rescues her by marrying her himself. The marriage, however, is in name only, as Jocelyn wants little to do with Percy.

Upon being released from prison, Lawrence Hilliard takes the name of John Smith and looks for work, and falls in love with Irene Mason, a social secretary, but is reluctant to tell her about his past.

A notorious gambler and card cheat, George Forrester, rules a little western town with an iron hand. The men of the town plot to catch him cheating and do, but his men save him from danger. In the same town lives Gerald Austen, or Aitkens, who had left his tyrannical father in the east and made good in the west.