Speedy loses his job as a soda jerk, then spends the day with his girl at Coney Island. He then becomes a cab driver and delivers Babe Ruth to Yankee Stadium, where he stays to see the game. When the railroad tries to run the last horse-drawn trolley (operated by his girl's grandfather) out of business, Speedy organizes the neighborhood old-timers to thwart their scheme.
After losing a fistfight to his romantic rival, wastrelly Clinton Philbrook skulks off to the North Woods. Hoping to redeem himself in the eyes of his sweetheart Alicia Van Orden, Clinton signs on as an apprentice to trapper Pierre Bechard.
A gang of crooks led by Holden steals a government code, and Cyril Gordon, a Secret Service agent who bears a strong resemblance to the gang leader, is assigned to recover the stolen documents.
Allayne Norman's husband Bruce is a gambler and drunkard who kills her artist cousin in an argument. Bruce flees the studio with Allayne and their son, and places his identifying documents in the pockets of an amnesiac man. To avoid the consequences of his actions, Allayne identifies the man as her husband. When Bruce returns, he tries to kill the man but is shot instead. The man regains his memory and is cleared of wrongdoing.
A young man is tasked by the powerful Cardinal Richelieu to capture one of the cardinal's enemies but falls in love with his target's sister. The film marks the last motion picture appearance by stage actor Robert B. Mantell who plays Cardinal Richelieu and the only silent screen performance of opera singer John Charles Thomas.
Warren Schuyler, a wealthy widower in a small Eastern town, is highly-respected until the citizens are financially ruined by devaluation of the oil stock he sold them. His daughter Ellen's New York socialite fiance' Roy Phelps deserts her after her father dies, but fellow townsman John Barrett comes to her aid, and she marries him out of gratitude. After three years of irritation from her mother-in-law, she again meets Roy and is persuaded to leave her husband and child, but on perceiving Roy's fraudulence, and following a serious illness, she reunites with John.
Betty, a blind girl, is the sole "witness" to the murder of a mine owner and whose mistaken testimony convicts Sid Allen her own benefactor. Years later, the adult Betty returns to the mining town, her sight restored. Fearing that she may remember the truth, the real murderer, "Bull" Snide has the girl kidnapped.
During the Civil War, Rachel Hayne, a young widow, is among those "held by the enemy" when her old family home is within the lines occupied by the Northern troops. Protected by Colonel Prescott from looters and the unwelcome attentions of Surgeon Fielding, Rachel begins to fall in love with the gallant Yankee officer. Their romance is disrupted when Rachel's husband Gordon, long reported dead, is captured as a spy and condemned to death.