Jack Breen and his wife, Lizzie, are professional crooks, who live in a fine house and set themselves up as belonging to the best. Breen gets his living by various means, including begging. He dresses in ragged clothes and picks up crusts in the street, which he pretends to eat, thereby exciting...
Against the backdrop of New York City of the early 1850s, a young woman -- naively seeking to win the love she reads about in the romance novels she devours -- finds one prospect in an earnest denizen of the Bowery, and another in an elegant young aristocrat. Focusing on the bygone era's fashions,...
Patience and Anne, two spinsters of the old school of aristocratic birth, have managed to keep up appearances under very trying conditions and with limited means, until they are reduced to such circumstances they are obliged to sell their household furnishing, of antique pattern, to raise the...
Mark Stetson, a scheming politician, entangles the Brandons, husband and wife, and their friend, Antoinette, in his smuggling schemes and engineers their arrest, to protect himself. Edited into Shadows of the Past (1919).
Tom and Dick are brothers and are being educated at the same college. Tom is a studious fellow and graduates with honors, while Dick is expelled from college through misbehavior. Dick is ashamed to go home, but before leaving Tom gives him a locket containing a picture of their mother. Ten years...
During Nick Austin's imprisonment, his wife passes away. Before she dies, she writes a note to her husband, asking him to put her little girl in the care of an orphan asylum. Mrs. Downes, while bringing some of her dead daughter's clothes to the asylum, takes a fancy to Nina Austin and adopts her.
Miss Edna White is very much grieved when she has not a suitable gown to wear at a party. Mrs. Donald, a wealthy customer, calls and asks Edna to try the dress on she has bought for her inspection. It answers her purposes, and Edna is instructed to deliver the dress that night, on her way home.
John Ruskin became acquainted with his wife through a loan which he made to her father, and his noted generosity no doubt appealed to her and it seems that she married him more out of gratitude than actual love. Be that as it may, the fact remains that when Millais met her, he and she fell...
Deserted by his wife Arline, who absconds with their baby daughter Ruth as well, Robert Travers loses all faith in women. Years later, Travers, now known as the man without a soul, is the owner of a chain of department stores in which young Ruth Carroll is employed as a ribbon clerk. Finding...
Mrs. Letitia Summers, owner and principal of an exclusive boarding school, decides to give her two nieces an education while deciding which will be her heir unbeknownst to them. She writes each a letter, stating that a lady of means has provided for their education at Mrs. Summers' seminary. Edith...
A beautiful secretary has her pick of the men in the office, but instead of marrying the boss, she takes one of his junior staff. Later, when she is suspected of committing a murder, her husband confesses to it--although he didn't do it--in order to protect her. Complications ensue.
An American ship is wrecked off the coast of the Dutch East Indies, and little Faith Fitzhugh and her mother have washed ashore on a rocky island that supports only a lighthouse. Faith's mother lives only long enough to inform the three Dutch lighthouse keepers that her daughter is the heiress to a...
Mrs. Travers, a society leader, is madly in love with Arthur Ingraham, a rising diplomat. Arthur is not in love with her and avoids her advances. He is in love with Beatrice Langton, a young debutante, to whom he becomes engaged. Mrs. Travers is furious.
On his way to New York to visit his relatives, the Masons, for the first time, Uncle Bill meets "Oiley" Curley, a crook. John Mason, Uncle Bill's nephew, is candidate for Governor and, on the eve of Uncle Bill's arrival, Mason and his political constituents are in secret conference with Murray of...
More a cautionary moral tale than anything else, Conscience makes use of a setting that was to become a horror movie favourite: the chamber of horrors. Persuaded to elope by her lover Eric, Eleanor Donelly defies her police officer brother to go to New York, where the young couple are married. Soon...
