Marian Skinner

Pat Dugan puts his last penny into oil prospecting and finds the oil. He deserts the old shack for his idea of what a palace should be and sends Jimmie to college. Jimmie promptly thrashes three of the students and polishes off the policeman who interferes. Then he leaves college for a partnership in a nursery business with a young Italian. Pat moves east and settles next door to Lady Blessington, but supposes the placid old lady who fraternizes with his wife to be the house- keeper. Jimmy turns up and falls in love with Joyce, Lady Blessington's god-daughter and marries her in spite of his father's commands, but when Pat sees how it all comes out he takes the full credit to himself.

Doris Standish's father insists upon her marriage to aging millionaire Cyrus W. Hopkins, but just before the wedding, the young woman runs from the house and leaps into a parked car, ordering the chauffeur to drive her quickly away. The driver is Jimmy Nevin, who, because Hopkins financially ruined his father, has agreed to help a gang of crooks in their plot to steal the bride's jewels and wedding presents. Realizing that Doris is not Mary Butler, his accomplice, Jimmy offers to accompany her home, but when she refuses to return, he takes her to the thieves' hideout.

After a brief view of Edgar Allan Poe's family background, his grandfather, David Poe, Sr., an Irish immigrant to America, and his father, David Poe, Jr., the poet's life is depicted from the death of his mother and his subsequent adoption by John Allan, to his own tortured death in 1849. Expelled from the University of Virginia for incurring too many debts, Poe nonetheless courts and marries Virginia Clemm but is disowned by his foster father. While residing in Fordham, New York, Poe tries to earn a living as a writer but meets with little financial success. Overwhelmed by their impoverished state, Virginia dies and Poe sinks into a profound depression. Always a victim of alcohol and subject to hallucinations, Poe first imagines that his neighbor, Helen Whitman, is Virginia, then plunges himself into an elaborate delusion in which his wife's spirit, various other spectres and a raven finally drive him to his own death.

Princess Triloff, an emigrée from Czarist Russia, escapes to America where she becomes a patron of the arts. She falls in love with the verses of impoverished poet Owen Carey and becomes his anonymous benefactor. When Owen inherits a fortune from his rich Uncle Krakerfeller, he assumes his uncle's identity and confers his own upon an impoverished friend, Frank Manners. At a resort, Owen meets the princess and falls in love with her, but is chagrined to discover that she is enamored with Manners. The princess finally discovers Owen's real identity and the two fall in love.

When noted scientist John Vandam dies in the Orient, he leaves the guardianship of his eighteen-year-old daughter to his old friend Sandy Verrall. Sandy believes that Eliza is a little girl and so prepares for the arrival of a child. Displeased with the situation, Eliza decides to dress and act like a kid so that Sandy will tire of her and send her away.

Daphne Trowbridge, an impulsive and obstinate but nonetheless kindhearted young woman, lives with her aunt and uncle on their country estate. Daphne falls in love with Tom Dunstan, but when she learns that Mrs. Trowbridge favors the young man, she deserts him, whereupon he departs for the woods brokenhearted. Because her aunt dislikes Gerald, Daphne accepts his proposal, but on the day of the wedding, she discovers that Mrs. Trowbridge has liked him from the beginning. Furious at her aunt's scheming, Daphne hires the first man she meets, who happens to be a heavily bearded lumberman, to marry her and then leave. Later, however, her hired husband abducts her to his cabin in the woods, where he eventually succeeds in taming her. After he rescues her from two lecherous lumberjacks, Daphne discovers that her husband is Tom, whom she had loved all along.

Norma Wood, a fed-up stenographer leaves her miserly fiancé, charges lavish gowns to her lecherous boss, and sets out to experience life. She is subsequently hired by a wealthy widow to seduce the woman's son away from his current girlfriend.

When a couple of scammers hold young Alice Faulkner against her will to discover the whereabouts of letters whose dissemination could cause a scandal affecting the royal family, Sherlock Holmes decides to take over the case. (Considered lost, a copy was found in 2014, in the vaults of the Cinémathèque Française.)