A twenty-year veteran of the printing room of The San Francisco Chronicle is passed up for a promotion at the same time his son is accused of graft and involved in scandal.
Jerry Chandler falls for the lovely Mimi Le Brun and she with him. He proposes marriage but Mimi wants money and security which he cannot provide so she becomes engaged to a wealthy man whom she does not love.
After years of service, the Captain of the Setuckit Life Saving Station on Cape Cod retires, Calvin Homer, the second in command, Calvin Homer expects to be promoted; but the appointment goes instead to Bartlett, a religious fanatic who has been the recipient of a good deal of favorable newspaper publicity.
A young British nobleman, impoverished and desperate, clings to the hope that either a prizefighter or a racehorse in which he holds interests can save his fortunes.
American sculptress Adele La Rue, working in Paris, lacks the inspiration to create a masterpiece, until Jean Ballard, a wild apache leader, takes refuge from the police in her apartment.