Two street cleaners, fired by the commissioner for playing with fire-crackers on the job, are taken to his home to recuperate from a car accident by his wife.
A foreword warns against the peril of yellow journalism, and the story illustrates it by following events in the upstate New York town of Cornwall after prominant financier George Ferguson is killed.
Thelma and Zazu are on a leisurely excursion in a borrowed car. Thelma lets Zazu drive. When she brakes to avoid a bull pulled along by three rustics, her foot gets stuck and the car crashes through a barn.
Among the travelers of varied backgrounds that meet and interact on one night at Union Depot, a metropolitan train station, are Chick and his friend Scrap Iron, both newly released from prison after serving time for vagrancy.
A group of drinking, smoking and card-playing society women are getting obesely flabby. They go to a gym where various methods are used to reduce their fat.