A Confederate officer is called off to war. He leaves his wife and daughter in the care of George, his faithful Negro servant. After the officer is killed in an exciting battle sequence, George continues in his caring duties, faithful to his trust. Events continue to turn for the worse when invading Yankee soldiers arrive to loot and torch the widow's home. George saves the officer's daughter and battle sword by braving the flames.

Set in a tenement boarding house, a lonely confirmed bachelor occupies a room across the hall from a dour spinster. Children run amok in the hallways playing pranks. Believing the bachelor perpetrated one particular prank, the spinster woman enters his room to confront him. She is followed by a neighbor child. Meanwhile, the other children have stolen a scarlet fever quarantine sign and posted it on the bachelor's door. The police, unaware that the quarentine sign is a prank, enforce the confinement. But aided by the sweet disposition of the toddler quarantined with them, the icy relations between spinster and bachelor begin to thaw, . . .

A potentially violent patient in an insane asylum is calmed when he hears a nurse playing the piano. But shortly afterwards he breaks free, eludes his pursuers, and acquires a gun. He soon comes to a house where a young wife is home alone, and there is a tense confrontation.

A young couple struggle to get ahead, the wife always assuaging the troubles of her melancholy husband. As he climbs the ladder of success, he abandons the homely values and takes up with another woman. His wife leaves him, returning to her mother's home where she bears a child. When the husband is abandoned by his concubine, remorse drives him to find his wife...

Kathy, a young child, has befriended the elderly miser who lives on an upper floor of the building where she lives. Today, while playing outside, she also makes friends with Jules, a homeless petty thief. Later, when she is in the miser's apartment, two violent criminals break in. They tie a rope around Kathy and dangle her out of a window, threatening to let her fall to the ground if the miser does not give them the combination to his safe. Outside, Jules sees her in danger, but to help her he must risk dealing with the police.