The story opens with the family patriarch marching off to the Boer war at the turn of the century, and ends thirty years later, with the now-aged principal characters coping with the Depression and the bleak days following Queen Victoria's death.

A country doctor learns his housekeeper is in possession of valuable painting given to her from an artist she befriended. Art collectors and swindlers attempt to get hold of these paintings.

Sure and it's a fine St. Paddy's dawn in New York City, and beat cop Bragan is finishing up his all-night midtown shift and heading back to his family. Mrs. Bragan is making waffles today, and there's no school for young Mike, and they're all looking forward to the big parade. It's Bragan's day. He's got his buttons already polished.

But he won't make it home after all. A scream pierces the daybreak, and Bragan looks up and gasps: Way up high, near the top of one of the avenue's fine hotels, there's a guy standing on a ledge, clinging to a cornice, looking down, teetering.

Jumper. Bragan breaks into a run, straightaway gets up to the hotel's 15th floor, collides with the manager who's fretting that his suicidal guest is going to bring unwelcome publicity. ""This is the worst possible thing that can happen to a hotel!"" the manager moans. Bragan disgustedly shoos him out, and now he's alone with the man on the ledge, the first cop on the scene, and he leans out the window, high over the d

An outlaw's son is torn between affection for his father and his own belief in law and order. While riding with the outlaw band, he is captured and imprisoned, and then learns the gang abandoned his wife to die, leaving his newborn son homeless. Furious, he turns against the gang and joins forces with the law.

After his wife suffers a miscarriage during an earthquake in Japan, he finds that a young Japanese girl is parentless and homeless and decides to take her in. Hoping of course that his wife will overcome her grief over the loss of their own child. He is reassigned to Honolulu and there he encounters problems with his superior who is extremely racist against his daughter and causes trouble for him and his outfit.

A sensitive widow of delicate constitution falls in love with a cottage by the sea previously owned by Captain Robert Wilton who commited suicide. Feeling a ghostly prescence she becomes enchanted with him and he helps her to overcome her fears.

Emil Markheim employs the same ruthless authority in running the bank he founded that he imposes on his own family. His sons hate him enough to want to destroy him. The son who loves him ends up in jail for trying to bride a juror after his father winds up on the bank examiners wrong side. After doing 5 years in Sing Sing upon his release the other brothers try to destroy him.

Jimmy Ringo an ex-gunfighter tries to settle down to a normal life but is constantly challenged to gun fights. As he tries to reconnect with his wife and son in Cayenne, his life is in danger when several attempts are made on his life. Distraught he tells the sheriff his friend not to pursue the attempts, to let the gunnies find out themselves what kind of life it is to be an outlaw.

A young Abe takes on a case where the only witness to the crime is the mother of two young men who are wrongfully accused in the stabbing death of the town deputy.

In Vaquero County at the Wells Fargo Office, Anse Trumbull is shot and killed in a bank hold up. This endangers the only witness to the crime, the sheriff's stepson. The sheriff is faced with a difficult decision whether to protect the boy and possibly lose his respect or risk the boys life.

Ben Macready son of John Macready owner and editor of the ""Hollisfield Herald"" has been asked by Police Chief Swanson to keep a lid on a kidnapping of Jimmie Elgin son of the Bank Manager George Elgin under wraps for 18 hours. Ben agrees, however his father doesnt and goes ahead with the story. The townspeople turn on Macready when it is learned that the river was dragged and a body was found. Fearing the worst, Macready embarks on a mission to capture the kidnapper. Offering him money for the story and trapping him only to discover that little Jimmie is alive and is exchanged for the reward. The police are able to arrest the kidnapper.

During the Civil War, imprisoned Confederate soldiers are paroled to help protect pioneers from Indians.

Retired schoolteacher pays a visit to a former pupil she taught many years ago. He is a candidate running for governor. She tells him about how difficult he was as a boy and her attempts to help him interfered with the man she loved and accusations concerning that man.

A mischievous, well meaning, meddling busy body opens up an agency to bring couples together. After years of being a scorned woman Mae decides to turn the tables on her nemisis after her ex-husbands death. A variation of Hello Dolly!