Monte Brewster learns that he has inherited $10 million from his late grandfather, but then learns that he must spend $2 million in less than a year and remain unmarried to inherit the rest of the money.

Little Betty has a luxurious home, an army of servants and the costliest of toys. But she hasn't what a child wants most of all, other children to play with. The result is that she runs away and joins a group of children from the ghetto district on the beach. In play she exchanges clothing with a little boy. That evening Betty doesn't return home. Her maiden aunt, an over-zealous guardian, is frantic. She notifies the police. The same evening the father of the boy, who has lost his position and is facing starvation, decides to turn burglar. He steals into the home of Betty's father. The household is awakened and the intruder captured.

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.

1920 film