So, what your calling, or your bent,
If clergy or if laity,
Fall into line. I'll be content
And plume me on my gayety,
If of the human file and rank
I can make nine-tenths smile,--and thank.
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CHAPTER I

On a Pittsburgh block, where three generations ago might have been heard
Indian war-whoops--yes, and the next generation wore hoops, too--a girl
child stood, in evident relief, far below the murky gray of the Pittsburgh
sky.

She couldn't see an Indian, not even a cigar store one, and she wouldn't
have noticed him anyway, for she was shaking with laughter.

A breeze, which had hurried across from New York for the purpose, blew her
hat off, but she recked not, and only tautened her hair ribbon with an
involuntary jerk just in time to prevent that going too.

A girl on a Pittsburgh block; bibulous, plastic, young; drinking the air in
great gulps, as she would later drink life.

It is Warble Mildew, expelled from Public School, and carolling with