Clarissa spins the tale for her children of how when she was a young girl, she was the belle of the small town of Cherry Pit Siding. Winning the title of “the most popular young lady” at the annual fireman’s ball she is awarded the prize of a beautiful calf. Loved by artist Josh Jiggers she poses for a painting to be known as "Clarissa's Charming Calf." Unfortunately for the lovers New York variety manager Omar Commerstein espies the portrait and yearns to make Clarissa a roof-garden attraction. When she spurns him, he takes desperate measures to ensnare her but thanks to the efforts of Josh and the firemen the villainous manager and his confederates are soon thwarted. Reunited Clarissa and Josh marry.

The wealthy, greedy publisher Mr. Meeson exploits the writer Augusta Smithers. After a shipwreck, Meeson has his dying will tattooed onto Augusta's back before he dies, setting up a dramatic legal battle in England over his fortune.

Unable to agree on the man responsible for the plays commonly attributed to William Shakespeare, Miss Gray, who favors Francis Bacon, and Lieutenant Stanton, who accepts Shakespeare as the author, break off their engagement. Stanton then arranges to be transferred to the Mexican border, and while fighting there is badly wounded. When she hears the news about Stanton's condition, Miss Gray faints, and then dreams that she has been transported to Elizabethan times. Then, after Bacon falls in love with her, she discovers his obsessive jealousy of Shakespeare, and learns that he has bribed a courtier to accuse him of stealing Bacon's plays. As a result, when Miss Gray wakes up, she realizes that she has championed the wrong poet, and so she immediately is reconciled with Stanton, who soon recovers from his wound.