A professor of literature once began a lecture on Lowell by saying: "It makes a great deal of difference to an author whether he is born in Cambridge or Kalamazoo." Miss Ferber was born in Kalamazoo, but it hasn't made much difference to her. The date was August 15, 1887. She attended high school at Appleton, Wisconsin, and at seventeen secured a position as reporter on the Appleton Daily Crescent. That she was successful in newspaper work is shown by the fact that she soon had a similar position on the Milwaukee Journal, and went from there to the staff of the Chicago Tribune, one of the leading newspapers in the United States.

But journalism, engrossing as it is, did not take all of her time. She began a novel, working on it in spare moments, but when it was finished she was so dissatisfied with it that she threw the manuscript into the waste basket. Here her mother found it, and sent it to a publisher, who accepted it at once. The book was Dawn O'Hara. It was dedicated "To my dear mother who frequently interrupts, and to my sister Fannie who says Sh-sh-sh outside my door." With this book Miss Ferber, at twenty-four, found herself the author of one of the successful novels of the year.

Her next work was in the field of the short story, and here too she quickly gained recognition. The field that she has made particularly her own is the delineation of the American business woman, a type familiar in our daily life, but never adequately presented in fiction until Emma McChesney appeared. The fidelity with which these stories describe the life of a traveling salesman show that Miss Ferber knew her subject through and through before she began to write. Her knowledge of other things is shown in an amusing letter which she wrote to the editor of the Bookman in 1912. He had criticized her for writing a story about baseball, saying that no woman really knew baseball. This was her reply, in part:

You, buried up there in your office, or your apartment, with your books, books, books, and your pipe, and your everlasting manuscripts, and makers of manuscripts, don't you know that your woman secretary knows more about baseball than you do? Don't you know that every American girl knows baseball, and that most of us read the sporting page, not as a pose, but because we're interested in things that happen on the field, and track, and links, and gridiron? Bless your heart, that baseball story was the worst story in the book, but it was written after a solid summer of watching our bush league team play ball in the little Wisconsin town that I used to call home.

Humanity? Which of us really knows it? But take a fairly intelligent girl of seventeen, put her on a country daily newspaper, and then keep her on one paper or another, country and city, for six years, and—well, she just naturally can't help learning some things about some folks, now can she?...

You say that two or three more such books may entitle me to serious consideration. If I can get the editors to take more stories, why I suppose there'll be more books. But please don't perform any more serious consideration stuff over 'em. Because me'n Georgie Cohan, we jest aims to amuse.

Her first book of short stories was called Buttered Side Down (her titles are always unusual). This was followed by Roast Beef, Medium, in which Mrs. McChesney appears as the successful distributor of Featherloom skirts. Personality Plus tells of the adventures of her son Jock as an advertising man. Cheerful—by Request introduces Mrs. McChesney and some other people. By this time her favorite character had become so well known that the stage called for her, so Miss Ferber collaborated with George V. Hobart in a play called Our Mrs. McChesney, which was produced with Ethel Barrymore in the title role. Her latest book, Fanny Herself, is a novel, and in its pages Mrs. McChesney appears again.

Her stories show the effect of her newspaper training. The style is crisp; the descriptions show close observation. Humor lights up every page, and underlying all her stories is a belief in people, a faith that life is worth while, a courage in the face of obstacles, that we like to think is characteristically American. In the structure and the style of her stories, Miss Ferber shows the influence of O. Henry, or as a newspaper wit put it,