ooklet published by GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, 1920.

Private Information.

Chapter XVI

AN ARMFUL OF NOVELS, WITH NOTES ON THE NOVELISTS

=i=

"The quiet, the calm, the extreme individualism, and the easy-going
self-content of my birthplace and early habitat--the Eastern Shore of
Maryland, have been, I fear, the dominating influences of my life," writes
Sophie Kerr. "Thank heaven, I had a restless, energetic, and very
bad-tempered father to leaven them, a man with a biting tongue and a kind
heart, a keen sense of the ridiculous and a passion for honesty in speech
and action. I, the younger of his two children, was his constant
companion. I tagged after him, every day and all day. Even when I was very
small he interested me--and very few fathers ever really interest their
children.

"The usual life of a girl in a small semi-Southern town was mine. I
learned to cook, I made most of my own frocks, I embroidered excessively,
I played the violin worse than any other person in the world, I went away
to college and I came back again. I wasn't a popular girl socially for two
reasons. I had inherited my father's gift of sarcasm, and there was the
even greater handicap of a beautiful, popular, socially malleable older
sister. Beside her I was nowhere.

"But I wanted to write, so I didn't care. I got my father to buy me a
second-hand typewriter, and learned to run it with two fingers. And I
wrote. I even sold some of the stuff. The Country Gentleman bought one of
my first stories, and the Ladies' World bought another. This was
glorious.

"Then I got a job on the Pittsburgh Chronicle-Telegraph, an afternoon
newspaper owned by Senator Oliver. Later I went to The Gazette-Times, the
morning paper also owned by the Senator. A few years later I came to New
York and found a place on the staff of the Woman's Home Companion,
eventually becoming Managing Editor. Two years ago I resigned my editorial
job to give all my time to writing. Of course I had been writing pretty
steadily anyway, but holding my job too.

"I had expected, when I gave up office work, to find my leisure time an
embarrassment. I planned so many things to do, how I would see all my
friends often, how I would travel, read, do all sorts of delightful things
that double work had before made impossible. But I've done none of them. I
haven't nearly as much time as I had when I hadn't any time at all, and
that's the honest truth.

"If only I could arrange a