at fourteen I had planned I
would be." So Miss Hurst, in a sketch written for the _American
Magazine_ (March, 1919), sums up the story of a remarkable literary
career.

Fannie Hurst was born in St. Louis, October 19, 1889. She attended the
public schools, and began to write--with the firm intention of becoming
an author--before she was out of grammar school. "At fourteen," she
tells us in the article just referred to, "the one pigeon-hole of my
little girl's desk was already stuffed with packets of rejected verse
which had been furtively written, furtively mailed, and still more
furtively received back again by heading off the postman a block before
he reached our door." To this dream of authorship--the secret of which
was carefully guarded from her family--she sacrificed her play and even
her study hours. The first shock to her family came on St. Valentine's
Day. There was to be a party that night, her first real party. A new
dress was ready for the occasion, and a boy escort was to call for her
in a cab. It happened that Valentine's day fell on Saturday, and
Saturday was her time for writing. That day she turned from poetry to
fiction, and was just in the middle of her first story when it came time
to get ready for the party. She did not get ready. The escort arrived,
cab and all; the family protested, but all to no purpose. She finished
the story, mailed it, three weeks later received it back, and began her
second story. All through her high school days she mailed a manuscript
every Saturday, and they always came back.

After high school she entered Washington University, St. Louis,
graduating in 1909. And still she kept writing. To one journal alone
she sent during those four years, thirty-four short stories. And they
all came back--all but one. Just before graduation she sold her first
article, a little sketch first written as a daily theme, which was
published in a local weekly, and brought her three dollars. This was the
total result of eight years' literary effort. So quite naturally she
determined to go on.

She announced to her family that she was going to New York City to
become a writer. There was a stormy discussion in the Hurst family, but
it ended in her going away, with a bundle of manuscripts in her trunk,
to brave the big city alone. She found a tiny furnished room and set
forth to besiege the editors' offices. One evening she returned, to find
the house being raided, a patrol wagon at the curb, an