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_ (