For a month I lived with an Armenian family on West Broadway, in a room over a tobacconist's shop. I apprenticed myself as a sales-girl in New York's most gigantic department store. Four and one-quarter yards of ribbon at seven and a half cents a yard proved my Waterloo, and my resignation at the end of one week was not entirely voluntary. I served as waitress in one of New York's most gigantic chain of white-tiled lunch rooms. I stitched boys' pants in a Polish sweatshop, and lived for two days in New York's most rococo hotel. I took a graduate course in Anglo Saxon at Columbia University, and one in lamp-shade making at Wanamaker's: wormed into a Broadway musical show as wardrobe girl, and went out on a self-appointed newspaper assignment to interview the mother of the richest baby in the world.
All these experiences yielded rich material for stories, but no one would print them. Her money was gone; so was a diamond ring that had been a Commencement present; it seemed as if there was nothing left but to give up the struggle and go back home. Then, just as she had struck bottom, an editor actually told her she could write, and followed up his remark by buying three stories. Since that time she has never had a story rejected, and her checks have gone up from two figures into four. And so, at the end of a long fight, as she says, "I find myself at twenty-nine exactly where at fourteen I had planned I would be. And best of all, what popular success I am enjoying has come not from pandering to popular demand or editorial policy, but from pandering to my own inner convictions, which are like little soul-tapers, lighting the way."
All her work has been in the form of the short story. Her first book, Just Around the Corner, published in 1914, is a collection of stories dealing with the life of working girls in a city. Every Soul Hath Its Song is a similar collection; the title suggests the author's outlook upon life. Some one has said that in looking at a puddle of water, you may see either the mud at the bottom or the sky reflected on its surface. Miss Hurst sees the reflection of the sky. The Boston Transcript said of this book: "Here at last is a story writer who is bent on listening to the voices of America and interpreting them." Gaslight Sonatas, from which "Bitter-Sweet" is taken, showed an advance over her earlier work. Two of the stories from this volume were selected by Mr. O'Brien for his volume, Best Short Stories, for 1916 and 1917. Humoresque, her latest work, continues her studies of city types, drawn from New York and St. Louis. The stories show her insight into character and her graphic descriptive power. Miss Hurst is also the author of two plays, The Land of the Free and The Good Provider.
IN THE LUMBER COUNTRY
The men of the woods are not as the men of the cities. The great open spaces where men battle with the primeval forest set their mark upon their inhabitants, not only in physique but in character. The lumberman,—rough, frank, independent, humorous, equally ready for a fight or a frolic, has been portrayed at full length by Stewart Edward White in The Blazed Trail and The Riverman. In the following sketch, taken from his Blazed Trail Stories, he shows the lumberman at work and at play.