Ten years or so ago a newspaper man was dining one evening with Dr. James T. Kelly, who asked for advice concerning his daughter’s troubles with magazine editors. This seemed like the preface to a familiar story—the young woman had literary ability which the editors persistently refused to recognize. What was to be done?
But the story was not along that familiar line.
“My daughter, Myra,” said Dr. Kelly when his companion asked how he could help, “is teaching in a downtown East Side school. All of us at[Pg 188] home have been entertained by her stories of her pupils and I urged her to write some of them. She was timid about it because of the tales of often rejected manuscripts by unknown writers and did not say that she would make the trial.
“Unknown to me she did, though, and, determined to get over the agony of unanimous rejection as soon as possible, she made three copies of her story and posted one each to three magazine editors.
“This morning she came to me in distress with three letters from three editors, three checks, and three requests for more stories.”
Dr. Kelly’s companion agreed to act as diplomatic agent; he saw the three editors, settled the matter of first choice by lot, and gave the bewildered young school teacher’s promise of other stories in turn to the other two editors.
That was the unusual manner of entrance into the field of story writing of Myra Kelly, then a teacher in the primary grade of Public School 147.
The opinions of the magazine editors were speedily justified. Readers demanded more stories about “Isidore Belchatosky,” there were enthusiastic encores for further comment by “Morris Mogilewsky,” subscribers would not be denied more of the wisdom of “Becky Zalmonowsky,” and “Patrick Brennan,” whose father had resisted the tide which had swept most of his race away from Poverty Hollow, had friends by the thousands among magazine readers.
For the first story Myra Kelly was glad to accept $50; within a year she got $500 for every story she wrote.
And all she had done, she often said, was simply to write down the stories she told at home of the queer deeds and views of the Ghetto children to whom she was teaching a, b,[Pg 189] c,—and deportment. But these stories were so very unlike any others from out of that world “east of the Bowery,” reproduced so quaintly the dialects, so accurately the points of view, gave such a new, deep insight into that seething world where there were hundreds of thousands of citizens in the making, that their author quickly became famous and prosperous.