The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-03-09
HOW FAME CAME
Kansas Girl Determined to
Write Big Stories.
Chance Came When She Least
Expected 1t.
TELLS OF EVERY DAY LIFE
And Big Journal Startles Her
by Offer.
How Doing Small Work Well
Won for Her.
TELLS OF EVERY DAY LIFE

few years ago a girl in Kansas
wanted to write. She lived in small
town where the Saturday afternoon
auction around the court house square
was the biggest event of the week.
Every fall the city had a corn carnl-
val and hired a parachute jumper 10
go up in his balloon and come sailing
down while the population of the whole
county held it's breath in wonder and
amazement, says Homer Croy in the
Magazine Maker.
She had always lived there and had
never known anybody except Mr.. O'F'aI-
len, who Kept the grocery on the cor
ner and told such funny stories about
the war; and Mrs. Grundy, who had
once been little Eva in a hy-by- might
But these were just common everyday
people and she has known them all her
lie.
Month after month dragged by and
year after year slipped away into the
dimness of things without the girl once
getting time or opportunity to travel
and tell of the curious people of the
world, but still the flame of ambition
burned
She had drifted into small job OF
reporting on the daily paper with a
round of the grocery store to make
each day to find who was in town from
Polk township and if A. r. Williams.
the leading merchant, had gone tic
Kansas City that week. Each day she
had to take the 10:45 bus down to
the station to see who was leaving
town and who was coming in; she us
ually walked back, coming by the hos
pital and dropping in at the Trast
lumberyard, for they always knew |
what was going on in the county.
She Still Had the Ambition.
But the chance to travel. to meet |
strange people, and write powerful |
stories never came. The sweet dream |
~ n
morning when she had to rush through !
her coffee to get down and open the
Office before the 1902 mail got in. But
the will to write never wavered; only
the chance to do powerful gripping
stories never came.
At last she began to write about
things she saw around her every day
and to turn them in as copy, as we'll
as the items about Roy Ford getting
back from a visit with his uncle at
Gentryville. and about Mrs. o. F
Woods, who was fast recovering after
her severe fall of last week. She be-
gan to write about people instead of
their accidents; she began to turn IN
the funny stories that Mr.. O'Fallon,
the grocer told. The editor knew I
them by heart, but it had never struck
him before that they were so funny.
She began to do a Saturday story
about the queer experience Mrs. Grun-
dy had down in Texas once when they
naQ TO use the DIOOQnOunQS IN OnClS
Toms Cabin to run to earth an es-
Gaping bank robber; everybody on
Mrs. Grundy's street knew the details
by heart, but Mrs. Grundy had never
told it SO well as the paper and so
they clipped it out and sent it to
friends who might be interested just
because it was good reading.
Then Fame Began to Come.
Subscribers began to drop into the
office to tell the editor how much they
liked the sketches; they began to COM
plain if they missed a single issue
for they were keeping scrapbooks-
and before it hadn't made much diff ,
ference if they did miss a number OF ,
Two.
Neighboring papers began copying $
he girls stories and pretty soon the i
Kansas City papers were featuring l
-hem-giving credit. of course. One I
lay an advertising firm bought the t
tight to print one of the stories in a ! :
booklet and distributed 100000 copies '
soon the people of three states were
the work of this one girl
for the stories all laid with
II the city limits of her town.
Then one day a telegram came. The
yirl opened it with trembling fingers,
or who knew her and what could they i
want? The message was brief: $
viii you consider coming to New i
Cork? t
New York Journal" n
The girl could hardly believe her n
yes, for how would they know about t
Ter away off in New York? In I
ream she turned it over in her mind c
or two days when another message II
anne: s
viii you consider proposition? Wire t
ollect- c
New York Journal"
She wired and in two weeks had
Ter own desk on Hearst's paper in
he throbbing heart of New York city. '
Her name was put on the magazine
age and, through his syndicate, fea-
ured from one end of the country to +
he other. N
The girl was Frances L. Garside a
Il
BAILEY HEADS TAFT CLUB. b
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