The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-05-15
EVENING STORY
The Recipe Lady's Face.
(By Jane OSBORNE


Among other things Mardy Graham
wrote recipes.
She had begun with big ideas about
writing short stories for the popular
magazines. play or SO and possibly a
best seller. But no, ensconced in her
very own little studio apartment in a
dinsy New York side street, she con-
sidered herself quite fortunate when
she kept the pot boiling by writing
anything at all.
After the rejection of that first play
of hers, the ambitious Mardy had TAX
en- one reef after another in her sails.
Still she chose to sail her own little
craft in her own way and she had not
been completely discouraged. The
first thing she finally did sell was. in
her opinion, the most proSaic thing
she ever wrote-an interview with
some east side housewives on the sub
ject of the high cost of living. Once
she had had an assignment to write
some obituaries. Sometimes she wrote
hints to mothers and puzzles for chill
dren and advice for the lovelorn, not
at all the sort of thing that had fig
ured in her original dreams. But for
some reason Mardy, who had always
scorned the kitchen in her grand
mothers home in the south, where she
had been brought up, and who knew
not a skillet from a bread pan except
DY name, proven 10 nave peculiar
charms as a writer on culinary SUBJ
jects. Her own cooking experience
consisted of the studio meals she made
for herself. Her stove was chatting
DISH and a teakettle. and her larder
was contained in a packing box fitted
with shelves and painted and tucked
miraculously out of sight behind a
bookcase.
Perhaps because she had reminis-
cences of corn bread and beaten bis
| cults and chicken as her grandmoth-
| er'S old Creole cook in the south had
made them, she was able to write most
| convincingly on the good things of the
! table, always, of course, getting the
actual foundation for her recipes from
some old cookbookS or from some
cook or housewife of her acquaintance.
Then an editor of a paper out west
somewhere wrote in and asked her for
| a picture. You have made a big hit
with the housewives who read your
talks in our paper, and we want to
run a cut of the recipe ladys' face
along with your daily talks. VIII you
send out a picture at once"
! In spite of the two years of uphill
work Mardy had spent in the big city
she had something of the d-time reti-
4 cence of well-bred women of her class
against permitting the publication OF
her photograph. She didn't quite like
the idea of appearing morning after
originator of countless ways of max
ing cakes. mullins, stews and pud-
dings, tie like of which she had not
even tasted for many a moon. "But
STILL" reflected Mardy, as she sat be-
fore her desk in the apartment, 90
really am that recipe lady. I have nc
other personality. The girl that live:
there alone and dreams of writing plays
land of having home with an upstair:
and a downstairs and real kitchen
with a cook-that isn't the rea
me. That girl doesn't amount to any
thing"
So Mardy went forth to the photog
lraphers one day and sat for her pic
tic. and with the usual misgivfngs ant
hopefulness she waited the finishing
Of the proof.
The photographers clerk smiled
with satisfaction as Mardy took tn
proofs. 1T is a very nice picture.
she said.
Mardy looked at the face critically
Yes, she told herself, the picture wa
very pretty. 1t f1attered her, she wa
sure. She did not dream-for he