The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-12-12
Ole Miss, dar's CT Lot uv Wimmin Folks dat Wears dey Clothes Well dat don't Wear Well Deyselves Nav m!

from Mrs Beckley's friend, Kathleen Norris, whose interesting stories we've all read and enjoyed, especially the most recent story:
 "A good many years ago l came to the conclusion that there was some wom- an, writing for an evening paper who had most unusual gift. For little while called her the woman whose name l never remember" and then I identified her as sayne unknown Zoe Beckley, and after that I used to look, as thou sands of other women do, for the name of Zoe Beckley, and read anything and everything she wrote.
 .'It wasn' t--as you all know-that there was anything especially arresting in this or that single article from her pen, put it was the sum of several of them, dozen or score, that made the impress sion. They ranged all over this kalel- doscopic city from Rockefeller, into whose fastnesses she cheerfully penetrated to the, tiniests east side baby in limp little rag of a wrapper, whose micro scopic joys and sorrows she made her own. and from Roosevelt to the smallest of Boy Scouts And everything she said was simple and human and true Ihose are small adjectives, but l could name the writers to whom they apply on the fingers of one hand.
 Her vignettes didn't always have the obvious, and the happy, ending. Tn the tiny stories she gave the world daily the working girls were real flesh-and- blood girls. who sometimes had colds, in their heads, and sometimes forgot their ideals long enough to go to the movies or to buy cheap silk stockings in De- cember: and the employers were human, too-not all professional villains and de- ceivers. In a word, it was life. And it takes courage to write about life.
 So that used to feel that I liked and admired Zoe Becl1Iey long before the for tuitous, autumn day that first made us friends - and it was then that I told her that she ought to write novel about New York. That was two years ago Well, she has written the story; she showed it to me few nights ago, and I laughed and cried over it as you will. It is only the story of one small, ambitious, wistful life-hungry girl, Annie Hargan, lost in the lower regions of New York like hundred thousand others climbing and hoping in spite of the pitfalls and despairs that we leave in the path of such girls, studying life with halfapuzZed and half-fright0ned eyes, holding tight to the miraculous truth of her own soul-as so many girls mysteriously do, in spite of all our civili- ga ton does to crust it and them.
 Ana II u COItftS lO yOu u WOHuci INV many other girls feet are going naturally and simply to follow Annie's feet, and how many other girls are going to find the solution where she finds it-well, Zoe and Annie and Ise only assure you that the facts are these-and these-and these--and we are dealing, in this life, with facts.
 For me, it is only to bespeak your 1n- terest and affection for little Annie liar gin, as she steps shyly but courageously into the world of loved heroines of fic- tion And like Napoleon's irrepressible laundress at Fontainebleau, or like the curtain raiser who nodded a last reas- surance to Galli-Curci when she made Ter first bow to us, take the privilege of friendship to wish her Godspeed on her new way, I take her toif-worn and tired and strong little hands in mine and say, Ladies and gentlemen-Annie!'
 And then I opened the pages of the story itself--of the dainty blue and gold pastel covering, which holds Zoe Beck ley's first book baby" and read and read--on and on--from the very first re- cital of Annie Hargan's excursion to the butchers and the bakers, with her list carefully written out. because it made her feel so much more important to read the things off from a list--fnore like other housewives" There was stew meat and salt pork at the butcher's; tea, on- ions and can of oil at the grocer's'-