In another place she says: “No autobiographical sketch is complete without a statement of ambitions. I have two. I want to be allowed to sit in a rocking chair on the curb at the corner of State and Madison streets and watch the folks go by. And I would fain live on a houseboat in the Vale of Cashmere. I don’t know where the Vale of Cashmere is, nor whether it boasts a water course or not.” What a lot she would get out of her view of life from a rocking chair at State and Madison streets! She complained bitterly once that a certain writer, now opulent and lazy, who knew Chicago from the stockyards to the North Shore, did not use the stuff he had in his head. She felt not so much that he was missing an opportunity, but that he had buried the talent of experience that should have been passed on to others after he had gone. Though Edna Ferber lives in New York—her apartment faces Central Park—she is not of New York. She knows Chicago, she thinks Chicago, just as Booth Tarkington thinks and knows Indianapolis and would not live wholly away from it. The author of “The Girls,” that masterpiece of Chicago, frequently visits the Windy City and sits, metaphorically, at the corner of State and Madison and soaks in the spirit of the city, that city so recently a pioneer town, so lately an effete city. No wonder she finds it fascinating and inexhaustible. Edna Ferber’s apartment is the place where she meets her friends, breakfasts, lunches, dines, and sleeps. It is her rest house, her relaxation. The furnishing of it was an adventure. The choosing of draperies for the windows (there are many facing east), the tints for the walls, and the fabrics for the upholstery, she found an exhilarating venture into the unknown. She has been a hotel dweller, a renter of the homes of other people. But here she is rioting in her own home with her own furniture and hers is the sole responsibility for the color scheme, the style, and the composition. And it is good. Her taste in furnishing as in writing is to be relied upon. It is also most comfortable, too comfortable. It would be hard enough to break away from this interesting woman if one were standing talking in a windy street, but when surrounded by all the comforts it is almost impossible not to overstay one’s welcome. But she works in a bare studio, close by, away from the telephone and too friendly visitors. Every morning she sits down at the typewriter and works—and most afternoons. No writer produces good work without wearying effort, long hours of concentration, and at times great discouragement. What Miss Ferber wears while she works, whether dress, sweater, or smock, I do not know, for she does not do her writing in public as a prize fighter trains for a battle. Her battles are fought out alone.