But the book _Bambi_ is another matter and precisely what the difference consists in we have tried to show. Let us illustrate it anew. _Bambi_ is imagined autobiography. Instead of creating Bambi and letting her go her way Miss Cooke conducted herself through the story. Or, if you want to put it in another way, you may say that she created Bambi and endowed her with certain of her own traits--gayety, courage, tenderness, wit, a love of drama--and then let her go her way. It is because of the intimate personal quality of her heroine that Miss Cooke dedicated her book “To Bambi, with thanks to her for being Herself! M. B. C.” The book is a marvel--an absolute marvel. It sold heavily and promptly, that was to be expected; but the marvel consists not in the book’s popularity but in the extraordinary enthusiasm it stirred in its readers. Since no one who has read it seems to be able to avoid the use of superlatives in speaking of it--certainly this writer isn’t--it might be best to put aside any attempt at characterization. What follows shall be--analysis! The first chapter takes the reader off his feet. Bambi, loving the dreamer Jarvis though perhaps not very consciously loving him, sends for a minister and has herself wedded to him, despite the absent-minded objections of her father, the professor of mathematics. Jarvis needs looking after. This perfectly implausible proceeding is made entirely plausible--you swallow it whole and with immense relish--by just two technical triumphs on Miss Cooke’s part. 1. Everything is in dialogue. You are not asked to believe that the Professor is one kind of a person, Bambi another, and Jarvis a third, and all three eminently unlikely; you see them do this and that and you hear them say so and so. Miss Cooke doesn’t ask you to believe _her_, she asks you to believe your senses! 2. The dialogue is witty--the wittiest--but there we go off on superlatives again. The dialogue is witty but natural in the completest sense of the word and the wit springs entirely from the situation. No other wit is so good, as any dramatist will tell you. These two things are the key to the whole story and the key to the utter amazement which overcomes the reader when he applies the test of probability to it--after he has read it through. Of course the wonder of that first chapter could not be entirely sustained through 366 pages, but by the time Miss Cooke’s capital starting situation has lost its sharpest edge the plot has reared its head! Oh, yes, there’s a plot; all such a story as _Bambi_ will stand; a plot with adequate suspense and a steady sweep toward a dénouement. For in a tale like _Bambi_ you must not have too much plot; the chief interest is ever in the charming and lovable heroine.