“Marjorie and her doting parents,” as Mrs. Cooke once remarked, “thought fame and fortune were hers to command.” They weren’t. She traveled a long, hard road, writing scraps of humor and satire for newspapers and magazines, concocting little stories and selling them. She was fifteen years away from _Bambi_ when she started. But she had the gift for dramatic recitation with which she later endowed that young woman. In 1902 she began touring the United States as a monologist. Dozens of her monologues have been published but will not be found listed at the end of this chapter. Miss Cooke would be the last to expect them to be. They are interesting only as the preparation necessary to write _Bambi_, particularly that first chapter. Miss Cooke has always been interested in social questions, as any one who remembers Jarvis Jocelyn’s experiences in New York will understand. She is a member of the Little Room Club in Chicago, the Heterodoxy Club and the Women’s University Club in New York.
Her books, as distinguished from her printed monologue booklets, began in 1903 with _Modern Monologues_, continued in 1905 with _Dramatic Episodes_ and _Plays for Children_, marked time in 1907 with _More Modern Monologues_ and budded with a novel, her first novel, in 1910--_The Girl Who Lived in the Woods_. _Dr. David_ appeared in 1911; and there were _To a Mother_, _The Twelfth Christian_, a dramatic poem, and three one-act plays which were produced--all before _Bambi_.
_And_ Miss Cooke will play a Chopin ballade for you and talk to you with the same lightness, deftness, and fun that Bambi displays. She has forgotten more about the art of talking than the authors of all the conversation books ever knew. She is not obtrusive. The manuscript of her happiest book came to the publishers quite unheralded--just a manuscript in a cardboard box with a note from Miss Cooke saying she would like to have Doubleday, Page & Company consider it. Eugene F. Saxton began it one Sunday afternoon about 5 o’clock, intending to read until six, then go for a walk and have dinner uptown somewhere. He read till seven, looked at the clock, and--went on reading. You can eat any day, you know....
Later a telegram went forth: “_Bambi_ is ours. Love at first sight.”