[1]
[Footnote 1: See _Infra_, p. 304.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Practice signatures of the name of Alice
Kauser.]
Mabel Parker's early history is shrouded in a certain amount of
obscurity, but there is reason to believe that she was the offspring of
respectable laboring people who turned her over, while she was still an
infant, to a Mr. and Mrs. Prentice, instructors in physical culture in
the public schools, first of St. Louis and later of St. Paul, Minnesota.
As a child, and afterwards as a young girl, she exhibited great
precocity and a considerable amount of real ability in drawing and in
English composition, but her very cleverness and versatility were the
means of her becoming much more sophisticated than most young women of
her age, with the result that while still in her teens she gave her
adopted parents ground for considerable uneasiness. Accordingly they
decided to place her for the next few years in a convent near New York.
By this time she had attained a high degree of proficiency in writing
short stories and miscellaneous articles, which she illustrated herself,
for the papers and inferior magazines.
Pages:
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31