“I have had some years of that passion for reform. I was president of a civic association here, then chairman of the State Federation’s civic work, then of the national civic work of the General Federation of Woman’s Clubs, and on the board of the American Civic association. I have resigned from everything in favor of the new democracy.... My only executive connection with any organization is with the board of the American Union Against Militarism. I have been a believer in equal suffrage since before it was respectable to believe. My paramount taste is for poetry. At the moment my chief admiration is for Russia. My deepest interest is to find those who feel something of the fundamental truth underlying all religion. And my recreation is talk with those who believe with passion in the new industrial and social and spiritual To-morrow.
Characteristically, Miss Gale says nothing, in her reply to a request for information about herself, concerning her novel, _Birth_, the book which has not only made absolutely necessary her inclusion in any record of American women novelists, but has placed her in the front rank. For however we may array the women writers of the United States, no one who has read _Birth_ is likely to deny that it possesses some of the attributes of greatness and literary permanence or that it has “its share of the qualities which lift writing out of time.”
Pressed to say what is in her heart, Miss Gale will tell you that, “as a matter of fact, _Birth_ is really my first novel. Since the most fantastic book with which I began, I have never done anything of novel length. All my other books have been short stories threaded together, save three stories of 30,000 words published separately, in no sense novels. After writing ten books, this book is really my first try at a novel.... It is embarrassing to be caught looking in a mirror--or saying one’s own name aloud over the telephone. But to try to do both, in print, seems to underscore all one’s lacks.” A very modest person, you see. The author of this book is aware of a certain injustice arising from his inclusion of a number of letters. The risk is clear. He begs to say, here and now, that he assumes that risk; and he had rather take the chance that readers may suspect some of his subjects of self-consciousness than encounter the certainty that they will think these authors hardly human--names on title-pages merely.