_All of Mrs. Burnham’s books are published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston._
It is the commendable but not always fruitful practice of the publishing house of Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, to send to all its authors a folder calling for such particulars of their lives as may properly be matter of interest to the general public. In 1914 or thereabouts one of these fact requisitions went to the author Demetra Vaka, otherwise Mrs. Kenneth Brown. In due time it came back to Boston bearing the following data, inscribed in a feminine hand that no school-master could conscientiously praise:
_Residence & address_: Green Lane Cottage, Mount Kisco, New York.
_Place of birth_: Island of Bouyouk Ada, Sea of Marmora.
_Education, when and where received, in detail_: First privately. Then at Athens Private School. Paris. Various convents. Courses at Sorbonne. One year University of Athens. One year University of New York. Various schools in Constantinople, too many to remember, using schools as frivolous women use garments--throwing away when not becoming.
_Military, political and civic record_: No records whatever except of bad temper.
_Director or trustee of the following educational or public institutions_: Never offered any, except the self-assumed one of bringing up my husband.
_Politics_: For the best man who is on the ticket.
_Religious denomination_: Orthodox Greek.
_Professional associations, learned and technical societies, decorations, etc._: None.
_Member of the following philanthropic or charitable institutions (if holder of any office, so state)_: Have not any money to spare.
_Social clubs_: Have not sufficient money except for golf and tennis clubs of wherever I happen to be, which if all counted will require more room than you allow me, as we roam all over the earth.
_Business or professional record_: On the editorial staff of Greek newspaper _Atlantis_ for about six months in New York City. French teacher at the Comstock School, N. Y. C., for several years up to 1903. Writer since 1904.
_Office or position occupied by you_: Wife.
_Title of (first) book_: First Secretary.
_Publisher_: W. B. Dodge & Co. (extinct).
This amusing cross-examination needs to be supplemented at several points and the reader will be somewhat more enlightened by what follows.