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Esther McCoy
2434 Beverly Avenue
Santa Monica, California

[[underlined]] My Life in the Arts [[/underlined]]

When you leave college and go to work it seems as if you learn more in the first four months than in the entire four years. Take myself. I went to New York to be a writer. When I arrived at the station I took a bus to various neighborhoods to see where I wanted to live.

Gramercy Park looked good, so I picked out the house I liked best, walked up the brownstone steps and rang a bell. The woman who buzzed me into her apartment was astonished at my request. Then looking over my campus clothes she began to smile.

"Why did you come to me?" she asked, and at my reply that I liked the park, and liked her house best of all, she threw back her head and laughed. Then she asked me what I wanted to do in New York -- "Write?"

Now [[underlined]] I [[/underlined]] was astonished. [[underlined]] How [[/underlined]] could she have known? "But first I'll get a job at Brentano^[[']]s selling books, then work for book and magazine publishers for a while."

Her decision to give me a room amused her; her husband was out of town so why not? "As for the rent, I have no idea. How is ten dollars a week?"