child. The book does not change, and, whatever it fortunes, it remains
to the end what its author made it. The son is an evolution out of a
long line of ancestry, and one's responsibility of this or that trait
is often very slight; but the book is an actual transcript of his
mind, and is wise or foolish according as he made it so. Hence I trust
my reader will pardon me if I shrink from any discussion of the merits
or demerits of these intellectual children of mine, or indulge in any
very confidential remarks with regard to them.

I cannot bring myself to think of my books as "works," because so
little "work" has gone to the making of them. It has all been play. I
have gone a-fishing, or camping, or canoeing, and new literary
material has been the result. My corn has grown while I loitered or
slept. The writing of the book was only a second and finer enjoyment
of my holiday in the fields or woods. Not till the writing did it
really seem to strike in and become part of me.

A friend of mine, now an old man, who spent his youth in the woods of
northern Ohio, and who has written many books, says, "I never thought
of writing a book, till my self-exile, and then only to reproduce my
old-time life to myself." The writing probably cured or alleviated a
sort of homesickness. Such is a great measure has been my own case. My
first book, "Wake-Robin," was written while I was a government clerk
in Washington. It enabled me to live over again the days I had passed
with the birds and in the scenes of my youth. I wrote the book sitting
at a desk in front of an iron wall. I was the keeper of a vault in
which many millions of bank-notes were stored. During my long periods
of leisure I took refuge in my pen. How my mind reacted from the iron
wall in front of me, and sought solace in memories of the birds and of
summer fields and woods! Most of the chapters of "Winter Sunshine"