novels were the fruits of this youthful ardour. Through the
sickness and death of a sister, the author missed the last three
months of school, but, she remarks, "unlike my schoolmates, I
studied harder after leaving school than ever before and in a
manner that did me real good. The most that can be said of what
education I have is that it is the very best kind in the world
for me; the only possible kind that would not ruin a person of my
inclinations. The others of my family had been to college; I
always have been too thankful for words that circumstances
intervened which saved my brain from being run through a groove
in company with dozens of others of widely different tastes and
mentality. What small measure of success I have had has come
through preserving my individual point of view, method of
expression, and following in after life the Spartan regulations
of my girlhood home. Whatever I have been able to do, has been
done through the line of education my father saw fit to give me,
and through his and my mother's methods of rearing me.

"My mother went out too soon to know, and my father never saw one
of the books; but he knew I was boiling and bubbling like a yeast
jar in July over some literary work, and if I timidly slipped to
him with a composition, or a faulty poem, he saw good in it, and
made suggestions for its betterment. When I wanted to express
something in colour, he went to an artist, sketched a design for
an easel, personally superintended the carpenter who built it,
and provided tuition. On that same easel I painted the water
colours for `Moths of the Limberlost,' and one of the most
poignant regrets of my life is that he was not there to see them,
and to know that the easel which he built through his faith in me
was finally used in illustrating a book.