photographing Colonel Lupton beside my dining-room fireplace for
the father in the story. At eleven I was dressing and posing Miss

Lizzie Huart for the princess. At twelve I was picturing in one
of my bed rooms a child who served finely for Little Sister, and

an hour later the same child in a cemetery three miles in the
country where I used mounted butterflies from my cases, and

potted plants carried from my conservatory, for a graveyard
scene. The time was early November, but God granted sunshine that

day, and short focus blurred the background. At four o'clock I
was at the schoolhouse, and in the best-lighted room with five or

six models, I was working on the spelling bee scenes. By six I
was in the darkroom developing and drying these plates, every one

of which was good enough to use. I did my best work with
printing-out paper, but I was compelled to use a developing

paper in this extremity, because it could be worked with much
more speed, dried a little between blotters, and mounted. At

three o'clock in the morning I was typing the quotations for the
pictures, at four the parcel stood in the hall for the six

o'clock train, and I realized that I wanted a drink, food, and
sleep, for I had not stopped a second for anything from the time

of reading Mr. Maxwell's letter until his order was ready to
mail. For the following ten years I was equallyprompt in doing

all work I undertook, whether pictures or manuscript, without a
thought of consideration for self; and I disappointed the

confident expectations of my nearest and dearest by remaining
sane, normal, and almost without exception the healthiest woman

they knew."
This story and its pictures were much praised, and in the

following year the author was asked for several stories, and even
used bird pictures and natural history sketches, quite an

innovation for a magazine at that time. With this encouragement
she wrote and illustrated a short story of about ten thousand

words, and sent it to the Century. Richard Watson Gilder advised
Mrs. Porter to enlarge it to book size, which she did. This book

is "The Cardinal." Following Mr. Gilder's advice, she recast the
tale and, starting with the mangled body of a cardinal some

marksman had left in the road she was travelling, in a fervour of
love for the birds and indignation at the hunter, she told the

Cardinal's life history in these pages.
The story was promptly accepted and the book was published with

very beautiful half-tones, and cardinal buckram cover.
Incidentally, neither the author's husband nor daughter had the

slightest idea she was attempting to write a book until work had
progressed to that stage where she could not make a legal

contract without her husband's signature. During the ten years of
its life this book has gone through eight different editions,

varying in form and make-up from the birds in exquisite colour,
as colour work advanced and became feasible, to a binding of

beautiful red morocco, a number of editions of differing design
intervening. One was tried in gray binding, the colour of the

female cardinal, with the red male used as an inset. Another was
woodsgreen with the red male, and another red with a wild rose

design stamped in. There is a British edition published by Hodder
and Stoughton. All of these had the author's own illustrations

which authorities agree are the most complete studies of the home
life and relations of a pair of birds ever published.

The story of these illustrations in "The Cardinal" and how the
author got them will be a revelation to most readers. Mrs. Porter

set out to make this the most complete set of bird illustrations
ever secured, in an effort to awaken people to the wonder and

beauty and value of the birds. She had worked around half a dozen
nests for two years and had carried a lemon tree from her

conservatory to the location of one nest, buried the tub, and
introduced the branches among those the birds used in

approaching their home that she might secure proper illustrations
for the opening chapter, which was placed in the South. When the

complete bird series was finished, the difficult work over, and
there remained only a few characteristic Wabash River studies of

flowers, vines, and bushes for chapter tail pieces to be secured,
the author "met her Jonah," and her escape was little short of a

miracle.
After a particularly strenuous spring afield, one teeming day in

early August she spent the morning in the river bottom beside the
Wabash. A heavy rain followed by August sun soon had her dripping

while she made several studies of wild morning glories, but she
was particularly careful to wrap up and drive slowly going home,

so that she would not chill. In the afternoon the author went to
the river northeast of town to secure mallow pictures for another

chapter, and after working in burning sun on the river bank until
exhausted, she several times waded the river to examine bushes on

the opposite bank. On the way home she had a severe chill, and
for the following three weeks lay twisted in the convulsions of

congestion, insensible most of the time. Skilled doctors and
nurses did their best, which they admitted would have availed

nothing if the patient had not had a constitution without a flaw
upon which to work.

"This is the history," said Mrs. Porter, "of one little tail
piece among the pictures. There were about thirty others, none so

strenuous, but none easy, each having a living, fighting history
for me. If I were to give in detail the story of the two years'

work required to secure the set of bird studies illustrating `The
Cardinal,' it would make a much larger book than the life of the

bird."
"The Cardinal" was published in June of 1903. On the 20th of

October, 1904, "Freckles" appeared. Mrs. Porter had been delving
afield with all her heart and strength for several years, and in

the course of her work had spent every other day for three months
in the Limberlost swamp, making a series of studies of the nest

of a black vulture. Early in her married life she had met a
Scotch lumberman, who told her of the swamp and of securing fine

timber there for Canadian shipbuilders, and later when she had
moved to within less than a mile of its northern boundary, she

met a man who was buying curly maple, black walnut, golden oak,
wild cherry, and other wood extremelyvaluable for a big

furniture factory in Grand Rapids. There was one particular
woman, of all those the author worked among, who exercised

herself most concerning her. She never failed to come out if she
saw her driving down the lane to the woods, and caution her to be

careful. If she felt that Mrs. Porter had become interested and
forgotten that it was long past meal time, she would send out

food and water or buttermilk to refresh her. She had her family
posted, and if any of them saw a bird with a straw or a hair in

its beak, they followed until they found its location. It was her
husband who drove the stake and ploughed around the killdeer nest

in the cornfield to save it for the author; and he did many other
acts of kindness without understanding exactly what he was doing

or why. "Merely that I wanted certain things was enough for those
people," writes Mrs. Porter. "Without question they helped me in

every way their big hearts could suggest to them, because they
loved to be kind, and to be generous was natural with them. The

woman was busy keeping house and mothering a big brood, and
every living creature that came her way, besides. She took me in,

and I put her soul, body, red head, and all, into Sarah Duncan.
The lumber and furniture man I combined in McLean. Freckles was a

composite of certain ideals and my own field experiences, merged
with those of Mr. Bob Burdette Black, who, at the expense of much

time and careful work, had done more for me than any other ten
men afield. The Angel was an idealized picture of my daughter.

"I dedicated the book to my husband, Mr. Charles Darwin Porter,
for several reasons, the chiefest being that he deserved it. When

word was brought me by lumbermen of the nest of the Black Vulture