enough to take a special interest in it and to bring it out with

greater expense than it was at all customary to put upon a novel
at that time; and this in face of the fact that they had

repeatedly warned me that the nature work in it would kill fully
half its chances with the public. Mr. F.N. Doubleday, starting on

a trip to the Bahamas, remarked that he would like to take a
manuscript with him to read, and the office force decided to put

`Freckles' into his grip. The story of the plucky young chap won
his way to the heart of the publishers, under a silk cotton tree,

'neath bright southern skies, and made such a friend of him that
through the years of its book-life it has been the object of

special attention. Mr. George Doran gave me a photograph which
Mr. Horace MacFarland made of Mr. Doubleday during this reading

of the Mss. of `Freckles' which is especially interesting."
That more than 2,000,000 readers have found pleasure and profit

in Mrs. Porter's books is a cause for particular gratification.
These stories all have, as a fundamental reason of their

existence, the author's great love of nature. To have imparted
this love to others--to have inspired many hundreds of thousands

to look for the first time with seeing eyes at the pageant of the
out-of-doors--is a satisfaction that must endure. For the part of

the publishers, they began their business by issuing "Nature
Books" at a time when the sale of such works was problematical.

As their tastes and inclinations were along the same lines which
Mrs. Porter loved to follow, it gave them great pleasure to be

associated with her books which opened the eyes of so great a
public to new and worthy fields of enjoyment.

The history of "Freckles" is unique. The publishers had inserted
marginal drawings on many pages, but these, instead of attracting

attention to the nature charm of the book, seemed to have exactly
a contrary effect. The public wanted a novel. The illustrations

made it appear to be a nature book, and it required three long
slow years for "Freckles" to pass from hand to hand and prove

that there really was a novel between the covers, but that it was
a story that took its own time and wound slowly toward its end,

stopping its leisurely course for bird, flower, lichen face, blue
sky, perfumed wind, and the closest intimacies of the daily life

of common folk. Ten years have wrought a great change in the
sentiment against nature work and the interest in it. Thousands

who then looked upon the world with unobserving eyes are now
straining every nerve to accumulate enough to be able to end life

where they may have bird, flower, and tree for daily companions.
Mrs. Porter's account of the advice she received at this time is

particularly interesting. Three editors who read "Freckles"
before it was published offered to produce it, but all of them

expressed precisely the same opinion: "The book will never sell
well as it is. If you want to live from the proceeds of your

work, if you want to sell even moderately, you must CUT OUT THE
NATURE STUFF." "Now to PUT IN THE NATURE STUFF," continues the

author, "was the express purpose for which the book had been
written. I had had one year's experience with `The Song of the

Cardinal,' frankly a nature book, and from the start I realized
that I never could reach the audience I wanted with a book on

nature alone. To spend time writing a book based wholly upon
human passion and its outworking I would not. So I compromised on

a book into which I put all the nature work that came naturally
within its scope, and seasoned it with little bits of imagination

and straight copy from the lives of men and women I had known
intimately, folk who lived in a simple, common way with which I

was familiar. So I said to my publishers: `I will write the books
exactly as they take shape in my mind. You publish them. I know

they will sell enough that you will not lose. If I do not make
over six hundred dollars on a book I shall never utter a

complaint. Make up my work as I think it should be and leave it
to the people as to what kind of book they will take into their

hearts and homes.' I altered `Freckles' slightly, but from that
time on we worked on this agreement.

"My years of nature work have not been without considerable
insight into human nature, as well," continues Mrs. Porter. "I

know its failings, its inborn tendencies, its weaknesses, its
failures, its depth of crime; and the people who feel called upon

to spend their time analyzing, digging into, and uncovering these
sources of depravity have that privilege, more's the pity! If I

had my way about it, this is a privilege no one could have in
books intended for indiscriminate circulation. I stand squarely

for book censorship, and I firmly believe that with a few more
years of such books, as half a dozen I could mention, public

opinion will demand this very thing. My life has been fortunate
in one glad way: I have lived mostly in the country and worked in

the woods. For every bad man and woman I have ever known, I have
met, lived with, and am intimately acquainted with an

overwhelming number of thoroughly clean and decent people who
still believe in God and cherish high ideals, and it is UPON THE

LIVES OF THESE THAT I BASE WHAT I WRITE. To contend that this
does not produce a picture true to life is idiocy. It does. It

produces a picture true to ideal life; to the best that good men
and good women can do at level best.

"I care very little for the magazine or newspaper critics who
proclaim that there is no such thing as a moral man, and that my

pictures of life are sentimental and idealized. They are! And I
glory in them! They are straight, living pictures from the lives

of men and women of morals, honour, and loving kindness. They
form `idealized pictures of life' because they are copies from

life where it touches religion, chastity, love, home, and hope of
heaven ultimately. None of these roads leads to publicity and the

divorce court. They all end in the shelter and seclusion of a
home.

"Such a big majority of book critics and authors have begun to
teach, whether they really believe it or not, that no book is

TRUE TO LIFE unless it is true to the WORST IN LIFE, that the
idea has infected even the women."

In 1906, having seen a few of Mrs. Porter's studies of bird life,
Mr. Edward Bok telegraphed the author asking to meet him in

Chicago. She had a big portfolio of fine prints from plates for
which she had gone to the last extremity of painstaking care, and

the result was an order from Mr. Bok for a six months' series in
the Ladies' Home Journal of the author's best bird studies

accompanied by descriptions of how she secured them. This
material was later put in book form under the title, "What I Have

Done with Birds," and is regarded as authoritative on the subject
of bird photography and bird life, for in truth it covers every

phase of the life of the birds described, and contains much of
other nature subjects.

By this time Mrs. Porter had made a contract with her publishers
to alternate her books. She agreed to do a nature book for love,

and then, by way of compromise, a piece of nature work spiced
with enough fiction to tempt her class of readers. In this way

she hoped that they would absorb enough of the nature work while
reading the fiction to send them afield, and at the same time

keep in their minds her picture of what she considers the only
life worth living. She was still assured that only a straight

novel would "pay," but she was living, meeting all her expenses,
giving her family many luxuries, and saving a little sum for a

rainy day she foresaw on her horoscope. To be comfortably
clothed and fed, to have time and tools for her work, is all she

ever has asked of life.
Among Mrs. Porter's readers "At the Foot of the Rainbow" stands