I WROTE THE BOOK AS I THOUGHT IT SHOULD BE WRITTEN, TO PROVE MY
POINTS AND ESTABLISH MY CONTENTIONS. I THINK IT DID. MEN THE

GLOBE AROUND PROMPTLY WROTE ME THAT THEY ALWAYS HAD OBSERVED THE
MORAL CODE; OTHERS THAT THE SUBJECT NEVER IN ALL THEIR LIVES HAD

BEEN PRESENTED TO THEM FROM MY POINT OF VIEW, BUT NOW THAT IT HAD
BEEN, THEY WOULD CHANGE AND DO WHAT THEY COULD TO INFLUENCE ALL

MEN TO DO THE SAME"
Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton publish a British edition of "The

Harvester," there is an edition in Scandinavian, it was running
serially in a German magazine, but for a time at least the German

and French editions that were arranged will be stopped by this
war, as there was a French edition of "The Song of the Cardinal."

After a short rest, the author began putting into shape a book
for which she had been compiling material since the beginning of

field work. From the first study she made of an exquisite big
night moth, Mrs. Porter used every opportunity to secure more and

representative studies of each family in her territory, and
eventually found the work so fascinating that she began hunting

cocoons and raising caterpillars in order to secure life
histories and make illustrations with fidelity to life. "It

seems," comments the author, "that scientists and lepidopterists
from the beginning have had no hesitation in describing and using

mounted moth and butterflyspecimens for book text and
illustration, despite the fact that their colours fade rapidly,

that the wings are always in unnatural positions, and the bodies
shrivelled. I would quite as soon accept the mummy of any

particular member of the Rameses family as a fair representation
of the living man, as a mounted moth for a live one."

When she failed to secure the moth she wanted in a living and
perfect specimen for her studies, the author set out to raise

one, making photographic studies from the eggs through the entire
life process. There was one June during which she scarcely slept

for more than a few hours of daytime the entire month. She turned
her bedroom into a hatchery, where were stored the most precious

cocoons; and if she lay down at night it was with those she
thought would produce moths before morning on her pillow, where

she could not fail to hear them emerging. At the first sound she
would be up with notebook in hand, and by dawn, busy with

cameras. Then she would be forced to hurry to the darkroom and
develop her plates in order to be sure that she had a perfect

likeness, before releasing the specimen, for she did release all
she produced except one pair of each kind, never having sold a

moth, personally. Often where the markings were wonderful and
complicated, as soon as the wings were fully developed Mrs.

Porter copied the living specimen in water colours for her
illustrations, frequently making several copies in order to be

sure that she laid on the colour enough BRIGHTER than her subject
so that when it died it would be exactly the same shade.

"Never in all my life," writes the author, "have I had such
exquisite joy in work as I had in painting the illustrations for

this volume of `Moths of the Limberlost.' Colour work had
advanced to such a stage that I knew from the beautiful

reproductions in Arthur Rackham's `Rheingold and Valkyrie' and
several other books on the market, that time so spent would not

be lost. Mr. Doubleday had assured me personally that I might
count on exact reproduction, and such details of type and paper

as I chose to select. I used the easel made for me when a girl,
under the supervision of my father, and I threw my whole heart

into the work of copying each line and delicate shading on those
wonderful wings, `all diamonded with panes of quaint device,

innumerable stains and splendid dyes,' as one poet describes
them. There were times, when in working a mist of colour over

another background, I cut a brush down to three hairs. Some of
these illustrations I sent back six and seven times, to be worked

over before the illustration plates were exact duplicates of the
originals, and my heart ached for the engravers, who must have

had Job-like patience; but it did not ache enough to stop me
until I felt the reproduction exact. This book tells its own

story of long and patient waiting for a specimen, of watching, of
disappointments, and triumphs. I love it especially among my

book children because it represents my highest ideals in the
making of a nature book, and I can take any skeptic afield and

prove the truth of the natural history it contains."
In August of 1913 the author's novel "Laddie" was published in

New York, London, Sydney and Toronto simultaneously. This book
contains the same mixture of romance and nature interest as the

others, and is modelled on the same plan of introducing nature
objects peculiar to the location, and characters, many of whom

are from life, typical of the locality at a given period. The
first thing many critics said of it was that "no such people ever

existed, and no such life was ever lived." In reply to this the
author said: "Of a truth, the home I described in this book I

knew to the last grain of wood in the doors, and I painted, it
with absoluteaccuracy; and many of the people I described I knew

more intimately than I ever have known any others. TAKEN AS A
WHOLE IT REPRESENTS A PERFECTLY FAITHFUL PICTURE OF HOME LIFE, IN

A FAMILY WHO WERE REARED AND EDUCATED EXACTLY AS THIS BOOK
INDICATES. There was such a man as Laddie, and he was as much

bigger and better than my description of him as a real thing is
always better than its presentment. The only difference, barring

the nature work, between my books and those of many other
writers, is that I prefer to describe and to perpetuate the BEST

I have known in life; whereas many authors seem to feel that
they have no hope of achieving a high literarystanding unless

they delve in and reproduce the WORST.
"To deny that wrong and pitiful things exist in life is folly,

but to believe that these things are made better by promiscuous
discussion at the hands of writers who FAIL TO PROVE BY THEIR

BOOKS that their viewpoint is either right, clean, or helpful, is
close to insanity. If there is to be any error on either side in

a book, then God knows it is far better that it should be upon
the side of pure sentiment and high ideals than upon that of a

too loose discussion of subjects which often open to a large part
of the world their first knowledge of such forms of sin,

profligate expenditure, and waste of life's best opportunities.
There is one great beauty in idealized romance: reading it can

make no one worse than he is, while it may help thousands to a
cleaner life and higher inspiration than they ever before have

known."
Mrs. Porter has written ten books, and it is not out of place

here to express her attitude toward them. Each was written, she
says, from her heart's best impulses. They are as clean and

helpful as she knew how to make them, as beautiful and
interesting. She has never spared herself in the least degree,

mind or body, when it came to giving her best, and she has never
considered money in relation to what she was writing.

During the hard work and exposure of those early years, during
rainy days and many nights in the darkroom, she went straight

ahead with field work, sending around the globe for books and
delving to secure material for such books as "Birds of the

Bible," "Music of the Wild," and "Moths of the Limberlost." Every
day devoted to such work was "commercially" lost, as publishers

did not fail to tell her. But that was the work she could do, and
do with exceeding joy. She could do it better pictorially, on

account of her lifelong knowledge of living things afield, than
any other woman had as yet had the strength and nerve to do it.

It was work in which she gloried, and she persisted. "Had I been
working for money," comments the author, "not one of these nature

books ever would have been written, or an illustration made."
When the public had discovered her and given generousapproval to

"A Girl of the Limberlost," when "The Harvester" had established
a new record, that would have been the time for the author to

prove her commercialism by dropping nature work, and plunging
headlong into books it would pay to write, and for which many

publishers were offeringalluring sums. Mrs. Porter's answer was