act condition in which I knew it as a child, and finish my
life there. I found that the house had been burned, killing all the big
trees set by my mother's hands immediately surrounding it. The hills
were shorn and ploughed down, filling and obliterating the creeks and
springs. Most of the forest had been cut, and stood in corn. My old
catalpa in the fence corner beside the road and the Bartlett pear under
which I had my wild-flower garden were all that was left of the
dooryard, while a few gnarled apple trees remained of the orchard,
which had been reset in another place. The garden had been moved, also
the lanes; the one creek remaining out of three crossed the meadow at
the foot of the orchard. It flowed a sickly current over a dredged bed
between bare, straight banks. The whole place seemed worse than a
dilapidated graveyard to me. All my love and ten times the money I had
at command never could have put back the face of nature as I knew it on
that land."

As a child the author had very few books, only three of her own outside
of school books. "The markets did not afford the miracles common with
the children of today," she adds. "Books are now so numerous, so cheap,
and so bewildering in colour and make-up, that I sometimes think our
children are losing their perspective and caring for none of them as I
loved my few plain little ones filled with short story and poem, almost
no illustration. I had a treasure house in the school books of my
elders, especially the McGuffey series of Readers from One to Six. For
pictures I was driven to the Bible, dictionary, historical works read
by my father, agricultural papers, and medical books about cattle and
sheep.

"Near the time of my mother's passing we moved from Hopewell to the
city of Wabash in order that she might have constant medical attention,
and the younger children better opportunities for schooling. Here we
had magazines and more books in which I was interested. The one volume
in which my heart was enwrapt was a collection of masterpieces of
fiction belonging to my eldest sister. It contained 'Paul and
Virginia,' 'Undine,' 'Picciola,' 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Pilgrim's
Progress,' and several others I soon learned by heart, and the reading
and rereading of those exquisitely expressed and conceived stories may
have done much in forming high conceptions of what really constitutes
literature and in furthering the lofty ideals instilled by my parents.
One of these s