tain 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 in the
Limberlost, I hastened to tell my husband the wonderful story of the
big black bird, the downy white baby, the pale blue egg, and to beg
back a rashly made promise not to work in the Limberlost. Being a
natural history enthusiast himself, he agreed that I must go; but he
qualified the assent with the proviso that no one less careful of me
than he, might accompany me there. His business had forced him to allow
me to work alone, with hired guides or the help of oilmen and farmers
elsewhere; but a Limberlost trip at that time was not to be joked
about. It had not been shorn, branded, and tamed. There were most
excellent reasons why I should not go there. Much of it was
impenetrable. Only a few trees had been taken out; oilmen were just
invading it. In its physical aspect it was a treacherous swamp and
quagmire filled with every plant, animal, and human danger known in the
worst of such locations in the Central States.

"A rod inside the swamp on a road leading to an oil well we mired to
the carriage hubs. I shielded my camera in my arms and before we
reached the well I thought the conveyance would be torn to pieces and
the horse stalled. At the well we started on foot, Mr. Porter in
kneeboots, I in waist-high waders. The time was late June; we forced
our way between steaming, fetid pools, through swarms of gnats, flies,
mosquitoes, poisonous insects, keeping a sharp watch for rattlesnakes.
We sank ankle deep at every step, and logs we thought solid broke under
us. Our progress was a steady successi