ion 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 generous approval 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 offering
alluring sums. Mrs. Porter's answer was the issuing of such books as
"Music of the Wild" and "Moths of the Limberlost." No argument is
necessary. Mr. Edward Shuman, formerly critic of the Chicago
Record-Herald, was impressed by this method of work and pointed it out
in a review. It appealed to Mr. Shuman, when "Moths of the Limberlost"
came in for review, following the tremendous success of "The
Harvester," that had the author been working for money, she could have
written half a dozen more "Harvesters" while putting seven years of
field work, on a scientific subject, into a personally illustrated work.

In an interesting passage dealing with her books, Mrs. Porter writes:
"I have done three times the work on my books of fiction that I see
other writers putting into a novel, in order to make all natural
history allusions accurate and to write them in such fashion that they
will meet with the commendation of high schools, colleges, and
universities using what I write as text books, and for the homes that
place them in their libraries. I am perfectly willing to let time and
the hearts of the people set my work in its ultimate place. I have no
delusions concerning it.

"To my way of thinking and working the greatest service a piece of
fiction c