Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1891-12-03
STORY OF A POPULAR NOVEL,
How Recent Work of Fiction Came
To Be Written.

One of the most successful of recent
pieces of fiction-loved for its quaint, old
time pictures and its tender pathos-has
an inner history, known to few, observes
the Chicago Times. The story has
brought the writer into sudden fame.
This is how it came to be written:-Its
author, q clever young female newspaper
correspondent, secured board for her
summer vacation with u quaint old
Quakeress in the country, not far from
Springfield. The young lady and her
hostess soon became fast friends. Even
ing after evening they would sit together
upon the porch steps, and the old lady
would pour into the attentive ears of her
sympathetic listener the story of her own
hard life-an orphaned and comfortless
childhood; a girlhood of ceaseless work,
devoid of coveted "schooling;;" an early
and incompatible marriage; woman
hood full of the privations, struggles and
small economics of those who ''raised a
family" and "got a home" in the early
days; whole life filled with unsatsfed
craving for knowledge, power, apprecia-
ton! She had hungered for the bread of
intellectual companionship and had been
given the stone of solitary drudging and
pinching.
But the pride of life had not been
wholly crushed out of her. She had
clung to one dream. She has written q
book. Yes, the last word of the last
page had been finished the very day that
her guest had arrived. She should never
forget-so she told her young listener as
they sat together under the mottled
quivering shade of the thick -leaved
naples which the moonlight silhouetted
upon the doorsteps-the feelings" which
she chad" as she traced the word
'F-i-n-i-s" and put straight mark
each side of it, so:-
How long had she worked over it?
Ten long years. And now it was done!
How glorious it would look in print-her
own book.
81 hope you put much of the story of
your own life into it?" suggested the
young woman.
"Oh, my, mol" exclaimed the dear old
woman; mot bit of it. Nobody would
care to read that. It's all about a lost
heir and things like that"
The next summer the young lady came
out to the old farm-h house again-but not
for more moonlight visits with her quaint
old friend, whose white lips had been
bitten into silence by the frosts of DEATH
The dull, sad husband led the young
woman into the bedroom, and pointing to
large package of sheets tied together
with welting cord, and dozen loose let
ters which stood upon the bureau beside
the tumblers and medicine, said:
MARY wanted you to put them into
the coffin along with her when she was
laid out-wouldn't have no one else tech
EN-, nohow. can't understand it. Nor
| can't see why them there letters should
a made her just pine herself away into
the grave. But they did, though"
The young woman read one of the let
ters, or rather circulars, for they were
printed
1--WE regret that your manuscript is
not available for our use and herewith
return it, with thanks"
She had no need to read more of them,
but placed them and the rejected manu-
script beside the dead Then she re-
turned home, wrote the story of the hum
bic life which nobody would care to
read, and made q fame the hundredth
part of which would have given the dis
appointed life, which had just gone out
in darkness, Il glorious sunset.