Among Mrs. Porter's readers "At the Foot of the Rainbow" stands as
perhaps the author's strongest piece of fiction.
In August of 1909 two books on which the author had been working
for years culminated at the same time: a nature novel, and a
straight nature book. The novel was, in a way, a continuation of
"Freckles," filled as usual with wood lore, but more concerned with
moths than birds. Mrs. Porter had been finding and picturing
exquisite big night flyers during several years of field work among
the birds, and from what she could have readily done with them she
saw how it would be possible for a girl rightly constituted and
environed to make a living, and a good one, at such work. So was
conceived "A Girl of the Limberlost." "This comes fairly close to
my idea of a good book," she writes. "No possible harm can be done
any one in reading it. The book can, and does, present a hundred
pictures that will draw any reader in closer touch with nature and
the Almighty, my primal object in each line I write. The human side
of the book is as close a character study as I am capable of
making. I regard the character of Mrs. Comstock as the best
thought-out and the cleanest-cut study of human nature I have so
far been able to do. Perhaps the best justification of my idea of
this book came to me recently when I received an application from
the President for permission to translate it into Arabic, as the
first book to be used in an effort to introduce our methods of
nature study into the College of Cairo.
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