The first thing many
critics said of it was that "no such people ever existed, and no
such life was ever lived." In reply to this the author said: "Of a
truth, the home I described in this book I knew to the last grain
of wood in the doors, and I painted, it with absolute accuracy; and
many of the people I described I knew more intimately than I ever
have known any others. ~Taken as a whole it represents a perfectly
faithful picture of home life, in a family who were reared and
educated exactly as this book indicates. There was such a man as
Laddie, and he was as much bigger and better than my description of
him as a real thing is always better than its presentment. The only
difference, barring the nature work, between my books and those of
many other writers, is that I prefer to describe and to perpetuate
the ~best I have known in life; whereas many authors seem to feel
that they have no hope of achieving a high literary standing unless
they delve in and reproduce the ~worst.
"To deny that wrong and pitiful things exist in life is folly, but
to believe that these things are made better by promiscuous
discussion at the hands of writers who ~fail to prove by their
books that their viewpoint is either right, clean, or helpful, is
close to insanity. If there is to be any error on either side in a
book, then God knows it is far better that it should be upon the
side of pure sentiment and high ideals than upon that of a too
loose discussion of subjects which often open to a large part of
the world their first knowledge of such forms of sin, profligate
expenditure, and waste of life's best opportunities.
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