"
During the past ten years thousands of people have sent the author
word that through her books they have been led afield and to their
first realization of the beauties of nature her mail brings an
average of ten such letters a day, mostly from students, teachers,
and professional people of our largest cities. It can probably be
said in all truth of her nature books and nature novels, that in
the past ten years they have sent more people afield than all the
scientific writings of the same period. That is a big statement,
but it is very likely pretty close to the truth. Mrs. Porter has
been asked by two London and one Edinburgh publishers for the
privilege of bringing out complete sets of her nature books, but as
yet she has not felt ready to do this.
In bringing this sketch of Gene Stratton-Porter to a close it will
be interesting to quote the author's own words describing the
Limberlost Swamp, its gradual disappearance under the encroachments
of business, and her removal to a new field even richer in natural
beauties. She says: "In the beginning of the end a great swamp
region lay in northeastern Indiana. Its head was in what is now
Noble and DeKalb counties; its body in Allen and Wells, and its
feet in southern Adams and northern Jay The Limberlost lies at the
foot and was, when I settled near it, ~exactly as described in my
books. The process of dismantling it was told in, Freckles, to
start with, carried on in `A Girl of the Limberlost,' and finished
in `Moths of the Limberlost.
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