_Ramona_ is a bombshell that all unknowingly to its creator turned out to be not a bombshell at all, but an exquisite work of art. The intensity and the passion, which came from the viewing of abuses and the desire to work reform, wove themselves into the very substance of it. It is a blending of realism and romanticism and ethic earnestness into a rounded romance. More and more is it evident that aside from this and perhaps two or three sonnets, nothing else that its author wrote is of permanent value. _Ramona_, however, is alone enough to give her a place in American literature, a place indeed with the two or three best writers of American romance. III The French occupation of the northern area of the continent has also proved a rich literary field. It seems, as Howells has observed, that the French have touched America "with romance wherever they have touched it at all as soldiers, priests, exiles, or mere adventurers." The bare history of their adventures is, as Parkman has recorded it, romance. Cooper caught a glimpse of the richness of the field, and a grand-niece of his, Constance Fenimore Woolson, made a new discovery of it during the "local color" period that followed the advent of Bret Harte. Her collection of stories, _Castle Nowhere_, 1875, pictured with graphic realism the life of the rude settlements along the upper lakes, but once or twice she dipped her pen into pure romance and became a pioneer. Her sketch, "The Old Agency," which deals with the ancient building at Mackinac with its memories of the Jesuits, and her strong story "St. Clair Flats" reveal what she might have done had she not turned her attention to other regions.