The idea of "The Harvester" was suggested to the author by an editor who wanted a magazine article, with human interest in it, about the ginseng diggers in her part of the country. Mr. Porter had bought ginseng for years for a drug store he owned; there were several people he knew still gathering it for market, and growing it was becoming a good business all over the country. Mrs. Porter learned from the United States Pharmacopaeia and from various other sources that the drug was used mostly by the Chinese, and with a wholly mistaken idea of its properties. The strongest thing any medical work will say for ginseng is that it is "A VERY MILD AND SOOTHING DRUG." It seems that the Chinese buy and use it in enormous quantities, in the belief that it is a remedy for almost every disease to which humanity is heir; that it will prolong life, and that it is a wonderful stimulant. Ancient medical works make this statement, laying special emphasis upon its stimulating qualities. The drug does none of these things. Instead of being a stimulant, it comes closer to a sedative. This investigation set the author on the search for other herbs that now are or might be grown as an occupation. Then came the idea of a man who should grow these drugs professionally, and of the sick girl healed by them. "I could have gone to work and started a drug farm myself," remarks Mrs. Porter, "with exactly the same profit and success as the Harvester. I wrote primarily to state that to my personal knowledge, clean, loving men still exist in this world, and that no man is forced to endure the grind of city life if he wills otherwise. Any one who likes, with even such simple means as herbs he can dig from fence corners, may start a drug farm that in a short time will yield him delightful work and independence. I WROTE THE BOOK AS I THOUGHT IT SHOULD BE WRITTEN, TO PROVE MY POINTS AND ESTABLISH MY CONTENTIONS. I THINK IT DID. MEN THE GLOBE AROUND PROMPTLY WROTE ME THAT THEY ALWAYS HAD OBSERVED THE MORAL CODE; OTHERS THAT THE SUBJECT NEVER IN ALL THEIR LIVES HAD BEEN PRESENTED TO THEM FROM MY POINT OF VIEW, BUT NOW THAT IT HAD BEEN, THEY WOULD CHANGE AND DO WHAT THEY COULD TO INFLUENCE ALL MEN TO DO THE SAME." Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton publish a British edition of "The Harvester," there is an edition in Scandinavian, it was running serially in a German magazine, but for a time at least the German and French editions that were arranged will be stopped by this war, as there was a French edition of "The Song of the Cardinal."