We may not judge of her literary work as of a finished product. It is rather like a sculptor's dream that is but half realized. Lips are parted as if for speech, eyes look wistfully towards the East; but the figure is still restrained in its marble prison, and we wonder why the sculptor was stricken, the task unfinished. But this unfinished work was fraught with rich promise. She probably wrote the first story of any writer that belongs to the distinctively Southern school. She wrote before '77 some of "The Gran'mammy Stories," and these seem to be the first negro dialect stories published in a Northern journal, and thus speaking to the whole country. She wrote in '78 "Like unto Like," a story that has to do with the reconstruction period. Into this field Cable came later, and Page selected it as a fitting period in which to locate his most ambitious work, "Red Rock." Only one writer before her had attempted to work this virgin soil, Baker in "Colonel Dunwoddie, Millionaire." In this book she refers to the "Tar Baby Story," which she published several years later in _Harper's Monthly_. She wrote some excellent dialect stories of the Tennessee mountains, thus doing pioneer work in a field which Miss Murfree has made so peculiarly her own. She spent some time beginning in 1880, in that portion of Illinois known as Egypt; and "On the Nine-Mile," and "Sister Weeden's Prayer" illuminate this dark world. These stories and a number of others were written in the dialect peculiar to this region. Of "Sister Weeden's Prayer" in the "new" dialect _The Nation_ spoke in most complimentary terms. She seems to have been the first to give to the vernacular of this region literary treatment, thus doing for Illinois what Eggleston and Riley have done for Indiana. Her principal writings may be grouped as follows: Early pieces, '64-'73;--Letters from Boston and Europe, '74-'76;--Short Stories published in periodicals between '73 and '83; a number of these were collected after the death of the author and reprinted in a volume entitled "Suwanee River Tales"[1] (There are many excellent sketches in this little book, but the best are those in which Gran'mammy figures); to this period of her life belong "Miss Willard's Two Rings,"[2] and "From '60 to '65"[3];--"Like unto Like,"[4] a novel, "The Valcours,"[5] a novelette, "The Revolution in the Life of Mr. Balingall,"[6] "Two Storms,"[7] "A Volcanic Interlude,"[8] appeared between '78 and '83. She wrote during these years besides, a number of dialect stories dealing with negro character, the mountaineers of East Tennessee, and the denizens of the Western prairie. "Hieronymus Pop and the Baby," "The Case of Eliza Blelock" and "Lame Jerry" are all strong sketches. Some of these stories have appeared in book form.[9]