Who can laugh at my Marsh Rosemary, or who can cry, for that matter? The gray primness of the plant is made up from a hundred colors if you look close enough to find them. This Marsh Rosemary stands in her own place, and holds her dry leaves and tiny blossoms steadily toward the same sun that the pink lotus blooms for, and the white rose. The stories chosen for these two volumes vary little in quality, though one may have one’s favorites among them. Personally, I like “The Flight of Betsey Lane” better than “The Hiltons’ Holiday,” though the latter story was especially dear to Miss Jewett herself. I think I know why; that story simply _is the look_—shy, kind, a little wistful—that shines out at one from good country faces on remote farms; it is the look _itself_—and therefore is a little miracle. To have got it down upon the printed page is like bringing the tenderest of early spring flowers from the deep wood into the hot light of summer noon without bruising its petals. The story “William’s Wedding” at the end of the “Pointed Fir” volume was uncompleted at the time of Miss Jewett’s death, and while all the essentials of the picture are there, the writing is in places a little vague, lacks the last coördinating touch of the writer’s hand. To note an artist’s limitations is but to define his genius. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his talent. These stories of Miss Jewett’s have much to do with fisherfolk and seaside villages; with juniper pastures and lonely farms, neat gray country houses and delightful, well-seasoned old men and women. That, when one thinks of it in a flash, is New England. I remember hearing an English actor say that until he made a motor trip through New England he had supposed that the Americans killed their aged in some merciful fashion, for he saw none in the cities where he played. There are many kinds of people in the State of Maine, and its neighboring States, who are not in Miss Jewett’s books. There may be Othellos and Iagos and Don Juans, but they are not highly characteristic of the country, they do not come up spontaneously in the juniper pastures as the everlasting does. Miss Jewett wrote of the people who grew out of the soil and the life of the country near her heart, not about exceptional individuals at war with their environment. This was not a creed with her, but an instinctive preference. She once laughingly told me that her head was full of dear old houses and dear old women, and that when an old house and an old woman came together in her brain with a click, she knew that a story was under way.