“I met another desert woman, too [she had been describing a visit to Ida Meacham Strobridge]--Mary Austin, who has within the last eighteen months appeared twice in the _Atlantic_ in sketches which could have been written only by one who knows the solitude and understands it. _A Shepherd of the Sierras_ and _The Little Coyote_ were the titles of these stories. She has also written much verse and of a peculiar order. It is for children, and has a wild and curious quality. This has appeared chiefly in the _Youth’s Companion_ and _St. Nicholas_. “Mary Austin lives down in Independence, where her husband is Government land agent. She is fairly on the edge of Death Valley, and her companions are principally Paiute Indians.... Mrs. Austin has an Indian-like solemnity about her. She has a pervading shyness and likes the philosophy of the Indians and their poetry. Instinctively she is artistic in all she does, and her writing has undeniable style as well as remarkable individuality. Her paper on _The Indian Arts_ read at one of the art sessions of the biennial meeting of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs was the most purely literary paper of the entire convention. It was written too well, if anything. It was so smooth that it failed to arrest the attention of the more casual listeners.... “All that Mrs. Austin says has a certain value. She speaks seldom. Her utterance is rather slow, her voice very soft, and her remarks are usually grave.... The desert has cloistered her; she is a religieuse, serving her kind, wearing no habit, subscribing to no creed.” A bit of a purple patch, that last! The truth is that the desert molded Mary Austin without stunting her. She is like one of those desert plants of which she tells us, whose maturity may be attained at ten feet or four inches, according to moisture and the region in which they grow. Herself, she is a desert species--but transplanted in time! She made her final escape before the desert “struck in” too deeply; had she not done so dwarfing would have been inescapable; instead of the ten-foot maturity she would have given us her best--her all, her completion--at four inches.