“The dates are to be got out of _Who’s Who_, but to spare trouble I will give them here. Born, 1868; brought up on an old farm in central Ohio; went to school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Cincinnati for some two or three years; married 1891; lived in Cincinnati ever since. Of all these events, the being brought up on that old farm is probably the greatest asset for the literary career. The other things happen to everybody, but the farm experience was _sui generis_, not exactly like anything else, least of all like the farm-life you read about and involuntarily picture. My people moved to this country home about the middle of the last century, when it was only a few years removed from the wilderness; I think the farm was the remnant of a comfortable patrimony which in the well-tried old phrase had been ‘run through’; I think it was a last resort, refuge, stronghold; but these were things which were not talked about in the family. I can see now that the life I was made to live as a child was very strange. Here we all were, educated people with traditions and sophisticated ideas, set down amongst actual backwoodsmen, whom the older members of the family looked upon, without the least idea of being snobbish, as peasants. They really were a wild, uncouth lot; there were grown men and women who could not read and write. Of course that is all over now; education, the railroads, the _Ladies’ Home Journal_ have changed everything. Don’t think I am not serious in mentioning that final item: I sincerely believe that the so-called women’s magazines have done more for these backward and isolated communities than all the other preachers and teachers put together. But the point of telling all this intimate history is to make you understand the loneliness of my upbringing as a child; my sister and I had no companions of our own age; we were not allowed to associate with the country children. We must have been queer little fish. We had to make up our own games, and we played stories out of books, taking all the characters in turn.