“If a young person aspiring to print should ask me whether there is a definite way to begin, I should tell him to start by catching a big brother. Preferably his own, for any one else’s might be a hindrance. Mine is Frederick W. Root, ex-president of the Literary Club, Cliff Dweller, Little Roomer, and in many other respects an orthodox Chicagoan. He has been my mascot ever since the day when he started on the labor--and hard labor it was--of drawing a young sister away from the music which was her chief interest and starting her at story writing. You know I am one of the Roots. My father, George F. Root, was known chiefly by his war songs, _Tramp, Tramp, Tramp_ and _The Battle Cry of Freedom_ and so on, but every home in the land knows his simple, melodious songs, and I should like to feel that the vitality in my unpretentious stories is akin to the spontaneous harmony that flowed for fifty happy years from his clear mind. “I suppose the reason I did not wish to write was that music satisfied me. My brother persisted against my indifference for a year. At last we were both exasperated. He shut me into a room with him one day, and opening a very business-like looking knife, declared with a fearful scowl that I should not leave that room alive unless I promised to try faithfully to write a story. I laughed a little and wept a little, and at last promised to show him that I couldn’t do it. “Some one asked him once in my presence why he was so certain that I could write. He replied: ‘Oh, she has a picturesque way of telling things and isn’t too much hampered by the truth.’ I forgive him even such aspersions. He is an example of what ‘a heart at leisure from itself’ can do for another. I owe him everything; above all the blessed assurance which sometimes reaches me that my stories help others. “It is wonderful that I met no obstacles in starting. With no conscious preparation I was like a ship ready to be launched. Fred pushed me off into deep water. “I enjoy my work, but not quite in the carefree way I used to enjoy it. With each new book now I am conscious of some anxiety not to disappoint my large parish; not to go backward. Both in books and plays I believe the destructive is doomed. In this world there exists only one rose without a thorn. There are many larger, more alluring, more fragrant, but there is only one thornless rose; it is work that you love.”