“Miss Glasgow is sorry that there are so many writers willing to supply the demand for ‘sugary philosophy,’ but those writers are not only willing to supply; they are inspired to supply. They aren’t superior people turning the trick for money, as Miss Glasgow seems to think; they are ‘giving the best that is in them.’ They take their art solemnly.” The truest word on the subject ever uttered and most essential to be reprinted here. It is not so much for the refutation of Miss Glasgow that we give it. The full application of Mr. Tarkington’s remarks will be seen in some of the later chapters of this book. But to return to our Southern realist. Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow was born in Richmond, Virginia, April 22, 1874, the daughter of Francis Thomas Glasgow and Anne Jane (Gholson) Glasgow. Her father belonged to a family of professional men--lawyers, judges, educators. The child was of delicate health. She never went to school--an admission she makes with a blush. An aunt used to tell her Scott’s stories at an age when Mother Goose is the customary intellectual fare. At thirteen she read and enjoyed Robert Browning. He is still her favorite poet, though Swinburne has a great place in her affections. Quite unaccountably Miss Glasgow showed a taste for scientific subjects. At eighteen she began “a systematic study of political economy and socialism.” Her love for a story remained strong. The home was a strict Southern home, the women in it were “sheltered.” The young woman would shut herself up in her room every day and later join the family for such diversions as they indulged in. Finally she went to her father and said: “Father, I have written a book.” Isaac F. Marcosson says that Father was dumbfounded, and well he might have been. The novel was published anonymously and was generally supposed to be the work of a man of training and experience. It was _The Descendant_, and it has been characterized as “a rather morbid exposition of the development and life of an intellectual hybrid, the offspring of a low woman and a highly intellectual man.”