“‘You said Love would open the shutters, and it has.’” The incident is charged with a special significance in the story. It appears that when the real mill disappeared a coincidence was noted, the sort of thing that many persons prefer to think no coincidence at all. We quote from the Portland _Evening Express_ of July 31, 1909: “It seems that one day last summer Captain Morrill of the Harpswell Steamboat Company, who is not too fond of story reading, picked up _The Opened Shutters_ to read. His wife in telling about it to Mrs. Burnham said that he read the story far into the night, not being willing to put it down till he had read the last word. The next day when he was sailing down the bay, his attention was suddenly directed to the old Tide Mill. He looked at it long and steadily. Could it be? Were his eyes deceiving him? Had he read so late and thought so deeply on the story that things did not look quite natural to him? He looked at the old mill again. Yes, it was sinking into the sea--and the shutters were wide open! The sun, too, was shining through. For years these old shutters had not let in a rift of light; but now they were aflood with it.” Those who do not hug the supernatural are at liberty to suppose that the strain of settling and sinking unbarred and flung open the shutters. Of Captain Morrill it may be noted that his presence of mind and bravery several years earlier had saved the lives of Mrs. Burnham and other passengers in a collision between the steamboat Sebascodegan and a revenue cutter. But for him _The Opened Shutters_ would never have been written. The beginning of this capital story was not with the Tide Mill, however, but with the name Thinkright Johnson. Like certain persons whose appearance before Mrs. Burnham’s mind’s eye has compelled her to write about them, this New Englandish appellation gave birth to a book. Thinkright Johnson--Thinkright Johnson; the name haunted Mrs. Burnham for days and weeks, “till I knew that the only way I could have any peace was to write something about him.” It was the same way with Jewel. She kept coming before her author. “She is the exact type of one of my little nieces, in character, looks, and even to the things that she says. In some way I felt compelled to write about her.” On the other hand the story of _The Right Princess_ came to Mrs. Burnham one evening when she was all dressed for the theater. “As I stood in my room, all ready to go, it began to come to me. I drew off one of my gloves and sat down to my desk just to jot down a few of the ideas; but the whole thing grew so rapidly in my mind that I did not realize anything in the world about me again, till I found myself removing one of my shoes many hours later.