Living in New York, writing in New York, working in New York as the managing editor of the _Delineator_, Mrs. Willsie is still and essentially the woman of Mr. Willsie’s photographs which made so forcible an impression on Mr. Le Gallienne. With her is always a splendid vision: “Exquisite violet mists rolled back toward the mountains. The pungent odor of sagebrush floated through the tent. Iridescent, bejeweled, flashing every rainbow tint from its moistened breast, the desert smiled at us. Once more I yielded to its loveliness.” To her and her vision many, many of her countrymen and countrywomen will always yield gratefully and with pleasure. BOOKS BY HONORÉ WILLSIE _The Heart of the Desert_, 1913. _Still Jim_, 1915. _Lydia of the Pines_, 1917. _Benefits Forgot_, 1917. _The Forbidden Trail_, 1919. _The Enchanted Canyon_, 1921. _Judith of the Godless Valley_, 1922. _Published by Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York._ CHAPTER XXXII FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT Half a dozen plays and half a hundred stories stand to the credit of Frances Hodgson Burnett, born in Manchester, England, naturalized as an American citizen in 1905 or thereabouts, the author of _Little Lord Fauntleroy_, most famous of children’s stories by a living writer. Mrs. Burnett is a novelist, as such books as _The Shuttle_ and _T. Tembaron_ attest. She is thought of half or more than half the time as a writer of tales for youngsters, and rightly. Of these she has produced a great number and their success is amazing. No beating of drums, no blasts on trumpets, even toy trumpets: yet as the publishers assure you, in respect of even her less known “juveniles,” they keep on selling, year after year, with the most relentless endurance. They don’t have to be advertised. In the famous sentiment of a famous advertisement, they are advertised by their loving friends. The best thing for the adult to do, after paying his tribute to _Fauntleroy_, is to read _The Shuttle_, “a novel of international marriage.” It represents Mrs. Burnett’s life. She alone of all the writers of our day could have written such a book, declares a friend whose desire to remain anonymous is here observed. He supplies a sketch of Mrs. Burnett which had better be reproduced verbatim: “She is English of the English by birth and temperament; born in Manchester, as you know, where she lived until she was about thirteen. Then, her father having failed in business, owing to the war in America--his failure had something to do with the blockading of the Southern ports, I believe--and he having died, the business went to ruin, although Mrs. Burnett’s mother tried her gentle best to save it. There was a large family of them, and Frances, who had already developed the faculty of story-telling, was the life and spirit of the crowd.