“I read the other day the most suggestive book that has appeared since Miss Alcott published _Little Women_. The title of the book, _A Daughter of the Rich_, by M. E. Waller, fails to convey an idea of the striking qualities of a most fascinating story. The scenes and background of the story are in a mountain fastness of New Hampshire, in a home where parents of culture and piety, encumbered by poverty, are successfully bringing up a household of delightful boys and girls. A city physician persuades the father of an only daughter to send his delicate darling out of the enervating atmosphere of a millionaire’s home that is motherless, into the sweetness and mother-brooding environment of the home on the mountainside. The little girl is introduced to strangers, who at once become her friends, and in the novel situation, without a single luxury, but in much homely comfort, she gains the health and strength that wealth could not give her. “I have it in my heart to wish that this book might have the vogue that _Little Women_ had. The simple, beautiful story is worth a thousand sermons and treatises on the best way of rearing and training a family.” The _Christian Herald_ enters many homes and Margaret E. Sangster was read by many thousands. There is no way of measuring the direct and indirect influence of such praise as she uttered. It is very great. But this was in 1907. The year following the appearance of _A daughter of the Rich_, Miss Waller’s third book, _The Wood-Carver of ’Lympus_, came along. Books have curious fates. Gene Stratton-Porter’s _Freckles_ took three years to find its audience. A fine novel by St. John G. Ervine, _Changing Winds_, was published, had the expected sale and died; remained dead for about a year and then suddenly began selling again! In the case of a textbook such a phenomenon can always be traced to some simple explanation. For example, W. J. Henderson wrote a condensed treatise called _Elements of Navigation_ which sold desultorily for years, the sales slowly declining. Came the Great War. The United States undertook to create a merchant marine. Thousands of men had to be trained to navigate merchant ships. Mr. Henderson’s book sold like hot cakes, was reprinted; was revised and pretty well rewritten; sold faster than fiction! In the case of a novel a “resurrection” is seldom quite explicable. It is matter for conjecture what “brought back” _Changing Winds_. Now _The Wood-Carver of ’Lympus_ was not a book that rose from the dead, but a book that almost never lived; that is to say, it was six months before it achieved popular success. Once “alive” it has ever since remained so. Seven years after publication the _twenty-eighth_ edition was published. It is unnecessary to say more.