_My Ragpicker_ is about Nanette, an appealing little child of poverty in Paris. _A Cry in the Wilderness_ has American and Canadian characters and its scenes are laid mainly in New York and in a seigneury on the St. Lawrence--Miss Waller’s first invasion of Canada. _Aunt Dorcas’s Change of Heart_ was published by Miss Waller herself, in 1913; doubtless it was an enterprise in behalf of that hospital which she thrust between herself and her visitor. _From an Island Outpost_ is a meditative book--thoughts that came to Miss Waller as she wrote from her own island outpost on Nantucket. _Out of the Silences_ is a return to Canada and a novel of the Great War. The setting is just over the border from Dakota. The central character, Bob Collamore, an American boy, is left as a youngster of nine in charge of William Plunket, a saddle-maker, quaintly philosophical, broad-minded, sympathetic, with a considerable knowledge of the human heart. The boy Bob grows up with Plunket’s stepson, McGillie, and the children of the Cree Indian tribe. He gets a good deal of the red man’s knowledge. As he matures the white man’s ambition to get out in the world and match his wits against his fellows seizes him. He goes forth confidently, to find that his youthful years have fixed indelibly his ideals, his philosophy and his outlook on life. Love, romance and success come to him--and death. For the war calls to his manhood and takes him to France. An intermediate book may be briefly mentioned. _A Year Out of Life_ is only partly a work of fiction; in part it records Miss Waller’s impressions of German life--long before the war, of course, for it was published in 1909. BOOKS BY MARY E. WALLER _Little Citizens_, 1902. _A Daughter of the Rich_, 1903. _The Wood-Carver of ’Lympus_, 1904. _Sanna of the Island Town_, 1905. _Through the Gates of the Netherlands_, 1906. _A Year Out of Life_, 1909. _Our Benny_, 1909. _Flamsted Quarries_, 1910. _My Ragpicker_, 1911. _A Cry in the Wilderness_, 1912. _Aunt Dorcas’s Change of Heart_, 1913. _From an Island Outpost_, 1914. _Out of the Silences_, 1918. _Little Citizens was published by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company, Boston; Aunt Dorcas’s Change of Heart was published by Miss Waller; all Miss Waller’s other books are published by Little, Brown & Company, Boston._ CHAPTER XXXIV ZONA GALE My dear Mr. Overton:-- “The first story which I ever wrote was printed. I printed it myself, in pencil, for it was before I could write. And the story appeared in a book. I made the book, of manilla paper, bound with ribbon. The story began: ‘The sun was just sinking behind the western hills when three travelers appeared. One was tall and one was short and one was middle-sized.’ And when the heroine arrived and one of these travelers asked her to marry him, I remember pressing my mother to tell me how to spell ‘N--yes’, which constituted the maid’s reply.