This is the most illuminating comment on Mrs. Atherton that has so far seen the light of day, and we shall not attempt more than to supply a footnote or two. Mr. Forman says that Mrs. Atherton writes for the public and not for writers. True, but is it the public which reads Gene Stratton-Porter or _Pollyanna_? Decidedly not. Her public--a very large one--consists of those who do not ask or desire that fiction shall interpret them to themselves or shape their lives for them, consciously or otherwise. It is made up of the thousands who are capable of some degree of purely æsthetic enjoyment in literature. For the pure æsthetes Mrs. Wharton _et al._ For the unæsthetic and ethical the two Mrs. Porters. For the great hosts who appreciate literary art and story-telling skill but who won’t sacrifice everything for them, who demand a real narrative, color, action, suspense and seek no moral end in the tale to justify the tale’s existence--for them Mrs. Atherton. And they--these people of her vast audience--are the great middle ground. They represent in their attitude toward fiction the healthiest note of all. The “literary” or highbrow attitude toward Mrs. Atherton is perfectly conveyed in an article upon her by Mr. H. W. Boynton, also published in the New York _Evening Post_ but over two years earlier, on February 26, 1916. We extract a few illustrative sentences: “I may say frankly that I write of Mrs. Atherton not out of a special admiration for her work,” begins Mr. Boynton, in a highly self-revelatory manner, “but because for any surveyor of modern American fiction she is so evidently a figure in some measure ‘to be reckoned with.’... Her publicity may be said to have been extraordinary in proportion to her achievement.... The person who is examining her work as literature can find nothing to the purpose here (_Mrs. Balfame_).” How comfortable to feel like that! Mrs. Atherton, with an amused smile, would probably say, at the intimation that there was no “literature” in _Mrs. Balfame_, and perhaps other of her books: “But life is so much more than literature!” When Mr. Boynton charges her with leaving life out of her books Mrs. Atherton will be seriously exercised. Gertrude Atherton is a great grandniece of Benjamin Franklin. She was born in 1857 in San Francisco, the daughter of Thomas L. Horn. She was educated at St. Mary’s Hall, Benicia, California, and at Sayre Institute, Lexington, Kentucky. At an early age she was married to George H. Bowen Atherton, a Californian who declined to travel and who died when he finally was lured to Chile as a guest on a warship. Mrs. Atherton describes her marriage as “one of the most important incidents of my school life.” She had always wanted to go round about the world and when she wasn’t able to do so she amused herself by writing complete travel books, taking her characters through all parts of Europe. She knew enough geography to make her stories truthful.