If Mrs. Porter has egoism it is the sort of egoism that the world needs. It is nothing more or less than a firm and sustaining belief in one’s self, in the worth of one’s work, and is bred of a passionate conviction that you must always give the best of yourself without stint. Is it egoistical to believe that? Is it self-centeredness to be proud of that? Is it wrong, having set the world the best example of which you are capable, to call it to the world’s attention? You will not get the present reporter to say so! You will get from him nothing but an expression of his own conviction that while literature, æsthetically viewed, may not have been enriched by Mrs. Porter’s writings, thousands, yes, tens of thousands of men and women have been made happier and better by her stories. And that just about sweeps any other possible accomplishment into limbo! The secret of Mrs. Porter’s success is sincerity, complete sincerity; doing one’s best work and doing it to the top of one’s bent. It is not a question of art. There is no art about it. The finest literary artist in the world could not duplicate her performance unless he were a duplicate of _her_. It’s not a literary matter at all; the thing has its roots in the personality, in the mind and heart and nervous organization of the writer. If you could be a Gene Stratton-Porter you could write the novels she writes and achieve just the success she achieves, a success which is improperly measured by earnings of $500,000 to $750,000 from her books, a success of which the true measure can never be taken because it is a success in human lives and not in dollars. The best evidence of this--for there will be doubters--is the story of her life, very largely told in her own words, published in a booklet by Doubleday, Page & Company in 1915. The booklet, for some time to be had on request, is now out of print. In what follows it is drawn upon freely and almost to the exclusion of anything else. “Mark Stratton, the father of Gene Stratton-Porter, described his wife, at the time of their marriage, as a ‘ninety-pound bit of pink porcelain, pink as a wild rose, plump as a partridge, having a big rope of bright brown hair, never ill a day in her life, and bearing the loveliest name ever given a woman--Mary.’ He further added that ‘God fashioned her heart to be gracious, her body to be the mother of children, and as her especial gift of Grace, he put Flower Magic into her fingers.’”