“‘My years of nature work have not been without considerable insight into human nature, as well,’ continues Mrs. Porter. ‘I know its failings, its inborn tendencies, its weaknesses, its failures, its depth of crime; and the people who feel called upon to spend their time analyzing, digging into, and uncovering these sources of depravity have that privilege, more’s the pity! If I had my way about it, this is a privilege no one could have in books intended for indiscriminate circulation. I stand squarely for book censorship, and I firmly believe that with a few more years of such books as half a dozen I could mention, public opinion will demand this very thing. My life has been fortunate in one glad way: I have lived mostly in the country and worked in the woods. For every bad man and woman I have ever known, I have met, lived with, and am intimately acquainted with an overwhelming number of thoroughly clean and decent people who still believe in God and cherish high ideals, and it is _upon the lives of these that I base what I write_. To contend that this does not produce a picture true to life is idiocy. It does. It produces a picture true to ideal life; to the best that good men and good women can do at level best. “‘I care very little for the magazine or newspaper critics who proclaim that there is no such thing as a moral man, and that my pictures of life are sentimental and idealized. They are! And I glory in them! They are straight, living pictures from the lives of men and women of morals, honor, and loving kindness. They form “idealized pictures of life” because they are copies from life where it touches religion, chastity, love, home, and hope of Heaven ultimately. None of these roads leads to publicity and the divorce court. They all end in the shelter and seclusion of a home. “‘Such a big majority of book critics and authors have begun to teach, whether they really believe it or not, that no book is _true to life_ unless it is true to the _worst in life_, that the idea has infected even the women.’” _A Girl of the Limberlost_ “‘comes fairly close to my idea of a good book. No possible harm can be done any one in reading it. The book can, and does, present a hundred pictures that will draw any reader in closer touch with nature and the Almighty, my primal object in each line I write. The human side of the book is as close a character study as I am capable of making. I regard the character of Mrs. Comstock as the best thought-out and the cleanest-cut study of human nature I have so far been able to do.’”