“The boy tripped along ahead and talked. He had the air of a monarch displaying his kingdom. Here was a flower that was like a story for interest, and there was a bush that bore a secret worth telling. Even Simon Holly glowed into a semblance of life when David had unerringly picked out and called by name the spruce, and fir, and pine, and larch; and then, in answer to Mrs. Holly’s murmured, ‘But, David, where is the difference? They look so much alike,’ had said: “‘Oh, but they are not. Just see how much more pointed at the top this fir is than that spruce back there; and the branches grow straight out, too, like arms, and they are all smooth and tapering at the end like a pussy-cat’s tail. But the spruce back there--its branches turned down and out--didn’t you notice?--and they are all bushy at the end like a squirrel’s tail. Oh, they’re lots different. “‘That’s a larch way ahead--that one with the branches all scraggly and close down to the ground. I could start to climb that easy, but I couldn’t that pine over there. See, it’s way up before there is a place for your feet! But I love pines. Up there on the mountain, where I lived, the pines were so tall that it seemed as if God used them sometimes to hold up the sky.’ “And Simon Holly heard, and said nothing, and that he did say nothing--especially nothing in answer to David’s confident assertions concerning celestial and terrestrial architecture--only goes to show how well, indeed, the man was learning to look at the world through David’s eyes....” “If the characters are true, the story tells itself,” says Mrs. Porter. “The plot comes very easily after I get some leading idea which I wish to work out. It is sometimes months after I have something in mind before I have carried the idea along far enough to begin writing. The ideas for novels come from careful observation and wide reading. “No, I would not say that novels are written by inspiration. I call it enthusiasm. And unless the writer has enthusiasm while writing a novel I think the indifference is bound to show in the story.” Her own enthusiasm holds her to the task, carries her through the year she devotes to a book, enables her sometimes to write steadily for eight or nine hours and then spend an evening with her heavy correspondence. Her enthusiasm, a steady flame, burns to the end; and then her exhaustion does not matter. The task is done.