Mary Hunter Austin was born in Carlinville, Illinois, descended on her mother’s side from the family of the celebrated French chemist, Daguerre. Being born fortunately before the flood of so-called children’s books, she began to be familiar with the English classics as soon as she could read, and the study of these and an intimate acquaintance with nature occupied most of the years until the end of her university work. At that time very serious ill health drove her to California, and a friendly destiny provided that she should settle in the new and untamed lands about the Sierra Nevadas and the desert edges. Although not yet twenty, she had already made some preparation for following the profession of teaching, and in the unconventional life of mining towns, and in the wickiups of the Indians found exceptional opportunities for pushing her investigations in child-study. Mrs. Austin’s work in this direction met with instant recognition in her state, and before long many excellent positions were open to her, but by this time she discovered that she did not want them. Like most desert dwellers, Mrs. Austin had come under the spell of its mystery, and after teaching a short time in the Los Angeles Normal School, was glad to return to the life of the hills, and soon after began to devote herself seriously to writing. Very early her work attracted the attention of The Atlantic Monthly, St. Nicholas, and the Youth’s Companion. Most of the monthly magazines have published work of hers. All of Mary Austin’s work is like her life, out of doors, nights under the pines, long days’ watchings by water holes to see the wild things drink, breaking trail up new slopes, heat, cloud bursts, snow, wild beast and mountain bloom, all equally delightful because understood. * * * * * [At this point the typewriting stops; the “biographical notes” continue in pen and ink, Mrs. Austin writing on both sides of the sheets of paper.] * * * * * N. B. I can’t do it, when I wrote the letter that accompanies this I thought it would be easy to do, but it isn’t. There is really nothing to tell. I have just _looked_, nothing more, when I was too sick to do anything else I could lie out under the sage brush and look, and when I was able to get about I went to look at other things, and by and by I got to know when and where looking was most worth while. Then I got so full of looking that I had to write to get rid of some of it to make room for more. I was only two months writing “A Land of Little Rain” but I spent 12 years peeking and prying before I began it. After a while I will write a book about my brother the coyote which will make you “sit up,” I mean that is the way I feel about it.