“And there is one thing American women must not forget—that the most important thing they can mobilize is their sex. When the men of a country give their bodies to the sword, the women must give theirs to the future—to the generation to come. Now, more than in peace times, women owe it to their country to bear children, and bear them intelligently. And when they have borne them, it is their sacred duty to bring them up Americans in a full understanding of the ideals on which our fathers built the nation.”
Living in New York, writing in New York, working in New York as the managing editor of the Delineator, Mrs. Willsie is still and essentially the woman of Mr. Willsie’s photographs which made so forcible an impression on Mr. Le Gallienne. With her is always a splendid vision: “Exquisite violet mists rolled back toward the mountains. The pungent odor of sagebrush floated through the tent. Iridescent, bejeweled, flashing every rainbow tint from its moistened breast, the desert smiled at us. Once more I yielded to its loveliness.” To her and her vision many, many of her countrymen and countrywomen will always yield gratefully and with pleasure.
Books by Honoré Willsie
The Heart of the Desert, 1913.
Still Jim, 1915.
Lydia of the Pines, 1917.
Benefits Forgot, 1917.
The Forbidden Trail, 1919.
The Enchanted Canyon, 1921.
Judith of the Godless Valley, 1922.
Published by Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York.
CHAPTER XXXII
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
HALF a dozen plays and half a hundred stories stand to the credit of Frances Hodgson Burnett, born in Manchester, England, naturalized as an American citizen in 1905 or thereabouts, the author of Little Lord Fauntleroy, most famous of children’s stories by a living writer. Mrs. Burnett is a novelist, as such books as The Shuttle and T. Tembaron attest. She is thought of half or more than half the time as a writer of tales for youngsters, and rightly. Of these she has produced a great number and their success is amazing. No beating of drums, no blasts on trumpets, even toy trumpets: yet as the publishers assure you, in respect of even her less known “juveniles,” they keep on selling, year after year, with the most relentless endurance. They don’t have to be advertised. In the famous sentiment of a famous advertisement, they are advertised by their loving friends.
The best thing for the adult to do, after paying his tribute to Fauntleroy, is to read The Shuttle, “a novel of international marriage.” It represents Mrs. Burnett’s life. She alone of all the writers of our day could have written such a book, declares a friend whose desire to remain anonymous is here observed. He supplies a sketch of Mrs. Burnett which had better be reproduced verbatim:
“She is English of the English by birth and temperament; born in Manchester, as you know, where she lived until she was about thirteen. Then, her father having failed in business, owing to the war in America—his failure had something to do with the blockading of the Southern ports, I believe—and he having died, the business went to ruin, although Mrs. Burnett’s mother tried her gentle best to save it. There was a large family of them, and Frances, who had already developed the faculty of story-telling, was the life and spirit of the crowd.
“An older brother had gone to join an uncle in Tennessee, and when the family’s fortunes were at lowest ebb he advised them to join him in America, which they did, and lived in the greatest poverty on the outskirts of Knoxville. They were so poor that when some one suggested that Frances write out one of her stories and send it to Godey’s Lady’s Book the money for the stamps had to be earned by picking blackberries.