Those words meant a great deal to Jimmie, and the manuscript bearing those words remains today, yellow with age, in Curwood Castle.
Now satisfied that she had helped her brother as best she could, Amy returned to Owosso.
From that moment hence Jimmie Curwood could not be held down in the reaching of his ultimate goal. Guided by that ever present desire to become wealthy, famous and to create his own characters on his own pages in his own stories, Jimmie Curwood probably never knew exactly when to quit writing once he had commenced. He drove himself unmercifully toward that which he desired so much. It seems almost unreasonable to think that a lad of his age was capable of such determination, but facts cannot be denied or doubted. Inspiration is one thing, while encouragement and help is still another. That which he knew so well could not be suppressed. It was there within him, germinating his mind, tormenting his soul.
It has often been said that a suppressed thought in the mind of a creative writer is the worst possible thing for him to endure. He may endure all the hardships of life that are thrown in his path, but a suppressed idea or thought germinating in his mind, is fiendish torture. Such must have undoubtedly been the case of Jimmie Curwood at that young age.
Although Amy had returned to Owosso she wrote her brother every week, sending him hope and inspiration. Fred Janette from time to time wrote to the boy urging him to keep at his work. Even between times in his writing as Jimmie would be picking up stones again or else at some other type of farm labor, he experienced thrills that he had not known before. He knew he was accomplishing something, creating that which no one could destroy.
As he continued piling stone on stone and as they began to take form, Jimmie imagined that they were great castles which held gallant princes and lovely princesses. He envisioned heroes who possessed more courage and more valor than any other earthly mortal. They fought long, hard, bitter battles, always to be victorious in the end. The developing of this vivid imagination at this early age in life was one of the direct causes for Jimmie’s rise to fame.
For the first time since his dreams and plans had begun to materialize, Jimmie at last shared his ideas with his “Whistling Jeanne.” She knew all of his fondest hopes and his aspirations, and she prayed for him and fought for him in many of his schoolboy tussles.
She alone stood up for him because he was so much smaller than the majority of the other boys and she was old enough and capable enough to manage most of them. She stood up for him when she knew he was wrong. She even talked Mrs. Curwood out of a great deal of spankings that were due the lad and which he surely would have received had it not have been for her. Although five years his senior, Jimmie looked upon her as being of his own age and even younger, perhaps.
It might be said that Jimmie Curwood had loved Jeanne in his own silent, youthful, schoolboy way. He adored, in silent worship, her great blue eyes, her thick braids of radiant brown hair and her flawless complexion. As a matter of fact everyone loved little Jeanne Fisher, but as Jim Curwood once said later in life:
“Everyone loved her, but none so devoutly as I.”