When They Were Girls

by Rebecca Deming Moore

This nine-year-old admirer of Dickens had not the slightest idea that one day she would be an author herself. Years later, however, when she was known as Kate Douglas Wiggin, she wrote a delightful story about another little State-of-Maine girl, entitled Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. She also wrote many other enjoyable books.

Kate Douglas Smith was not a State-of-Maine girl by birth. She was born in Philadelphia, September 28, 1859. When she was six years old her family moved to the village of Hollis, Maine.

Little Katie Smith loved the world in which she lived and especially her own little corner of it on the banks of the Saco River. What fun she had with her little sister Nora and her playmate Annie. Nora is better known to us as Nora Archibald Smith, the author of many charming stories for children. These little girls gathered velvety pussy willows, hunted for arbutus in the early spring, and picked wild strawberries and raspberries in the summer.

How amusing Katie found the froggery, a nice quiet pool where lived her favorite frogs! She knew them all by name and twice a week she arranged them very gently in a row on a strip of board for a singing lesson. In the winter she enjoyed coasting and snowballing. She also liked to be in the house where she could play with her orphanage of paper dolls and read her beloved books.

To little Katie Smith, work was almost as amusing as play. It was fun, she thought, to cut up rhubarb for sauce, to make milk toast for supper, to water the plants, to iron the handkerchiefs, and to go for the milk. Just to be alive, to run along the river bank, to help about the house, was enough for this joyous child. No dreams of authorship had come to her, though she was filling her mind with the pictures which she was later to give to the world in her books.

Katie Smith was taught at home and also attended a district school. Later she went to a boarding school in Maine, after which she attended Abbot Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, from which she was graduated.

When Kate Smith was seventeen years old she followed her family to Santa Barbara, California, where they had gone several years before. As there was very little money in the family treasury, the elder daughter of the house felt that she must begin to help at once. A girl’s story which she had written merely to amuse herself she decided to send to a magazine editor. What was Kate’s delight to receive in payment for the story a check for one hundred and fifty dollars, which came just in time to pay some taxes!

The proud young author, however, did not think of writing for a living. She decided that she did not yet know enough to write. She realized that she must live a little longer and learn more. In the meantime she decided to find some useful work to do. Years later, after she had become a successful author, she said that this decision was the most sensible act of her life.

Kate Smith soon found the work that she sought. Kindergartens were still very new in America. Miss Smith studied the system and organized a free kindergarten in San Francisco, the first one to be established west of the Rockies. This young woman was very successful in bringing happiness into the lives of the little children who flocked to her kindergarten.

It was for the purpose of raising money for kindergartens that the young teacher wrote two stories, The Story of Patsy, and The Birds’ Christmas Carol. She had them printed and sold at twenty-five cents a copy. Miss Smith thought that the only reason they sold well was because so many friends were anxious to help the good cause of free kindergartens. Little did she realize that these books would later bring her fame.