THE COMMON PEOPLE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3885, 18 December 1928, Page 1

THE COMMON PEOPLE.

Included in the life of Gene Stratton-Porter, published by her daughter, is a justification of the characters delineated in the late novelist’s books. It included the following passage:—“I want to say for such people as I put into books that in the plain old-fashioned country homes where I have lived I have known such wealth of loving consideration, such fidelity between husband and wife, such obedience in children, such constancy to purpose, such whole-souled love for friends and neighbours, such absence of jealousy., pettiness and rivalry, as my city critics do not know is in existence. I never could write a historical novel, because I want my history embellished with anything on earth save fiction. I never could write of society; because I know just enough about it to know that the more I know the less I wish to know. I have read a few ‘problem’ novels and they appeal ito me as a wandering over nasty, lawless subjects and situations of the most ancient type under new names. There is nothing remaining for me but the woods and the people I meet there. For every bad man and woman I ever have known I have me*, lived with and intimately known an overwhelming number of strictly clean, decent people, and upon the lives of these I base what I write;”