s man on his way satisfied. Possibly it did. But I
have a shrewd suspicion it lay in high-grade plates, a careful
exposure, judicious development, with self-compounded chemicals
straight from the factory, and C.P. I think plates swabbed with wet
cotton before development, intensified if of short exposure, and
thoroughly swabbed again before drying, had much to do with it; and
paper handled in the same painstaking manner had more. I have hundreds
of negatives in my closet made twelve years ago, in perfect condition
for printing from to-day, and I never have lost a plate through fog
from imperfect development and hasty washing; so my little mother's
rule of 'whatsoever thy hands find to do, do it with thy might,' held
good in photography."

Thus had Mrs. Porter made time to study and to write, and editors began
to accept what she sent them with little if any changes. She began by
sending photographic and natural history hints to Recreation, and with
the first installment was asked to take charge of the department and
furnish material each month for which she was to be paid at current
prices in high-grade photographic material. We can form some idea of
the work she did under this arrangement from the fact that she had over
one thousand dollars' worth of equipment at the end of the first year.
The second year she increased this by five hundred, and then accepted a
place on the natural history staff of Outing, working closely with Mr.
Casper Whitney. After a year of this helpful experience Mrs. Porter
began to turn her attention to what she calls "nature studies sugar
coated with fiction." Mixing some childhood fact with a large degree of
grown-up fiction, she wrote a little story entitled "Laddie, the
Princess, and the Pie."

"I was abnormally sensitive," says the author, "about trying to
accomplish any given thing and failing. I had been taught in my home
that it was black disgrace to undertake anything and fail. My husband
owned a drug and book store that carried magazines, and it was not
possible to conduct departments in any of them and not have it known;
but only a few people in our locality read these publications, none of
them were interested in nature photography, or natural science, so what
I was trying to do was not realized even by my own family.

"With them I was much more timid than with the neighbours. Least of all
did I want to fail before my man Person and my daughter and our
respective families; so I wo