ite went to Africa. His explanation was
simple:

I went because I wanted to. About once in so often the wheels get
rusty and I have to get up and do something real or else blow up.
Africa seemed to me a pretty real thing. Let me add that I did not
go for material. I never go anywhere for material; if I did I
should not get it. That attitude of mine would give me merely
externals, which are not worth writing about. I go places merely
because for one reason or another they attract me. Then if it
happens that I get close enough to the life, I may later find that
I have something to write about. A man rarely writes anything
convincing unless he has lived the life; not with his critical
faculty alert, but whole-heartedly and because, for the time being,
it is his life.

Naturally he found that he had something to write about on his return.
_The Land of Footprints_, _African Camp Fires_, _Simba_, and _The
Leopard Woman_ were books that grew out of his African trip. Mr. White
next planned to write a series of three novels dealing with the romantic
history of the state of California. The first of these books, _Gold_,
describes the mad rush of the Forty-Niners on the first discovery of
gold in California. _The Gray Dawn_, the second of the series, tells of
the days of the Vigilantes, when the wild life of the mining camps
slowly settled down to law and order. The coming of the World War was a
fresh challenge to his adventurous spirit, and he saw service in France
as a major in the U. S. Field Artillery.

From this sketch it is apparent that Mr. White's books have all grown
out of his experience, in the sense that the background is one that he
has known. This explains the strong feeling of reality that we
experience as we read his stories.

NEW ENGLAND GRANITE

_From the day the Pilgrims landed on a rockbound coast, the name New
Englander has suggested certain traits of character. It connotes a
restraint of feeling which more impulsive persons may mistake for
absence of feeling; a reserve carried almost to the point of coldness; a
quiet dignity which to a breezy Westerner seems like "stand-offishness."
But those who come to know New England people well, find that beneath
the flint is fire. Dorothy Canfield suggests the theme of her story in
the title--"Flint and Fire."_

FLINT AND FIRE

BY

DOROTHY CANFIELD

My husband's cousin had come up