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 worked in secret, sent in my
material, and kept as quiet about it as possible. On Outing I had
graduated from the camera department to an illustrated article
each month, and as this kept up the year round, and few
illustrations could be made in winter, it meant that I must
secure enough photographs of wild life in summer to last during
the part of the year when few were to be had.
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