It was not long after her removal to the Atlantic coast that Mrs. Wiggin, now a widow and separated much of the year from her special work in California, threw herself eagerly into the kindergarten movement in New York, and it was in this interest that she was drawn into the semi-public reading of her own stories. Her interpretation of them is full of exquisite taste and feeling, but she has declared most characteristically that she would rather write a story for the love of doing it, than be paid by the public for reading it; hence her readings have always been given purely for philanthropic purposes, especially for the introduction of kindergartens, a cause which she warmly advocates, and with which she has most generously identified herself.

I may say that there is an old meeting-house in Hollis in which she has been interested since her childhood. Each succeeding summer the whole countryside within a radius of many miles gathers there to hear her bright, sympathetic readings of her manuscript stories, sometimes before even her publishers have a peep at them. These occasions are rare events that are much talked over and planned for, as I learned soon after reaching that neighborhood. During the summer of 1895 she read one of her manuscript stories–The Ride of the Midnight Cry (now published in The Village Watch Tower)–to a group of elderly ladies in the neighborhood of Quillcote, who are deeply interested in all she writes. The story takes its title from an ancient stage-coach well known throughout that region in its day, and known only by the suggestive if not euphonious name of "The Midnight Cry."

Mrs. Wiggin possesses rare musical taste and ability, and enthusiastically loves music as an art. It is simply a recreation and delight to her to compose and adapt whatever pleases her fancy to her own flow of harmony. She is the possessor of some very rare and interesting foreign instruments; among this collection is a Hawaiian guitar, the tiniest of stringed instruments, and also one of curious Portuguese workmanship.

In the early months of 1895 she was married to George C. Riggs, of New York, but she prefers to retain in literature the name with which she first won distinction. I will speak of her New York winter home only to say that it is the gathering-place of some of the most eminent authors and artists in the country. She goes abroad yearly, and Maine levies a heavy claim on her by right of home ties and affection, for the 'Pine Tree State' is proud to claim this gifted daughter, not only for her genius but her beauty of character and true womanliness.

Mrs. Wiggin's work is characterized by a delicious flow of humor, depth of pathos, and a delicate play of fancy. Her greatest charm as a writer is simplicity of style. It enables us to come in perfect touch with her characterizations, which are so full of human nature that, as some one has said, "we feel them made of good flesh and blood like ourselves, with whom we have something, be it ever so little, that keeps us from being alien one to another." Her keen but sympathetic penetration attains some of the happiest results in the wholesome realism of her child characters; her children become real to us, creep into our hearts, and we love them, and in sympathy with this sentiment springs up a spontaneous reawakening of interest in the child-world about us.

EMMA SHERMAN ECHOLS

"What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

GOETHE.

CHAPTER I. A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

"I have determined only one thing definitely," said Polly Oliver; "and that is, the boarders must go. Oh, how charming that sounds! I 've been thinking it ever since I was old enough to think, but I never cast it in such an attractive, decisive form before. 'The Boarders Must Go!' To a California girl it is every bit as inspiring as 'The Chinese Must Go.' If I were n't obliged to set the boarders' table, I 'd work the motto on a banner this very minute, and march up and down the plaza with it, followed by a crowd of small boys with toy drums."

"The Chinese never did go," said Mrs. Oliver suggestively, from the sofa.

"Oh, that's a trifle; they had a treaty or something, and besides, there are so many of them, and they have such an object in staying."

"You can't turn people out of the house on a moment's warning."

"Certainly not. Give them twenty-four hours, if necessary. We can choose among several methods of getting rid of them. I can put up a placard with

BOARDERS, HO!

printed on it in large letters, and then assemble them in the banquet-hall and make them a speech."

"You would insult them," objected Mrs. Oliver feebly, "and they are perfectly innocent."

"Insult them? Oh, mamma, how unworthy of you! I shall speak to them firmly but very gently. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' I shall begin, 'you have done your best to make palatable the class of human beings to which you belong, but you have utterly failed, and you must go! Board, if you must, ladies and gentlemen, but not here! Sap, if you must, the foundations of somebody else's private paradise, but not ours. In the words of the Poe-et, "Take thy beaks from off our door."' Then it will be over, and they will go out."

"Slink out, I should say," murmured Polly's mother.

"Very well, slink out," replied Polly cheerfully. "I should like to see them slink, after they 've been rearing their crested heads round our table for generations; but I think you credit them with a sensitiveness they do not, and in the nature of things cannot, possess. There is something in the unnatural life which hardens both the boarder and those who board her. However, I don't insist on that method. Let us try bloodless eviction,–set them quietly out in the street with their trunks; or strategy,–put one of them in bed and hang out the smallpox flag. Oh, I can get rid of them in a week, if I once set my mind on it."

"There is no doubt of that," said Mrs. Oliver meekly.

Polly's brain continued to teem with sinister ideas.

"I shall make Mr. Talbot's bed so that the clothes will come off at the foot every night. He will remonstrate. I shall tell him that he kicks them off, and intimate that his conscience troubles him, or he would never be so restless. He will glare. I shall promise to do better, yet the clothes will come off worse and worse, and at last, perfectly disheartened, he will go. I shall tell Mr. Greenwood at the breakfast-table, what I have been longing for months to tell him, that we can hear him snore, distinctly, through the partition. He will go. I shall put cold milk in Mrs. Caldwell's coffee every morning. I shall mean well, you know, but I shall forget. She will know that I mean well, and that it is only girlish absent-mindedness, but she will not endure it very long; she will go. And so, by the exercise of a little ingenuity, they will depart one by one, remarking that Mrs. Oliver's boarding-house is not what it used to be; that Pauline is growing a little 'slack.'"

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