But we were to enumerate what is known of Miss Waller. Well, in 1913, after she had been besieged for nine years for her picture, a visitor to Nantucket, whither the author had gone to live, did succeed in seeing her and talking with her. He did not get a photograph of her (in the fall of 1912 a photographer went expressly to Nantucket and lay long in wait for a snapshot, coming away without a single exposure). But at least the visitor did see and converse with Miss Waller. How came this miracle about?
There had never been a hospital on Nantucket, in spite of the shipwrecks and succorings of two centuries. Certain residents decided it was time one was built. A board of trustees was formed and a house purchased. Money for maintenance was needed. So they built an enormous thermometer on the main street, under overarching elms. When the visitor came to trail Miss Waller he found the temperature about $6,800, which included royalties from one of Miss Waller’s books.
The hospital cottage was not new--but very solid. The visitor reflected that amid all this white paneling of the eighteenth century and mission oak of the nineteenth, other visitors would doubtless soon be drinking tea and paying the cost of absorbent cotton and iron bedsteads. Meanwhile he was sufficiently grateful to be allowed to visit another house and find himself seated opposite Miss Waller. She occupied a chintz-covered chair halfway between a flashing grate fire and a row of windows. Mahogany and the implements of authorship were all about. The mahogany was exceptionally fine. Through the windows, marine views and glimpses of moorland--or what they’d call moorland in an English novel. Talk. About the hospital. Nothing about Miss Waller. Nothing about her work. Nothing about her plans. Yes, she lived on Nantucket the year round. Illness in the family kept her closely at home.... Beyond question, there _is_ a Mary E. Waller. She is not mythical. Though she may some day be a cause of controversy. Let it therefore be set down that Shakespeare, not Bacon, wrote _Hamlet_; Mary E. Waller, not Clara Louise Burnham, wrote _The Wood-Carver of ’Lympus_.
And that is all. No more exists. We may say a word or two about Miss Waller’s books since her big success. It will have to be inadequate and sketchy. _A Daughter of the Rich_ is technically described as “for girls of 10 and upward.” _Sanna of the Island Town_ is a series of pen pictures of incidents in the ordinary life of an island village--Nantucket is the original. _Through the Gates of the Netherlands_ is the “pleasant narrative of the six months’ experience in Holland of an American architect and his wife who saw the country, its art and its people intimately and intelligently.” We quote again from the American Library Association’s catalogue. In epitomizing this sort of volume (travel-educational-gift book) see how excellent the outline method is!