io6 OBSERVATIONS OF A RANCHWOMAN 



withdrawn in preference. When it was dis- 

 covered later that the critical fifth reader had 

 never been South in her life, the author 

 experienced a pardonable self-gratulation. 

 No doubt this is the plan on which many 

 Southern books are published corrected to 

 suit the Northern reading public's idea of 

 what Southern life, habits, and customs 

 should be, and in nine cases out of ten 

 are not. 



With a ranchwoman's life such matters as 

 politics and sectionalism may seem to have 

 little to do ; but unless she spends year after 

 year shut up within the narrow confines of an 

 ' English set ' which surely no person in full 

 enjoyment of his or her senses would desire 

 to do these and other public questions touch 

 her at all sorts of unexpected points. To live 

 in a rapidly-moving, progressive country, and 

 not be of it to exist without interchange of 

 ideas or the formation of friendships with 

 its people would indeed be a cramped and 

 wretched existence ; and it is in the doing of 

 these things that we discover how, more 

 perhaps in this country than in any other, 

 public and private questions are inextricably 

 mingled. 



