INTRODUCTION
Bushy is real, but she is no longer a little girl. In her memory the scenes and incidents of that strange child-life in the Rockies mingle to form a single pleasant dream. Their hardness is all gone. They have become impersonal, so that it would often be difficult for Bushy herself to determine where the line runs that separates individual experience from environment. But no matter! The whole picture is a truthful one, as those who knew Bushy in the mines could testify.
The resolution of the equation of existence to its simplest form, amid the most rugged surroundings, makes a singular school for the development of womanhood. A child situated as Bushy was, finds little encouragement for that element of innate poetry which ranges from “Jack the Giant Killer” to “The Tempest,” and from “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” to Tennyson’s “Round Table.” The habit of self-dependence, the perpetual exaltation of the practical, the continuous nearness to nature, bring their compensation, nevertheless, in the forced growth of character; character worth having and worth studying.
In the hope that the value of such character may be illustrated here, this story is dedicated to an indulgent public.
THE AUTHOR.