Polly Oliver's Problem

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Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith. Polly Oliver's Problem

KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN

CHAPTER I. A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

CHAPTER II. FORECASTING THE FUTURE

CHAPTER III. THE DOCTOR GIVES POLLY A PRESCRIPTION

CHAPTER IV. THE BOARDERS STAY, AND THE OLIVERS GO

CHAPTER V. TOLD IN LETTERS

CHAPTER VI. POLLY TRIES A LITTLE MISSIONARY WORK

CHAPTER VII "WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS."

CHAPTER VIII. TWO FIRESIDE CHATS

CHAPTER IX. HARD TIMES

CHAPTER X. EDGAR GOES TO CONFESSION

CHAPTER XI. THE LADY IN BLACK

CHAPTER XII. THE GREAT SILENCE

CHAPTER XIII. A GARDEN FLOWER, OR A BANIAN-TREE

CHAPTER XIV. EDGAR DISCOURSES OF SCARLET RUNNERS

CHAPTER XV. LIFE IN THE BIRDS' NEST

CHAPTER XVI. THE CANDLE CALLED PATIENCE

CHAPTER XVII. POLLY LAUNCHES HER SHIPS

CHAPTER XVIII. THE CHILDREN'S HOUR: REPORTED IN A LETTER BY AN EYE-WITNESS

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It is an advantage for an author to have known many places and different sorts of people, though the most vivid impressions are commonly those received in childhood and youth. Mrs. Wiggin, as she is known in literature, was Kate Douglas Smith; she was born in Philadelphia, and spent her young womanhood in California, but when a very young child she removed to Hollis in the State of Maine, and since her maturity has usually made her summer home there; her earliest recollections thus belong to the place, and she draws inspiration for her character and scene painting very largely from this New England neighborhood.

Hollis is a quiet, secluded place, a picturesque but almost deserted village–if the few houses so widely scattered can be termed a village–located among the undulating hills that lie along the lower reaches of the Saco River. Here she plans to do almost all her actual writing–the story itself is begun long before–and she resorts to the place with pent-up energy.

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This school was, and is at the present time, located in a densely inhabited and poverty-ridden quarter of the city. It was largely among the very poor that Mrs. Wiggin's full time and wealth of energy were devoted, for kindergartening was never a fad with her as some may have imagined; always philanthropic in her tendencies, she was, and is, genuinely and enthusiastically in earnest in this work. It is interesting to know that on the wall of one apartment at the Silver Street Kindergarten hangs a life-like portrait of its founder, underneath which you may read these words:–

In this room was born the first free Kindergarten west of the Rocky Mountains. Let me have the happiness of looking down upon many successive groups of children sitting in these same seats.

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