Well, I suppose Uncle Nick was right.
When we let Mr. MacPherson, the publisher from the East, make a book based on my diary of our life in Miracle Springs, I didn’t know what would happen with it. But Uncle Nick said folks would like reading it, and I guess he knew what he was saying, judging from all the mail I’ve received.
Pa’s kind of proud, too—not just of being in a book, but seeing that folks admire him and his family. He walks around town with his head up high, knowing he doesn’t have anything to be ashamed of anymore. And I think too, though he’s never said it, that he hopes some of the folks back in New York might get hold of the book and read it, and will find out he wasn’t as bad a man as some of them might have thought.
Of course Mr. Kemble still blusters around like the whole notion of a book’s a crazy idea. And he still tries to talk to me in the same gruff way. But things are different now, and he knows it. Sometimes I can see a little light in his eye when he’s looking me over that says he’s almost proud of me, though he would never say it! I think he’s a little proud of himself too, because he’s the one who’s pretty much responsible for getting it made into a book. But he won’t admit that, either!
All of them have been hinting at me to tell more about what happened after we found the gold, and about how Miracle started to grow, and about Uncle Nick and Mrs. Parrish and Pa. And I did have to agree with them. When we were first talking about the idea of a book, it seemed like a mighty farfetched notion. But now that I’ve done it, there’s an incomplete feeling about it all. The story is only partway told. So much happened after my birthday when Pa shaved off his beard, and that spring day early in 1853 when we watched the wagons heading East. It hardly seems right that I should tell only part of it, and not what came afterwards.
So that’s what I’m going to do now. I’m going to try my hand at a second book, picking up where I left off with the first.
I hope you like it!
Corrie Belle Hollister
Miracle Springs, California
1863