I might tell you that I was prompted by an artistic urge that would not be denied expression, or that clamoring  readers from Herschel's Island to Patagonia and from Oshkosh east to Oshkosh instead upon another classical interpretation of jungle life, but the truth of the matter is that Joan is sixteen and loves to dance, which is an expensive pastime with shoes at eighteen dollars a pair, and that Hulbert blossomed forth in long trousers and evening clothes all in the same year, while the demands of Jack for rifle ammunition, marbles and kite strings threatened to exceed the supply.

It must be wonderful to be able to devote one's self to art for art's sake, a luxury which I have never  been able to afford.