In Writings to Young Women from Laura Ingalls Wilder: On Life As a Pioneer Woman, Laura tells her readers what it was like to be a pioneer in the early 1900s. Her stories and insights show us how difficult even the simplest chores or tasks were for the early pioneers, yet through it all she continued to see each situation as an adventure--as if she was truly blazing the trail for future generations.

From helping others in times of need, to keeping and maintaining friendships, to having a positive attitude, Laura's words of wisdom in "Writings to Young Women from Laura Ingalls Wilder: On Wisdom and Virtues" are applicable even in today's world. As she shares stories and experiences from her own life, she encourages readers to live lives of integrity and to realize their dreams.

Before Laura Ingalls Wilder found fame with her ""Little House"" books, she made a name for herself with short nonfiction pieces in magazines and newspapers. Read today, these pieces offer insight into her development as a writer and depict farm life in the Ozarks - and also show us a different Laura Ingalls Wilder than we have come to know. This volume collects essays by Wilder that originally appeared in the ""Missouri Ruralist"" between 1911 and 1924. Building on the initial compilation of these articles under the title ""Little House in the Ozarks"", this revised edition marks a more comprehensive collection by adding forty-two additional Ruralist articles and restoring passages previously omitted from other articles. Writing as ""Mrs. A. J. Wilder"" about modern life in the early-twentieth-century Ozarks, Laura lends her advice to women of her generation on such timeless issues as how to be an equal partner with their husbands, how to support the new freedoms they'd won with the right to vote, and how to maintain important family values in their changing world. Yet she also discusses such practical matters as how to raise chickens, save time on household tasks, and set aside time to relax now and then. New articles in this edition include ""Making the Best of Things,"" ""Economy in Egg Production,"" and ""Spic, Span, and Beauty."" ""Magic in Plain Foods"" reflects her cosmopolitanism and willingness to take advantage of new technologies, while ""San Marino Is Small but Mighty"" reveals her social-political philosophy and her interest in cooperation and community as well as in individualism and freedom. Mrs. Wilder was firmly committed to living in the present while finding much strength in the values of her past. A substantial introduction by Stephen W. Hines places the essays in their biographical and historical context, showing how these pieces present Wilder's unique perspective on life and politics during the World War I era while commenting on the challenges of surviving and thriving in the rustic Ozark hill country. The former little girl from the little house was entering a new world and wrestling with such issues as motor cars and new ""labor-saving"" devices, but she still knew how to build a model small farm and how to get the most out of a dollar. Together, these writings lend more insight into Wilder than even her novels do and show that, while technology may have improved since she wrote them, the key to the good life hasn't changed much in almost a century. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist distills the essence of her pioneer heritage and will delight fans of her later work as it sheds new light on a vanished era.

Two rather young women, Amy and Helen, traveling with an older uncle, are doing the "tour" of Europe, and are supposedly soaking up education but secretly yearning for adventures and romance. At this wish for adventure, a pair of gloves suddenly drops beside them from a balcony above their hotel room near Coblentz. Ah, whose gloves? The two young men who enter the lives of these ladies are rich and eligible adventurers traveling through Europe, and agree to play a prank on the young women by becoming aides to their uncle.

Maurice Traherne is wrongly accused of fraud and gambling and must play a careful hand if he is to win his love, Octavia, from the grasp of other, less honorable men and retain the trust of those who had faith in him.