But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!

[She displayed] what may be described as a native aptitude for narration amounting almost to genius. Her major works were two short story collections Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). The people in her stories are usually inhabitants of Louisiana.