Some people are born with a vital and responsive energy. It not only enables them to keep abreast of the times; it qualifies them to furnish in their own personality a good bit of the motive power to the mad pace.

[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.