A SON OF THE MIDDLE BORDER

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

tOXDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lit

TORONTO

A SON OF THE
MIDDLE BORDER

BY

HAMLIN GARLAND

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

ALICE BARBER STEPHENS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1928 .,v.x

. ( - *

204

221

234
248
26';

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

COPYRIGHT, 1914 AND 1917
BY P. F. COLLIER & SON

COPYRIGHT, 1917
BY HAMLIN GARLAND

Set up and electrotyped. Published August, 1917. Reprinted
March, 1925, December, 1925. Reissued, January, 1927,
February, 1928.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. HOME FROM THE WAR . . , , i

II. THE McCLiNTOCKS 14

III. THE HOME IN THE COULEE 27

IV. FATHER SELLS THE FARM 42

V. THE LAST THRESHING IN THE COULEE 50

VI. DAVID AND ms VIOLIN 59

VII. WlNNESHEIK "WOODS AND PRAIRIE LANDS " 68

VIII. WE MOVE AGAIN 79

IX. OUR FIRST WINTER ON THE PRAIRIE 85

X. THE HOMESTEAD ON THE KNOLL 99

XL SCHOOL LIFE 107

XII. CHORES AND ALMANACS 116

XIII. BOY LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE 125

XIV. WHEAT AND THE HARVEST 144

XV. HARRIET GOES AWAY 161

XVI. WE MOVE TO TOWN 173

XVII. A TASTE OF VILLAGE LIFE 189

XVIII. BACK TO THE FARM 204

XIX. END OF SCHOOL DAYS 221

XX. THE LAND OF THE DAKOTAS 234

XXI. THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANT 248

XXII. WE DISCOVER NEW ENGLAND 267

V

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

XXIII. COASTING DOWN MT. WASHINGTON 279

XXIV. TRAMPING, NEW YORK, WASHINGTON, AND

CHICAGO 287

XXV. THE LAND OF THE STRADDLE-BUG 301

XXVI. ON TO BOSTON 318

XXVII, ENTER A FRIEND 333

XXVIII. A VISIT TO THE WEST 353

XXIX. I JOIN THE ANTI-POVERTY BRIGADE 375

XXX. MY MOTHER is STRICKEN 396

^XXXI. MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS 410

XXXII. THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT 421

XXXIII. THE END OF THE SUNSET TRAIL 433

XXXIV. WE Go TO CALIFORNIA 440

XXXV. THE HOMESTEAD IN THE VALLEY 455

r

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

My father's return from the war Frontispiece

Father often invited us to his knees 47

Now came the tender farewells 232

The shadows were long on the grass when father rose to reply 236

"I am sorry to have you go " 426

As he played I was a boy again, lying before the fire 452

Vii

A SON OF THE MIDDLE BORDER

A Son of the Middle Border

CHAPTER I
Home from the War

AX of this universe known to me in the year 1864
was bounded by the wooded hills of a little Wis
consin coulee, and its center was the cottage in which
my mother was living alone — my father was in the war.
As I project myself back into that mystical age, half
lights cover most of the valley. The road before our
doorstone begins and ends in vague obscurity — and
Granma Green's house at the fork of the trail stands on
the very edge of the world in a sinister region peopled
with bears and other menacing creatures. Beyond this
point all is darkness and terror.

It is Sunday afternoon and my mother and her three
children, Frank, Harriet and I (all in our best dresses)
are visiting the Widow Green, our nearest neighbor, a
plump, jolly woman whom we greatly love. The house
swarms with stalwart men and buxom women and ^e

A Son of the Middle Border

are all sitting around the table heaped with the remains
of a harvest feast. The women are " telling fortunes "
by means of tea-grounds. Mrs. Green is the seeress.
After shaking the cup with the grounds at the bottom,
she turns it bottom side up in a saucer. Then whirling
it three times to the right and three times to the left,
she lifts it and silently studies the position of the leaves
which cling to the sides of the cup, what time we all
wait in breathless suspense for her first word.

"A soldier is ccnu'ng to you!" she says to my mother.
"See," and she points into the cup. We all crowd near,
and T perceive a leaf with a stem sticking up from its
body like a bayonet over a man's shoulder. "He is al
most home," the widow goes on. Then with sudden dra
matic turn she waves her hand toward the road, "Heav
ens and earth ! " she cries. "There's Richard now ! "

We all turn and look toward the road, and there, in
deed, is a soldier with a musket on his back, wearily
plodding his way up the low hill just north of the gate.
He is too far away for mother to call, and besides I
think she must have been a little uncertain, for he did
not so much as turn his head toward the house. Trem
bling with excitement she hurries little Frank into his
wagon and telling Hattie to bring me, sets off up the
road as fast as she can draw the baby's cart. It all
seems a dream to me and I move dumbly, almost stupidly
like one in a mist. . . .

We did not overtake the soldier, that is evident, for
my next vision is that of a blue-coated figure leaning
upon the fence, studying with intent gaze our empty
cottage. I cannot, even now, precisely divine why he
stood thus, sadly contemplating his silent home, — but
so it was. His knapsack lay at his feet, his musket was
propped against a post on whose top a cat was dream
ing, unmindful of the warrior and his folded hands.

a

Home from the War

He did not hear us until we were close upon him, and
even after he turned, my mother hesitated, so thin, sa
hollow-eyed, so changed was he. " Richard, is that
you?" she quaveringly asked.

His worn face lighted up. His arms rose. "Yes, Belle !
Here I am/' he answered.

Nevertheless though he took my mother in his arms,
I could not relate him to the father I had heard so much
about. To me he was only a strange man with big eyes
and care-worn face. I did not recognize in him anything
I had ever known, but my sister, who was two years
older than I, went to his bosom of her own motion. She
knew him, whilst I submitted to his caresses rather for
the reason that my mother urged me forward than be
cause of any affection I felt for him. Frank, however,
would not even permit a kiss. The gaunt and grizzled
stranger terrified him.

"Come here, my little man," my father said. — "My
little man!" Across the space of half-a-century I can
still hear the sad reproach in his voice. "Won't you
come and see your poor old father when he comes home
from the war? "

"My little man!'9 How significant that phrase seems
to me now! The war had in very truth come between
this patriot and his sons. I had forgotten him — the baby
had never known him.

Frank crept beneath the rail fence and stood there,
well out of reach, like a cautious kitten warily surveying
an alien dog. At last the soldier stooped and drawing
from his knapsack a big red apple, held it toward the
staring babe, confidently calling, "Now, I guess he'll
come to his poor old pap home from the war."

The mother apologized. "He doesn't know you,
Dick. How could he? He was only nine months old
when you went away. He'll go to you by and by."

A Son of the Middle Border

The babe crept slowly toward the shining lure. My
father caught him despite his kicking, and hugged him
close. "Now I've got you," he exulted.

Then we all went into the little front room and the
soldier laid off his heavy army shoes. My mother
brought a pillow to put under his head, and so at last
he stretched out on the floor the better to rest his tired,
aching bones, and there I joined him.

"Oh, Belle!" he said, in tones of utter content. "This
is what I've dreamed about a million times."

Frank and I grew each moment more friendly and soon
began to tumble over him while mother hastened to
cook something for him to eat. He asked for "hot bis
cuits and honey and plenty of coffee."

That was a mystic hour — and yet how little I can
recover of it! The afternoon glides into evening while
the soldier talks, and at last we all go out to the barn to
watch mother milk the cow. I hear him ask about the-
crops, the neighbors. — The sunlight passes. Mother
leads the way back to the house. My father follows
carrying little Frank in his arms.

He is a "strange man" no longer. Each moment his
voice sinks deeper into my remembrance. He is my
father — that I feel ringing through the dim halls of my
consciousness. Harriet clings to his hand in perfect
knowledge and confidence. We eat our bread and milk,
the trundle-bed is pulled out, we children clamber in,
and I go to sleep to the music of his resonant voice re
counting the story of the battles he had seen, and the
marches he had made.

The emergence of an individual consciousness from the
void is, after all, the most amazing fact of human life
and I should like to spend much of this first chapter in
groping about in the luminous shadow of my infant world
because, deeply considered, childish impressions are the

Home from the War

fundamentals upon which an author's fictional out-put
is based; but to linger might weary my reader at the out
set, although I count myself most fortunate in the fact
that my boyhood was spent in the midst of a charming
landscape and during a certain heroic era of western
settlement.

The men and women of that far time loom large in my
thinking for they possessed not only the spirit of adven
turers but the courage of warriors. Aside from the nat
ural distortion of a boy's imagination I am quite sure
that the pioneers of 1860 still retained something broad
and fine in their action, something a boy might honorably
imitate.

The earliest dim scene in my memory is that of a soft
warm evening. I am cradled in the lap of my sister
Harriet who is sitting on the doorstep beneath a low roof.
It is mid-summer and at our feet lies a mat of dark-green
grass from which a frog is croaking. The stars are out,
and above the high hills to the east a mysterious glow
is glorifying the sky. The cry of the small animal at
last conveys to my sister's mind a notion of distress, and
rising she peers closely along the path. Starting back
with a cry of alarm, she calls and my mother hurries
out. She, too, examines the ground, and at last points
out to me a long striped snake with a poor, shrieking
little tree-toad in its mouth. The horror of this scene
fixes it in my mind. My mother beats the serpent with
a stick. The mangled victim hastens away, and the
curtain falls.

I must have been about four years old at this time,
although there is nothing to determine the precise date.
Our house, a small frame cabin, stood on the eastern
slope of a long ridge and faced across a valley which
seemed very wide to me then, and in the middle of it
ky a marsh filled with monsters, from which the Water

A Son of the Middle Border

People sang night by night. Beyond was a wooded
mountain.

This doorstone must have been a favorite evening
seat for my sister, for I remember many other delicious
gloamings. Bats whirl and squeak in the odorous dusk.
Night hawks whiz and boom, and over the dark forest
wall a prodigious moon miraculously rolls. Fire-flies
dart through the grass, and in a lone tree just outside
the fence, a whippoorwill sounds his plaintive note.
Sweet, very sweet, and wonderful are all these!

The marsh across the lane was a sinister menacing
place even by day for there (so my sister Harriet warned
me) serpents swarmed, eager to bite runaway boys.
" And if you step in the mud between the tufts of grass,"
she said, "you will surely sink out of sight." — At night
this teeming bog became a place of dank and horrid
mystery. Bears and wolves and wildcats were reported
as ruling the dark woods just beyond — only the door
yard and the road seemed safe for little men — and even
there I wished my mother to be within immediate call.

My father who had bought his farm "on time," just
before the war, could not enlist among the first volun
teers, though he was deeply moved to do so, till his land
was paid for — but at last in 1863 on the very day that he
made the last payment on the mortgage, he put his name
down on the roll and went back to his wife, a soldier.

I have heard my mother say that this was one of the
darkest moments of her life and if you think about it you
will understand the reason why. My sister was only
five years old, I was three and Frank was a babe in the
cradle. Broken hearted at the thought of the long
separation, and scared by visions of battle my mother
begged the soldier not to go; but he was of the stern
stuff which makes patriots — and besides his name was
already on the roll, therefore he went away to joi&

6

Home from the War

Grant's army at Vicksburg. "What sacrifice! What
folly!" said his pacifist neighbors — "to leave your wife
and children for an idea, a mere sentiment ; to put your
life in peril for a striped silken rag." But he went.
For thirteen dollars a month he marched and fought
while his plow rusted in the shed and his cattle called
to him from their stalls.

My conscious memory holds nothing of my mother's
agony of waiting, nothing of the dark days when the
baby was ill and the doctor far away — but into my
sub-conscious ear her voice sank, and the words Grant,
Lincoln, Sherman, "furlough," "mustered out," ring like
bells, deep-toned and vibrant. I shared dimly in every
emotional utterance of the neighbors who came to call
and a large part of what I am is due to the impressions
of these deeply passionate and poetic years.

Dim pictures come to me. I see my mother at the
spinning wheel, I help her fill the candle molds. I hold
in my hands the queer carding combs with their crinkly
teeth, but my first definite connected recollection is
the scene of my father's return at the close of the war.

I was not quite five years old, and the events of that
day are so commingled with later impressions, — ex
periences which came long after — that I cannot be quite
sure which are true and which imagined, but the picture
as a whole is very vivid and very complete.

Thus it happened that my first impressions of life were
martial, and my training military, for my father brought
back from his two years' campaigning under Sherman
and Thomas the temper and the habit of a soldier.

He became naturally the dominant figure in my hori
zon, and his scheme of discipline impressed itself almost
at once upon his children.

I suspect that we had fallen into rather free and easy
habits under mother's government, for she was too jolly,

A Son of the Middle Border

too tender-hearted, to engender fear in us even when
she threatened us with a switch or a shingle. We soon
learned, however, that the soldier's promise of punish
ment was swift and precise in its fulfillment. We seldom
presumed a second time on his forgetfulness or tolerance.
We knew he loved us, for he often took us to his knees
of an evening and told us stories of marches and battles,;
or chanted war-songs for us, but the moments of his
tenderness were few and his fondling did not prevent
him from almost instant use of the rod if he thought
either of us needed it.

His own boyhood had been both hard and short.
Born of farmer folk in Oxford County, Maine, his early
life had been spent on the soil in and about Lock's Mills
with small chance of schooling. Later, as a teamster,
and finally as shipping clerk for Amos Lawrence, he had
enjoyed three mightily improving years in Boston. He
loved to tell of his life there, and it is indicative of his
character to say that he dwelt with special joy and pride
on the actors and orators he had heard. He could de
scribe some of the great scenes and repeat a few of the
heroic lines of Shakespeare, and the roll of his deep voice
as he declaimed, "Now is the winter of our discontent
made glorious summer by this son of York," thrilled us —
filled us with desire of something far off and wonderful.
But best of all we loved to hear him tell of "Logan at
Peach Tree Creek," and "Kilpatrick on the Granny
White Turnpike."

He was a vivid and concise story-teller and his words
brought to us (sometimes all too clearly), the tragic
happenings of the battle-fields of Atlanta and Nashville.
To him Grant, Lincoln, Sherman and Sheridan were
among the noblest men of the world, and he would not
tolerate any criticism of them.

Next to his stories of the war I think we loved best

8

Home from the War

to have him picture "the pineries" of Wisconsin, for
during his first years in the State he had been both
lumberman and raftsman, and his memory held de
lightful tales of wolves and bears and Indians.

He often imitated the howls and growls and actions
of the wild animals with startling realism, and his river
narratives were full of unforgettable phrases like "the
Jinny Bull Falls," "Old Moosinee" and "running the
rapids."

He also told us how his father and mother came west
by way of the Erie Canal, and in a steamer on the Great
Lakes, of how they landed in Milwaukee with Susan,
their twelve-year-old daughter, sick with the smallpox;
of how a farmer from Monticello carried them in his
big farm wagon over the long road to their future home
in Green county and it was with deep emotion that he
described the bitter reception they encountered in the
village.

It appears that some of the citizens in a panic of dread
were all for driving the Garlands out of town — then
uprose old Hugh McClintock, big and gray as a grizzly
bear, and put himself between the leader of the mob
and its victims, and said, "You shall not lay hands
upon them. Shame on ye!" And such was the powef
of his mighty arm and such the menace of his flashing
eyes that no one went further with the plan of casting
the new comers into the wilderness.

Old Hugh established them in a lonely cabin on the
edge of the village, and thereafter took care of them,
nursing grandfather with his own hands until he was
well. "And thaVs the way the McClintocks and the
Garlands first joined forces," my father often said in
ending the tale. "But the name of the man who carried
your Aunt Susan in his wagon from Milwaukee to
Monticello I never knew."

A Son of the Middle Border

I cannot understand why that sick girl did not die on
that long journey over the rough roads of Wisconsin,
and what it all must have seemed to my gentle New
England grandmother I grieve to think about. Beau
tiful as the land undoubtedly was, such an experience
should have shaken her faith in western men and western
hospitality. But apparently it did not, for I never heard
her allude to this experience with bitterness.

In addition to his military character, Dick Garland
also carried with him the odor of the pine forest and ex
hibited the skill and training of a forester, for in those
early days even at the time when I began to remember
the neighborhood talk, nearly every young man who
could get away from the farm or the village went north,
in November, into the pine woods which covered the
entire upper part of the State, and my father, who had
been a raftsman and timber cruiser and pilot ever since
his coming west, was deeply skilled with axe and steering
oars. The lumberman's life at that time was rough but.
not vicious, for the men were nearly all of native Amer
ican stock, and my father was none the worse for his
winters in camp.

His field of action as lumberman was for several years,
in and around Big Bull Falls (as it was then called),
near the present town of Wausau, and during that time
he had charge of a crew of loggers in winter and in sum
mer piloted rafts of lumber down to Dubuque and other
points where saw mills were located. He was called at
this time, "Yankee Dick, the Pilot."

As a result of all these experiences in the woods, he
was almost as much woodsman as soldier in his talk,
and the heroic life he had led made him very wonderful
in my eyes. According to his account (and I have no
reason to doubt it) he had been exceedingly expert in
running a raft and could ride a canoe like a Chippewa.

10

Home from the War

I remember hearing him very forcefully remark, "God
forgot to make the man I could not follow."

He was deft with an axe, keen of perception, sure of
hand and foot, and entirely capable of holding his own
with any man of his weight. Amid much drinking he
remained temperate, and strange to say never used
tobacco in any form. While not a large man he was
nearly six feet in height, deep-chested and sinewy, and
of dauntless courage. The quality which defended him
from attack was the spirit which flamed from his eagle-
gray eyes. Terrifying eyes they were, at times, as I had
many occasions to note.

As he gathered us all around his knee at night before
the fire, he loved to tell us of riding the whirlpools of
Big Bull Falls, or of how he lived for weeks on a raft
with the water up to his knees (sleeping at night in his
wet working clothes), sustained by the blood of youth
and the spirit of adventure. His endurance even after his
return from the war, was marvellous, although he walked
a little bent and with a peculiar measured swinging
stride — the stride of Sherman's veterans.

As I wras born in the first smoke of the great conflict,
so all of my early memories of Green's coulee are per
meated with the haze of the passing war-cloud. My sol
dier dad taught me the manual of arms, and for a year
Harriet and I carried broom-sticks, flourished lath
sabers, and hammered on dishpans in imitation of of
ficers and drummers. Canteens made excellent water-
bottles for the men in the harvest fields, and the long
blue overcoats which the soldiers brought back with
them from the south lent many a vivid spot of color
to that far-off landscape.

All the children of our valley inhaled with every breath
this mingled air of romance and sorrow, history and
song, and through those epic days runs a deep-laid con-

XI

A Son of the Middle Border

sciousness of maternal pain. My mother's side of those
long months of waiting was never fully delineated, for
she was natively reticent and shy of expression. But
piece by piece in later years I drew from her the tale of
her long vigil, and obtained some hint of the bitter an
guish of her suspense after each great battle.

It is very strange, but I cannot define her face as I
peer back into those childish times, though I can feel
her strong arms about me. She seemed large and quite
middle-aged to me, although she was in fact a hand
some girl of twenty-three. Only by reference to a rare
daguerreotype of the time am I able to correct this
childish impression.

Our farm lay well up in what is called Green's coulee,
in a little valley just over the road which runs along the
LaCrosse river in western Wisconsin. It contained one
hundred and sixty acres of land which crumpled against
the wooded hills on the east and lay well upon a ridge
to the west. Only two families lived above us, and
over the height to the north was the land of the red
people, and small bands of their hunters used occasion
ally to come trailing down across our meadow on their
way to and from LaCrosse, which was their immemorial
trading point.

Sometimes they walked into our house, always with
out knocking — but then we understood their ways. No
one knocks at the wigwam of a red neighbor, and we
were not afraid of them, for they were friendly, and our
mother often gave them bread and meat which they
took (always without thanks) and ate with much relish
while sitting beside our fire. All this seemed very curious
to us, but as they were accustomed to share their food
and lodging with one another so they accepted my
mother's bounty in the same matter-of-fact fashion.

Once two old fellows, while sitting by the fire, watched

12

Home from the War

Frank and me bringing in wood for the kitchen stove,
and smiled and muttered between themselves thereat.
At last one of them patted my brother on the head and
called out admiringly, "Small pappoose, heap work-
good!" and we were very proud ot the old man's praise.

CHAPTER II
The M cClin tocks

THE members of my mother's family must have
been often at our home during my father's mili
tary service in the south, but I have no mental pictures of
them till after my father's home-coming in '65. Their
names were familiar — were, indeed, like bits of old-
fashioned song. "Richard" was a fine and tender word
in my ear, but "David" and "Luke," "Deborah" and
"Samantha," and especially "Hugh," suggested some
thing alien as well as poetic.

They all lived somewhere beyond the hills which
walled our coulee on the east, in a place called Salem,
and I was eager to visit them, for in that direction my
universe died away in a luminous mist of unexplored
distance. I had some notion of its near-by loveliness for
I had once viewed it from the top of the tall bluff which
stood like a warder at the gate of our valley, and when
one bright morning my father said, "Belle, get ready,
and we'll drive over to Grandad's," we all became greatly
excited.

In those days people did not "call," they went
"visitin'." The women took their knitting and stayed
all the afternoon and sometimes all night. No one
owned a carriage. Each family journeyed in a heavy
farm wagon with the father and mother riding high on
the wooden spring seat while the children jounced up
and down on the hay in the bottom of the box or clung
desperately to the side-boards to keep from being jolted

14

The McClintocks

out. In such wise we started on our trip to the Me*
Clintocks'.

The road ran to the south and east around the base
of Sugar Loaf Bluff, thence across a lovely valley and
over a high wooded ridge which was so steep that at
times we rode above the tree tops. As father stopped
the horses to let them rest, we children gazed about
us with wondering eyes. Far behind us lay the LaCrosse
valley through which a slender river ran, while before
us towered wind-worn cliffs of stone. It was an explor
ing expedition for us.

The top of the divide gave a grand view of wooded
hills to the northeast, but father did not wait for us to
enjoy that. He started the team on the perilous down
ward road without regard to our wishes, and so we
bumped and clattered to the bottom, all joy of the
scenery swallowed up in fear of being thrown from the
wagon.

The roar of a rapid, the gleam of a long curving stream,
a sharp turn through a pair of bars, and we found
ourselves approaching a low unpainted house which
stood on a level bench overlooking a river and its
meadows.

"There it is. That's Grandad's house," said mother,
and peering over her shoulder I perceived a group of
people standing about the open door, and heard then-
shouts of welcome.

My father laughed. "Looks as if the whole Mc-
Clintock clan was on parade," he said.

It was Sunday and all my aunts and uncles were in
holiday dress and a merry, hearty, handsome group
they were. One of the men helped my mother out and
another, a roguish young fellow with a pock-marked face,
snatched me from the wagon and carried me under his
arm to the threshold where a short, gray-haired smiling

IS

A Son of the Middle Border

woman was standing. "Mother, here's another grand
son for you," he said as he put me at her feet.

She greeted me kindly and led me into the house, in
which a huge old man with a shock of perfectly white hair
was sitting with a Bible on his knee. He had a rugged
face framed in a circle of gray beard and his glance was
absent-minded and remote. "Father," said my grand
mother, "Belle has come. Here is one of her boys."

Closing his book on his glasses to mark the place of
his reading he turned to greet my mother who entered
at this moment. His way of speech was as strange as
his look and for a few moments I studied him with
childish intentness. His face was rough-hewn as a rock
but it was kindly, and though he soon turned from
his guests and resumed his reading no one seemed to
resent it.

Young as I was I vaguely understood his mood. He
was glad to see us but he was absorbed in something
else, something of more importance, at the moment, than
the chatter of the family. My uncles who came in a
few moments later drew my attention and the white-
haired dreamer fades from this scene.

The room swarmed with McClintocks. There was
William, a black-bearded, genial, quick-stepping giant
who seized me by the collar with one hand and lifted
me off the floor as if I were a puppy just to see how much
I weighed; and David, a tall young man with handsome
dark eyes and a droop at the outer corner of his eyelids
which gave him in repose a look of melancholy distinc
tion. He called me and I went to him readily for I
loved him at once. His voice pleased me and I could see
that my mother loved him too.

From his knee I became acquainted with the girls of
the family. Rachel, a demure and sweet-faced young
woman, and Samantha, the beauty of the family, won

16

The McClintocks

my instant admiration, but Deb, as everybody called her,
repelled me by her teasing ways. They were all gay as
larks and their hearty clamor, so far removed from
the quiet gravity of my grandmother Garland's house,
pleased me. I had an immediate sense of being per*
fectly at home.

There was an especial reason why this meeting should
have been, as it was, a joyous hour. It was, in fact, a
family reunion after the war. The dark days of sixty-
five were over. The Nation was at peace and its warriors
mustered out. True, some of those who had gone "down
South" had not returned. Luke and Walter and Hugh
were sleeping in The Wilderness, but Frank and Richard
were safely at home and father was once more the clarion-
voiced and tireless young man he had been when he
went away to fight. So they all rejoiced, with only a
passing tender word for those whose bodies filled a
soldier's nameless grave.

There were some boys of about my own age, William's
sons, and as they at once led me away down into the
grove, I can say little of what went on in the house after
that. It must have been still in the warm September
weather for we climbed the slender leafy trees and swayed
and swung on their tip-tops like bobolinks. Perhaps I
did not go so very high after all but I had the feeling
of being very close to the sky.

The blast of a bugle called us to dinner and we all
went scrambling up the bank and into the "front room"
like a swarm of hungry shotes responding to the call of
the feeder. Aunt Deb, however shooed us out into the
kitchen. "You can't stay here," she said. "Mother'll
feed you in the kitchen."

Grandmother was waiting for us and our places were
ready, so what did it matter? We had chicken and
mashed potato and nice hot biscuit and honey — just as

17

A Son of the Middle Border

good as the grown people had and could eat all we wanted
without our mothers to bother us. I am quite certain
about the honey for I found a bee in one of the cells of
my piece of comb, and when I pushed my plate away
in dismay grandmother laughed and said, "That is
only a little baby bee. You see this is wild honey. Wil
liam got it out of a tree and didn't have time to pick all
the bees out of it."

At this point my memories of this day fuse and flow
into another visit to the McClintock homestead which
must have taken place the next year, for it is my Jjnal
record of my grandmother. I do not recall a single
word that she said, but she again waited on us in the
kitchen, beaming upon us with love and understanding.
I see her also smiling in the midst of the joyous tumult
which her children and grandchildren always produced
when they met. She seemed content to listen and to serve.

She was the mother of seven sons, each a splendid type
of sturdy manhood, and six daughters almost equally
gifted in physical beauty. Four of the sons stood over
six feet in height and were of unusual strength. All of
them — men and women alike — were musicians by in^
heritance, and I never think of them without hearing
the sound of singing or the voice of the violin. Each of
them could play some instrument and some of them
could play any instrument. David, as you shall learn,
was the finest fiddler of them all. Grandad himself was
able to play the violin but he no longer did so. "'Tis
the Devil's instrument," he said, but I noticed that he
always kept time to it.

Grandmother had very little learning. She could
read and write of course, and she made frequent pathetic
attempts to open her Bible or glance at a newspaper-
all to little purpose, for her days were filled from dawn
to dark with household duties.

18

The McClintocks

I know little of her family history. Beyond the fact
that she was born in Maryland and had been always on
the border, I have little to record. She was in truth
overshadowed by the picturesque figure of her husband
who was of Scotch-Irish descent and a most singular and
interesting character.

He was a mystic as well as a minstrel. He was an
"Adventist" — that is to say a believer in the Second
Coming of Christ, and a constant student of the Bible,
especially of those parts which predicted the heavens
rolling together as a scroll, and the destruction of the
earth. Notwithstanding his lack of education and his
rude exterior, he was a man of marked dignity and so
briety of manner. Indeed he was both grave and re
mote in his intercourse with his neighbors.

He was like Ezekiel, a dreamer of dreams. He loved
the Old Testament, particularly those books which
consisted of thunderous prophecies and passionate lam
entations. The poetry of Isaiah, The visions of The
Apocalypse, formed his emotional outlet, his escape into
the world of imaginative literature. The songs he loved
best were those which described chariots of flaming
clouds, the sound of the resurrection trump — or the
fields of amaranth blooming "on the other side of
Jordan."

As I close my eyes and peer back into my obscure
childish world I can see him sitting in his straight-
backed cane-bottomed chair, drumming on the rungs
with his fingers, keeping time to some inaudible tune —
or chanting with faintly-moving lips the wondrous
words of John or Daniel. He must have been at this
time about seventy years of age, but he seemed to me
as old as a snow-covered mountain.

My belief is that Grandmother did not fully share
her husband's faith in The Second Coming but upon

19

A Son of the Middle Border

her fell the larger share of the burden of entertainment
when Grandad made "the travelling brother" welcome.
His was an open house to all who came along the road,
and the fervid chantings, the impassioned prayers of
these meetings lent a singular air of unreality to the
business of cooking or plowing in the fields.

I think he loved his wife and children, and yet I never
heard him speak an affectionate word to them. He was
kind, he was just, but he was not tender. With eyes
turned inward, with a mind filled with visions of angel
messengers with trumpets at their lips announcing "The
Day of Wrath," how could he concern himself with the
ordinary affairs of human life?

Too old to bind grain in the harvest field, he was
occasionally intrusted with the task of driving the
reaper or the mower — and generally forgot to oil the
bearings. His absent-mindedness was a source of
laughter among his sons and sons-in-law. I've heard
Frank say: "Dad would stop in the midst of a swath to
announce the end of the world." He seldom remembered
to put on a hat even in the blazing sun of July and his
daughters had to keep an eye on him to be sure he had
his vest on right-side out.

Grandmother was cheerful in the midst of her toil
and discomfort, for what other mother had such a family
of noble boys and handsome girls? They all loved her,
that she knew, and she was perfectly willing to sacrifice
her comfort to promote theirs. Occasionally Samantha
or Rachel remonstrated with her for working so hard,
but she only put their protests aside and sent them back
to their callers, for when the McClintock girls were at
home, the horses of their suitors tied before the gate
would have mounted a small troop of cavalry.

It was well that this pioneer wife was rich in children,
for she had little else. I do not suppose she ever knew

20

The McClintocks

what it was to have a comfortable well-aired bed-room,
even in child-birth. She was practical and a good man
ager, and she needed to be, for her husband was as
weirdly unworldly as a farmer could be. He was indeed
a sa^, husbandman. Only the splendid abundance of
the soil and the manual skill of his sons, united to the
good management of his wife, kept his family fed and
clothed. "What is the use of laying up a store of goods
against the early destruction of the world?" he argued.

He was bitterly opposed to secret societies, for some
reason which I never fully understood, and the only
fury I ever knew him to express was directed against
these "dens of iniquity."

Nearly all his neighbors, like those in our coulee, were^
nativejAmerican as their names indicated. The Dud~
"leys, Elwells, and Griswolds came from Connecticut, the
McEldowneys and McKinleys from New York and
Ohio, the Baileys and Garlands from Maine. Buoyant,
vital, confident, these sons of the border bent to the work
of breaking sod and building fence quite in the spirit
of sportsmen.

They were always racing in those days, rejoicing in
their abounding vigor. With them reaping was a game,
husking corn a test of endurance and skill, threshing a
" bee." It was a Dudley against a McClintock, a Gilfillan
against a Garland, and my father's laughing descriptions
of the barn-raisings, harvestings and rail-splittings of the
valley filled my mind with vivid pictures of manly deeds.
Every phase of farm work was carried on by hand.
Strength and skill counted high and I had good reason
for my idolatry of David and William. With the hearts
of woodsmen and fists of sailors they were precisely the
type to appeal to the imagination of a boy. Hunters,
athletes, skilled horsemen — everything they did was to
me heroic.

21

A Son of the Middle Border

Frank, smallest of all these sons of Hugh, was not what
(in observer would call puny. He weighed nearly one
hundred and eighty pounds and never met his match
except in his brothers. William could outlift him, David
could out-run him and outleap him, but he was more
agile than either — was indeed a skilled acrobat.

His muscles were prodigious. The calves of his legs
would not go into his top boots, and I have heard my
father say that once when the "tumbling" in the little
country "show" seemed not to his liking, Frank sprang
over the ropes into the arena and went around the ring
in a series of professional flip-flaps, to the unrestrained
delight of the spectators. I did not witness this per
formance, I am sorry to say, but I have seen him do
somersaults and turn cart-wheels in the dooryard just
from the pure joy of living. He could have been a pro
fessional acrobat — and he came near to being a pro
fessional ball-player.

He was always smiling, but his temper was fickle.
Anybody could get a fight out of Frank McClintock at
any time, simply by expressing a desire for it. To call
him a liar was equivalent to contracting a doctor's bill.
He loved hunting, as did all his brothers, but was too
excitable to be a highly successful shot — whereas William
and David were veritable Leather-stockings in their
mastery of the heavy, old-fashioned rifle. David was
especially dreaded at the turkey shoots of the county.

William was over six feet in height, weighed two hun
dred and forty pounds, and stood "straight as an Injun."
He was one of the most formidable men of the valley — •
even at fifty as I first recollect him, he walked with a
quick lift of his foot like that of a young Chippewa. To
me he was a huge gentle black bear, but I firmly believed
he could whip any man in the world — even Uncle David
—if he wanted to. I never expected to see him fight, for

The McClintocks

I could not imagine anybody foolish enough to invite
his wrath.

Such a man did develop, but not until William was
over sixty, gray-haired and ill, and even then it took two
strong men to engage him fully, and when it was all
over (the contest filled but a few seconds), one assailant
could not be found, and the other had to call in a doctor
to piece him together again.

William did not have a mark — his troubles began when
he went home to his quaint little old wife. In some
strange way she divined that he had been fighting, and
soon drew the story from him. "William McClintock,"
said she severely, "hain't you old enough to keep your
temper and not go brawling around like that and at a
school meeting too!"

William hung his head. "Well, I dunno! — T suppose
my dyspepsy has made me kind o' irritable," he said
by way of apology.

My father was the historian of most of these exploits
on the part of his brothers-in-law, for he loved to exalt
their physical prowess at the same time that he deplored
their lack of enterprise and system. Certain of their
traits he understood well. Others he was never able to
comprehend, and I am not sure that they ever quite
understood themselves.

A deep vein of poetry, of sub-conscious Celtic sadness^
_ran through them all. It was associated with their love"
of music and was wordless. Only hints of this endow
ment came out now and again, and to the day of his
death my father continued to express perplexity, and a
kind of irritation at the curious combination of bitterness
and jweetness^ sloth and tremendous energy, slovenli
ness and exaltation which made Hugh McClintock and
his sons the jest and the admiration of those who knew
them best.

23

A Son of the Middle Border

Undoubtedly to the Elwells and Dudleys, as to most
of their definite, practical, orderly and successful New
England neighbors, my uncles were merely a good-
natured, easy-going lot of " fiddlers," but to me as 1
grew old enough to understand them, they became a
group of potential poets, bards and dreamers, inarticu
late and moody. They fell easily into somber silence.
Even Frank, the most boisterous and outspoken of them
all, could be thrown into sudden melancholy by a melody,
a line of poetry or a beautiful landscape.

The reason for this praise of their quality, if the reason
needs to be stated, lies in my feeling of definite indebted
ness to them. They furnished much of the charm and
poetic suggestion of my childhood. Most of what I have
in the way of feeling for music, for rhythm, I derive from
my mother's side of the house, for it was almost entirely
Celt in every characteristic. She herself was a wordless
poet, a sensitive singer of sad romantic songs.

Father was by nature an orator and a lover of the
drama. So far as I am aware, he never read a poem if
he could help it, and yet he responded instantly to
music, and was instinctively courtly in manner. His
mind was clear, positive and definite, and his utterances
fluent. Orderly, resolute and thorough in all that he
did, he despised William McClintock's easy-going habits
of husbandry, and found David's lack of "push," of
business enterprise, deeply irritating. And yet he loved
them both and respected my mother for defending
them.

To me, in those days, the shortcomings of the Me-
Clintocks did not appear particularly heinous. All our
neighbors were living in log houses and frame shanties
built beside the brooks, or set close against the hillsides,
and William's small unpainted dwelling seemed a nat
ural feature of the landscape, but as the years passed

24

The McCHntocks

jtfid other and more enterprising settlers built big barns,
and shining white houses, the gray and leaning stables,
sagging gates and roofs of my uncle's farm, became a
reproach even in my eyes, so that when I visited it for
the last time just before our removal to Iowa, I, too, was
a little ashamed of it. Its disorder did not diminish my
regard for the owner, but I wished he would clean out
the stable and prop up the wagon-shed. ^

My grandmother's death came soon after our second
visit to the homestead. I have no personal memory of
the event, but I heard Uncle David describe it. The
setting of the final scene in the drama was humble. The
girls were washing clothes in the yard and the silent
old mother was getting the mid-day meal. David, as
he came in from the field, stopped for a moment with
his sisters and in their talk Samantha said: " Mother
isn't at all well today."

David, looking toward the kitchen, said, "Isn't there
some way to keep her from working?"

"You know how she is," explained Deborah. "She's
worked so long she don't know how to rest. We
tried to get her to lie down for an hour but she
wouldn't."

David was troubled. "She'll have to stop sometime,"
he said, and then they passed to other things, hearing
meanwhile the tread of their mother's busy feet.

Suddenly she appeared at the door, a frightened look
on her face.

"Why, mother! — what is the matter?" asked her
daughter.

She pointed to her mouth and shook her head, to in
dicate that she could not speak. David leaped toward
her, but she dropped before he could reach her.

Lifting her in his strong arms he laid her on her
bed and hastened for the doctor. All in vain! She

-5

A Son of the Middle Border

sank into unconsciousness and died without a word of
farewell.

She fell like a soldier in the ranks. Having served
uncomplainingly up to the very edge of her evening
bivouac, she passed to her final sleep hi silent dignity.

CHAPTER HI
The Home in the Coulee

OUR postoffice was in the village of Onalaska, sit
uated at the mouth of the Black River, which
came down out of the wide forest lands of the north. It
was called a "boom town" for the reason that "booms"
or yards for holding pine logs laced the quiet bayou
and supplied several large mills with timber. Busy
saws clamored from the islands and great rafts of planks
and lath and shingles were made up and floated down
into the Mississippi and on to southern markets.

It was a rude, rough little camp filled with raftsmen,
loggers, mill-hands and boomsmen. Saloons abounded
and deeds of violence were common, but to me it was a
poem. From its position on a high plateau it com
manded a lovely southern expanse of shimmering water
bounded by purple bluffs. The spires of LaCrosse rose
from the smoky distance, and steamships' hoarsely
giving voice suggested illimitable reaches of travel.
Some day I hoped my father would take me to that
shining market-place whereto he carried all our grain.

In this village of Onalaska, lived my grandfather and
grandmother Garland, and their daughter Susan, whose
husband, Richard Bailey, a quiet, kind man, was held in
deep affection by us all. Of course he could not quite
measure up to the high standards of David and William,
even though he kept a store and sold candy, for he could
neither kill a bear, nor play the fiddle, nor shoot a gun — •
much less turn hand-springs or tame a wild horse, but

A Son of the Middle Border

we liked him notwithstanding his limitations and were
always glad when he came to visit us.

Even at - ais time I recognized the wide differences
which separated the McClintocks from the Garlands.
The fact that my father's people lived to the west and
in a town> helped to emphasize the divergence.
~ All the McClintocks were farmers, but grandfather
Garland was a carpenter by trade, and a leader in his
church which was to him a club, a forum and a commer
cial exchange. He was a native of Maine and proud
of the fact. His eyes were keen and gray, his teeth fine
and white, and his expression stern. His speech was neat
and nipping. As a workman he was exact and his tools
were always in perfect order. In brief he was a Yankee,
as concentrated a bit of New England as was ever trans
planted to the border. Hopelessly "sot" in all his
eastern ways, he remained the doubter, the critic, all
life.

We always spoke of him with formal precision as
Grandfather Garland, never as "Grandad" or "Gran-
pap" as we did in alluding to Hugh McClintock, and
his long prayers (pieces of elaborate oratory) wearied
us, while those of Grandad, which had the extravagance,
the lyrical abandon of poetry, profoundly pleased us.
Grandfather's church was a small white building in the
edge of the village, Grandad's place of worship was a
Vision, a cloudbuilt temple, a house not made with hands.

The contrast between my grandmothers was equally
wide. Harriet Garland was tall and thin, with a dark
and serious face. She was an invalid, and confined to a
chair, which stood in the corner of her room. On the
walls within reach of her hand hung many small pockets,
so ordered that she could obtain her sewing materials
without rising. She was always at work when I called,
but it was her habit to pause and discover in some one

28

The Home in the Coulee

of her receptacles a piece of candy or a stick of "lickerish
root" which she gave to me "as a reward for being a
good boy."

She was always making needle rolls and thimble boxes
and no doubt her skill helped to keep the family fed and
clothed.

Notwithstanding all divergence in the characters of
Grandmother Garland and Grandmother McClintock,
we held them both in almost equal affection. Serene,
patient, bookish, Grandmother Garland brought to us,
as to her neighbors in this rude river port, some of the
best qualities of intellectual Boston, and from her lips
we acquired many of the precepts and proverbs of our
Pilgrim forbears.

Her influence upon us was distinctly literary. She
gloried in New England traditions, and taught us to
love the poems of Whittier and Longfellow. It was she
who called us to her knee and told us sadly yet benignly
of the death of Lincoln, expressing only pity for the
misguided assassin. She was a constant advocate of
charity, piety, and learning. Always poor, and for
many years a cripple, I never heard her complain, and
no one, I think, ever saw her face clouded with a frown.

Our neighbors in Green's Coulee were all native Amer
ican. The first and nearest, Al Randal and his wife
and son, we saw often and on the whole liked, but the
Whitwells who lived on the farm above us were a con
stant source of comedy to my father. Old Port, as he
was called, was a mild-mannered man who would have
made very little impression on the community, but for
his wife, a large and rather unkempt person, who as
sumed such man-like freedom of speech that my father
was never without an amusing story of her doings.

She swore in vigorous pioneer fashion, and dominated
her husband by force of lung power as well as by a certain

29

A Son of the Middle Border

painful candor. "Port, you're an old fool," she often
said to him in our presence. It was her habit to apolo
gize to her guests, as they took their seats at her abun
dant table, "Wai, now, folks, I'm sorry, but there ain't a
blank thing in this house fit for a dawg to eat — " ex
pecting of course to have everyone cry out, "Oh, Mrs.
Whitwell, this is a splendid dinner!" which they gener
ally did. But once my father took her completely aback
by rising resignedly from the table — "Come, Belle," said
he to my mother, "let's go home. I'm not going to eat
food not fit for a dog."

The rough old woman staggered under this blow, but
quickly recovered. "Dick Garland, you blank fool.
Sit down, or I'll fetch you a swipe with the broom."
In spite of her profanity and ignorance she wasjiggoji

jneighbor and in time of trouble no one was readiejrto
relieve any distress in the coulee. However, it was
upon Mrs. Randal and the widow Green that my mother
called for aid, and I do not think Mrs. Whitwell was
ever quite welcome even at our quilting bees, for her

(Vloud voice silenced every other, and my mother did not
enjoy her vulgar stories. — Yes, I can remember several
quilting bees, and I recall molding candles, arid that
our "company light" was a large kerosene lamp, in the
glass globe of which a strip of red flannel was coiled.
Probably this was merely a device to lengthen out the
wick, but it made a memorable spot of color in the
room — just as the watch-spring gong in the clock gave
off a sound of fairy music to my ear. I don't know why
the ring of that coil had such a wondrous appeal, but I
often climbed upon a chair to rake its spirals with a nail
in order that I might float away on its "dying fall."

' Life was primitive in all the homes of the coulee.
Money was hard to get. We always had plenty to eat,
but little in the way of luxuries. We had few toys

30

The Home in the Coulee

except those we fashioned for ourselves, and our gar
ments were mostly homemade. I have heard my father
say, "Belle could go to town with me, buy the calicoi
for a dress and be wearing it for supper" — but I fearl
that even this did not happen very often. Her "dress*
up" gowns, according to certain precious old tintypes,
indicate that clothing was for her only a sort of uni
form, — and yet I will not say this made her unhappy.
Her face was always smiling. She knit all our socks,
made all our shirts and suits. She even carded and spun
wool, in addition to her housekeeping, and found time
to help on our kites and bows and arrows.

Month by month the universe in which I lived light
ened and widened. In my visits to Onalaska, I dis
covered the great Mississippi River, and the Minnesota
Bluffs. The light of knowledge grew stronger. I began
to perceive forms and faces which had been hidden in
the dusk of babyhood. I heard more and more of La-
Crosse, and out of the mist filled lower valley the boom
ing roar of steamboats suggested to me distant countries
and the sea.

My father believed in service. At seven years of age,
I had regular duties. I brought firewood to the kitchen
and broke nubbins for the calves and shelled corn for
the chickens. I have a dim memory of helping him
(and grandfather) split oak-blocks into rafting pins in
the kitchen. This seems incredible to me now, and yet
it must have been so. In summer Harriet and I drove
the cows to pasture, and carried "switchel" to the men
in the hay-fields by means of a jug hung in the middle
of a long stick.

Haying was a delightful season to us, for the scythes
of the men occasionally tossed up clusters of beautiful
strawberries, which we joyfully gathered. I remember

A Son of the Middle Border

with especial pleasure the delicious shortcakes which
my mother made of the wild fruit which we picked in
the warm odorous grass along the edge of the meadow.
^ Harvest time also brought a pleasing excitement
(something unwonted, something like entertaining visi
tors) which compensated for the extra work demanded
of us. The neighbors usually came in to help and life
was a feast.

There was, however, an ever-present menace in our
;lives, the snake! During mid-summer months blue
racers and rattlesnakes swa,rmed and the terror of them
often chilled our childish hearts. Once Harriet and I,
with little Frank in his cart, came suddenly upon a
monster diamond-back rattler sleeping by the roadside.
In our mad efforts to escape, the car was overturned
and the baby scattered in the dust almost within reach
of the snake. As soon as she realized what had happened,
Harriet ran back bravely, caught up the child and
brought him safely away.

Another day, as I was riding on the load of wheat-
sheaves, one of the men, in pitching the grain to the
wagon lifted a rattlesnake with his fork. I saw it
writhing in the bottom of the sheaf, and screamed out,
"A snake, a snake!" It fell across the man's arm but
slid harmlessly to the ground, and he put a tine through
it.

As it chanced to be just dinner time he took it with
him to the house and fastened it down near the door
of a coop in which an old hen and her brood of chickens
were confined. I don't know why he did this but it
threw the mother hen into such paroxysms of fear that
she dashed herself again and again upon the slats of her
house. It appeared that she comprehended to the full
the terrible power of the writhing monster.

Perhaps it was this same year that one of the men dia-

32

The Home in the Coulee

covered another enormous yellow-back in the barn
yard, one of the largest ever seen on the farm — and
killed it just as it was moving across an old barrel. I
cannot now understand why it tried to cross the barrel,
but I distinctly visualize the brown and yellow band it
made as it lay for an instant just before the bludgeon
fell upon it, crushing it and the barrel together. He was
thicker than my leg and glistened in the sun with sinister
splendor. As he hung limp over the fence, a warning to
his fellows, it was hard for me to realize that death still
lay in his square jaws and poisonous fangs.

Innumerable garter-snakes infested the marsh, and
black snakes inhabited the edges of the woodlands, but
we were not so much afraid of them. We accepted them
as unavoidable companions in the wild. They would
run from us. Bears and wildcats we held in real terror, *,
though they were considered denizens of the darkness
and hence not likely to be met with if one kept to the
daylight.

The "hoop snake'7 was quite as authentic to us as the
blue racer, although no one had actually seen one.',)
Den Green's cousin's uncle had killed one in Michigan,
and a man over the ridge had once been stung by one
that came rolling down the hill with his tail in his mouth.
But Den's cousin's uncle, when he saw the one coming
toward him, had stepped aside quick as lightning, and
the serpent's sharp fangs had buried themselves so deep
in the bark of a tree, that he could not escape.

Various other of the myths common to American "••
boyhood, were held in perfect faith by Den and Ellis
and Ed, myths which made every woodland path an
ambush and every marshy spot a place of evil. Horse
hairs would turn to snakes if left in the spring, and a
serpent's tail would not die till sundown.

Once on the high hillside, I started a stone rolling,

33

A Son of the Middle Border

which as it went plunging into a hazel thicket, thrust out
a deer, whose flight seemed fairly miraculous to me.
He appeared to drift along the hillside like a bunch of
thistle-down, and I took a singular delight in watching
him disappear.

Once my little brother and I, belated in our search for
the cows, were far away on the hills when night suddenly
came upon us. I could not have been more than eight
years old and Frank was five. This incident reveals
the fearless use our father made of us. True, we were
hardly a mile from the house, but there were many
serpents on the hillsides and wildcats in the cliffs, and
eight is pretty young for such a task.

We were following the cows through the tall grass and
bushes, in the dark, when father came to our rescue,
and I do not recall being sent on a similar expedition
thereafter. I think mother protested against the danger
of it. Her notions of our training were less rigorous.

I never hear a cow-bell of a certain timbre that I do
Jiot relive in some degree the terror and despair of that
hour on the mountain, when it seemed that my world had
suddenly slipped away from me.

Winter succeeds summer abruptly in my memory.
Behind our house rose a sharp ridge down which we
used to coast. Over this hill, fierce winds blew the
snow, and wonderful, diamonded drifts covered the
yard, and sometimes father was obliged to dig deep
trenches in order to reach the barn.

On winter evenings he shelled corn by drawing the
cars across a spade resting on a wash tub, and we chil
dren built houses of the cobs, while mother sewed carpet
rags or knit our mittens. Quilting bees of an afternoonJ
were still recognized social functions and the spread \
quilt on its frame made a gorgeous tent under which
my brother and I camped on our way to "Colorado."

Ihe Home in the Coulee

Lath swords and tin-pan drums remained a part of our
equipment for a year or two.

One stormy winter day, Edwin Randal, riding borne
in a sleigh behind his uncle, saw me in the yard and, pick
ing an apple from an open barrel beside which he was
standing, threw it at me. It was a very large apple, and
as it struck the drift it disappeared leaving a round deep
hole. Delving there I recovered it, and as I brushed the
rime from its scarlet skin it seemed the most beautiful
thing in this world. From this vividly remembered de
light, I deduce the fact that apples were not very plenti
ful in our home.

My favorite place in winter time was directly under
the kitchen stove. It was one of the old-fashioned high-
stepping breed, with long hind legs and an arching belly,
and as the oven was on top, the space beneath the arch
offered a delightful den for a cat, a dog or small boy, and
I was usually to be found there, lying on my stomach,
spelling out the "continued" stories which came to us
in the county paper, for I was born with a hunger for
print.

We had few books in our house. Aside from the Bible
I remember only one other, a thick, black volume filled
with gaudy pictures of cherries and plums, and por
traits of ideally fat and prosperous sheep, pigs and
cows. It must have been a Farmer's Annual o
State agricultural report, but it contained in the mi
of its dry prose, occasional poems like "/ remember,
I remember" "The Old Armchair" and other pieces of a
domestic or rural nature. I was especially moved by
The Old Armchair, and although some of the words
and expressions were beyond my comprehension, I fully
understood the defiant tenderness of the lines:

I love it, I love it, and who shall dare
To chide me for loving the old armchair?

35

A Son of the Middle Border

I fear the horticultural side of this volume did not
interest me, but this sweetly-sad poem tinged even the
gaudy pictures of prodigious plums and shining apples
with a literary glamor. The preposterously plump
cattle probably affected me as only another form of ro
mantic fiction. The volume also had a pleasant smell,
not so fine an odor as the Bible, but so delectable that
I loved to bury my nose in its opened pages. What
caused this odor I cannot tell — perhaps it had been used
to press flowers or sprigs of sweet fern.

Harriet's devotion to literature, like my own, was a
nuisance. If my mother wanted a pan of chips she had
to wrench one of us from a book, or tear us from a paper.
If she pasted up a section of Harper's Weekly behind the
washstand in the kitchen, I immediately discovered a
special interest in that number, and likely enough for
got to wash myself. When mother saw this (as of course
she very soon did), she turned the paper upside down,
and thereafter accused me, with some justice, of stand
ing on my head in order to continue my tale. "In fact/'
she often said, "it is easier for me to do my errands my
self than to get either of you young ones to move."

The first school which we attended was held in a neigh
boring farm-house, and there is very little to tell con
cerning it, but at seven I began to go to the public school
in Onalaska and memory becomes definite, for the wide
river which came silently out of the unknown north,
carrying endless millions of pine logs, and the clamor of
saws in the island mills, and especially the men walking
the rolling logs with pike-poles in their hands filled me
with a wordless joy. To be one of these brave and
graceful ''drivers" seemed almost as great an honor as
to be a Captain in the army. Some of the boys of my
acquaintance were sons of these hardy boomsmen, and
related wonderful stories of their fathers' exploits —

36

The Home in the Coulee

stories which we gladly believed. We all intended to be
rivermen when we grew up.

The quiet water below the booms harbored enormous
fish at that time, and some of the male citizens who
were too lazy to work in the mills got an easy living by
capturing cat-fish, and when in liquor joined the river-
men in their drunken frays. My father's tales of the
exploits of some of these redoubtable villains filled my
mind with mingled admiration and terror. No one
used the pistol, however, and very few the knife. Phys
ical strength counted. Foot and fist were the weapons
which ended each contest and no one was actually slain
in these meetings of rival crews.

In the midst of this tumult, surrounded by this coarse,
unthinking life, my Grandmother Garland's home stood,
a serene small sanctuary of lofty womanhood, a temple
of New England virtue. From her and from my great
aunt Bridges who lived in St. Louis, I received my
first literary instruction, a partial off-set to the vulgar
yet heroic influence of the raftsmen and mill hands.

The school-house, a wooden two story building, oc
cupied an unkempt lot some distance back from the
river and near a group of high sand dunes which pos
sessed a sinister allurement to me. They had a mys
terious desert quality, a flavor as of camels and Arabs.
Once you got over behind them it seemed as if you were
in another world, a far-off arid land where no water ran
and only sear, sharp-edged grasses grew. Some of these
mounds were miniature peaks of clear sand, so steep
and dry that you could slide all the way down from top
to bottom, and do no harm to your Sunday-go-to-meeting
clothes. On rainy days you could dig caves in their sides.

But the mills and the log booms were after all much
more dramatic and we never failed to hurry away to the
river if we had half an hour to spare. The " drivers,"

37

A Son of the Middle Border

so brave and skilled, so graceful, held us in breathless
admiration as they leaped from one rolling log to another,
or walked the narrow wooden bridges above the deep
and silently sweeping waters. The piles of slabs, the
mounds of saw-dust, the intermittent, ferocious snarl of
the saws, the slap of falling lumber, the never ending
fires eating up the refuse — all these sights and sounds
made a return to school difficult. Even the life around
the threshing machine seemed a little tame in comparison
with the life of the booms.

We were much at the Greens', our second-door neigh
bors to the south, and the doings of the men-folks fill
large space in my memory. Ed, the oldest of the boys,
a man of twenty-three or four, was as prodigious in his
way as my Uncle David. He was mighty with the axe.
His deeds as a railsplitter rivaled those of Lincoln.
The number of cords of wood he could split in a single
day was beyond belief. It was either seven or eleven,
I forget which — I am perfectly certain of the number of
buckwheat pancakes he could eat for I kept count on
several occasions. Once he ate nine the size of a dinner
plate together with a suitable number of sausages — •
but what would you expect of a man who could whirl g
six pound axe all day in a desperate attack on the forest,
without once looking at the sun or pausing for breath?

However, he fell short of my hero in other ways. He
looked like a fat man and his fiddling was only middling,
therefore, notwithstanding his prowess with the axe and
the maul, he remained subordinate to David, and though
they never came to a test of strength we were perfectly
sure that David was the finer man. His supple grace and
his unconquerable pride made him altogether admirable.

Den, the youngest of the Greens, was a boy about three
years my senior, and a most attractive lad. I met him
some years ago in California, a successful doctor, and we

The Home in the Coulee

talked of the days when I was his slave and humbly
carried his powder horn and game bag. Ellis Usher,
'who lived in Sand Lake and often hunted with Den, is
an editor in Milwaukee and one of the political leaders
of his state. In those days he had a small opinion oi
me. No doubt I was a nuisance.

The road which led from our farm to the village school
crossed a sandy ridge and often in June our path became
so hot that it burned the soles of our feet. If we went!
out of the road there were sand-burrs and we lost a great!
deal of time picking needles from our toes. How we
hated those sand-burrs! — However, on these sand bar
rens many luscious strawberries grew. They were not
large, but they gave off a delicious odor, and it some
times took us a long time to reach home.

There was a recognized element of danger in this
road. Wildcats were plentiful around the limestone
cliffs, and bears had been seen under the oak trees. In
fact a place on the hillside was often pointed out with
awe as "the place where Al Randal killed the bear."
Our way led past the village cemetery also, and there
was to me something vaguely awesome in that silent
bivouac of the dead.

Among the other village boys in the school were two
lads named Gallagher, one of whom, whose name was
Matt, became my daily terror. He was two years older
than I and had all of a city gamin's cunning and self-
command. At every intermission he sidled close to me,
walking round me, feeling my arms, and making much
of my muscle. Sometimes he came behind and lifted me
to see how heavy I was, or called attention to my strong
hands and wrists, insisting with the most terrifying can
dor of conviction, "I'm sure you can lick me." We
never quite came to combat, and finally he gave up this
baiting for a still more exquisite method of torment.

39

A Son of the Middle Border

My sister and I possessed a dog named Rover, a meek
little yellow, bow-legged cur of mongrel character, but
with the frankest, gentlest and sweetest face, it seemed
to us, in all the world. He was not allowed to accom
pany us to school and scarcely ever left the yard, but
Matt Gallagher in some way discovered my deep affec
tion for this pet and thereafter played upon my fears
with a malevolence which knew no mercy. One day
he said, "Me and brother Dan are going over to your
place to get a calf that's in your pasture. We're going
to get excused fifteen minutes early. We'll get there
before you do and we'll fix that dog of yours! — There
won't be nothin' left of him but a grease spot when we are
done with him."

These words, spoken probably in jest, instantly filled
my heart with an agony of fear. I saw in imagination
just how my little playmate would come running out to
meet his cruel foes, his brown eyes beaming with love
and trust, — I saw them hiding sharp stones behind their
backs while snapping their left-hand fingers to lure him
within reach, and then I saw them drive their murdering
weapons at his head.

I could think of nothing else. I could not study, I
could only sit and stare out of the window with tears
running down my cheeks, until at last, the teacher ob
serving my distress, inquired, "What is the matter?"
And I, not knowing how to enter upon so terrible a tale,
whined out, "I'm sick, I want to go home."

"You may go," said the teacher kindly.

Snatching my cap from beneath the desk where I had
concealed it at recess, I hurried out and away over the
sand-lot on the shortest way home. No stopping now
for burrs! — I ran like one pursued. I shall never forget
as long as I live, the pain, the paric, the frenzy of that
race against time. The hot sand burned my feet, my

40

The Home in the Coulee

side ached, my mouth was dry, and yet I ran on and on
and on, looking back from moment to moment, seeing
pursuers in every moving object.

At last I came in sight of home, and Rover frisked out
to meet me just as I had expected him to do, his tail
wagging, his gentle eyes smiling up at me. Gasping,
unable to utter a word, I frantically dragged the dog
into the house and shut the door.

"What is the matter?" asked my mother.

I could not at the moment explain even to her what
had threatened me, but her calm sweet words at last
gave my story vent. Out it came in torrential flow.

"Why, you poor child!" she said. "They were only
fooling — they wouldn't dare to hurt your dog!"

This was probably true. Matt had spoken without
any clear idea of the torture he was inflicting.

It is often said, "How little is required to give a child ,, I
joy," but men — and women too — sometimes forget how
little it takes to give a child pain.

G

CHAPTER IV
Father Sells the Farm

REEN'S COULEE was a delightful place for boys.
It offered hunting and coasting and many other
engrossing sports, but my father, as the seasons went by,
became thoroughly dissatisfied with its disadvantages.
More and more he resented the stumps and ridges which
interrupted his plow. Much of his quarter-section re
mained unbroken. There were ditches to be dug in the
marsh and young oaks to be uprooted from the forest,
and he was obliged to toil with unremitting severity.
There were times, of course, when field duties did not
press, but never a day came when the necessity for
twelve hours' labor did not exist.

Furthermore, as he grubbed or reaped he remem
bered the glorious prairies he had crossed on his ex
ploring trip into Minnesota before the war, and the
oftener he thought of them the more bitterly he resented
his up-tilted, horse-killing fields, and his complaining
words sank so deep into the minds of his sons that for
years thereafter they were unable to look upon any rise
of ground as an object to be admired.

//T\ It irked him beyond measure to force his reaper along
\ j a steep slope, and he loathed the irregular little patches

V J running up the ravines behind the timbered knolls, and
so at last like many another of his neighbors he began
to look away to the west as a fairer field for conquest.
He no more thought of going east than a liberated eagle
dreams of returning to its narrow cage. He loved to

42

Father Sells the Farm

talk of Boston, to boast of its splendor, but to live there,
to earn his bread there, was unthinkable. Beneath the
sunset lay the enchanted land of opportunity and his
liberation came unexpectedly.

Sometime in the spring of 1868, a merchant from
LaCrosse, a plump man who brought us candy and was
very cordial and condescending, began negotiations for
our farm, and in the discussion of plans which followed,
my conception of the universe expanded. I began to
understand that "Minnesota" was not a bluff but a
wide land of romance, a prairie, peopled with red men,
which lay far beyond the big river. And then, one day,
I heard my father read to my mother a paragraph from
the county paper which ran like this, "It is reported
that Richard Garland has sold his farm in Green's
Coulee to our popular grocer, Mr. Speer. Mr. Speer
intends to make of it a model dairy farm."

This intention seemed somehow to reflect a ray of
glory upon us, though I fear it did not solace my mother,
as she contemplated the loss of home and kindred. She
was not by nature an emigrant, — few women are. She
was content with the pleasant slopes, the kindly neigh
bors of Green's Coulee. Furthermore, most of her
brothers and sisters still lived just across the ridge in
the valley of the Neshonoc, and the thought of leaving
them for a wild and unknown region was not pleasant.

To my father, on the contrary, change was alluring.
Iowa was now the place of the rainbow, and the pot of
gold. He was eager to push on toward it, confident
the outcome. His spirit was reflected in one of th
songs which we children particularly enjoyed hearing
our mother sing, a ballad which consisted of a dialogue
between a husband and wife on this very subject of emi
gration. The words as well as its wailing melody still
stir me deeply, for they lay hold of my sub-conscious

43

A Son of the Middle Border

memory — embodying admirably the debate which went
on in our home as well as in the homes of other farmers
,;in the valley, — only, alas! our mothers did not prevail.

It begins with a statement of unrest on the part of the
husband who confesses that he is about to give up his
plow and his cart —

Away to Colorado a journey I'll go,
For to double my fortune as other men do,
While here I must labor each day in the field
And the winter consumes all the summer doth yield.

To this the wife replies:

Dear husband, I've noticed with a sorrowful heart
That you long have neglected your plow and your cart,
Your horses, sheep, cattle at random do run,
And your new Sunday jacket goes every day on.
Oh, stay on your farm and you'll suffer no loss,
For the stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss.

But the husband insists:

Oh, wife, let us go; Oh, don't let us wait;
I long to be there, and I long to be great,
While you some fair lady and who knows but I
May be some rich governor long 'fore I die,
Whilst here I must labor each day in the field,
And the winter consumes all the summer doth yield.

But wife shrewdly retorts:

Dear husband, remember those lands are so dear
They will cost you the labor of many a year.
Your horses, sheep, cattle will all be to buy,
You will hardly get settled before you must die.
Oh, stay on the farm, — etc.

The husband then argues that as in that country the
lands are all cleared to the plow, and horses and cattle
not very dear, they would soon be rich. Indeed, "we will

44

Father Sells the Farm

feast on fat venison one-half of the year." Thereupon
the wife brings in her final argument:

Oh, husband, remember those lands of delight
Are surrounded by Indians who murder by night.
Your house will be plundered and burnt to the ground
While your wife and your children lie mangled around.

This fetches the husband up with a round turn:

Oh, wife, you've convinced me, I'll argue no more,
I never once thought of your dying before.
I love my dear children although they are small
And you, my dear wife, I love greatest of all.

Refrain (both together)

We'll stay on the farm and we'll suffer no loss
For the stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss.

This song was not an especial favorite of my father.
Its minor strains and its expressions of womanly doubts
and fears were antipathetic to his sanguine, buoyant,
self-confident nature. He was inclined to ridicule the
conclusions of its last verse and to say that the man was
a molly-coddle — or whatever the word of contempt
was in those days. As an antidote he usually called for
"O'er the hills in legions, boys," which exactly expressed
his love of exploration and adventure.

This ballad which dates back to the conquest of the
Allegheny mountains opens with a fine uplif ting note,

Cheer up, brothers, as we go
O'er the mountains, westward ho,
Where herds of deer and buffalo
Furnish the fare.

and the refrain is at once a bugle call and a vision: }

Then o'er the hills in legions, boys,
Fair freedom's star
Points to the sunset regions, boys,
Ha, ha, ha-ha!

45

A Son of the Middle Border

and when my mother's clear voice rose on the notes of
that exultant chorus, our hearts responded with a surge
of emotion akin to that which sent the followers of Daniel
Boone across the Blue Ridge, and lined the trails of
Kentucky and Ohio with the canvas-covered wagons
of the pioneers.
A little farther on in the song came these words,

When we've wood and prairie land,
Won by our toil,

We'll reign like kings in fairy land,
Lords of the soil I

which always produced in my mind the picture of a
noble farm-house in a park-like valley, just as the line,
"We'll have our rifles ready, boys," expressed the bold
ness and self-reliance of an armed horseman.

The significance of this song in the lives of the McClin-
tocks and the Garlands cannot be measured. It was the
marching song of my Grandfather's generation and un
doubtedly profoundly influenced my father and my
juncles in all that they did. It suggested shining moun
tains, and grassy vales, swarming with bear and elk.
It called to green savannahs and endless flowery glades.
It voiced as no other song did, the pioneer impulse throb
bing deep in my father's blood. That its words will not
bear close inspection today takes little from its power.
Unquestionably it was a directing force in the lives of at
least three generations of my pioneering race. Its strains
will be found running through this book from first to
last, for its pictures continued to allure my father on
and on toward "the sunset regions," and its splendid
faith carried him through many a dark vale of discon
tent.

Our home was a place of song, notwithstanding the
severe toil which was demanded of every hand, for often

46

Father often invited us to his knees. P. 47

Father Sells the Farm

of an evening, especially in winter time, father took his
seat beside the fire, invited us to his knees, and called
on mother to sing. These moods were very sweet to us
and we usually insisted upon his singing for us. True,
he hardly knew one tune from another, but he had a
hearty resounding chant which delighted us, and one of
the ballads which we especially like to hear him repeat
was called Down the Ohio. Only one verse survives in
my memory:

The river is up, the channel is deep,
The winds blow high and strong.
The flash of the oars, the stroke we keep,
As we row the old boat along,
Down the 0-h-i-o.

Mother, on the contrary, was gifted with a voice of
great range and sweetness, and from her we always de
manded Nellie Wildwood, Lily Dale, Lorena or some of
Root's stirring war songs. We loved her noble, musical
tone, and yet we always enjoyed our father's tuneless
roar. There was something dramatic and moving in
each of his ballads. He made the words mean so much.

It is a curious fact that nearly all of the ballads which
the McClintocks and other of these powerful young
sons of the border loved to sing were sad. Nellie Wild-
wood, Minnie Minturn, Belle Mahone, Lily Dale were all
concerned with dead or dying maidens or with mocking
birds still singing o'er their graves. Weeping willows and
funeral urns ornamented the cover of each mournful
ballad. Not one smiling face peered forth from the pages
of The Home Diadem.

Lonely like a withered tree,

What is all the world to me?
Light and life were all in thee,

Sweet Belle Mahone,

47

A Son of the Middle Border

wailed stalwart David and buxom Deborah, and ready
tears moistened my tanned plump cheeks.

Perhaps it was partly by way of contrast that the
jocund song of Freedom's Star always meant so much to
me, but however it came about, I am perfectly certain
that it was an immense subconscious force in the life of
my father as it had been in the westward marching of the
McClintocks. In my own thinking it became at once
a vision and a lure.

The only humorous songs which my uncles knew were
negro ditties, like Camp Town Racetrack and Jordan am
a Hard Road to Trabbel but in addition to the sad ballads
I have quoted, they joined my mother in The Pirate's
Serenade, Erin's Green Shore, Bird of the Wilderness, and
the memory of their mellow voices creates a golden
dusk between me and that far-off cottage.

During the summer of my eighth year, I took a part
in haying and harvest, and I have a painful recollection
of raking hay after the wagons, for I wore no shoes and
the stubble was very sharp. I used to slip my feet along
close to the ground, thus bending the stubble away from
me before throwing my weight on it, otherwise walking
was painful. If I were sent across the field on an errand
I always sought out the path left by the broad wheels
of the mowing machine and walked therein with a most
delicious sense of safety.

It cannot be that I was required to work very hard
or very steadily, but it seemed to me then, and afterward,
as if I had been made one of the regular hands and that
I toiled the whole day through. I rode old Josh for the
hired man to plow corn, and also guided the lead horse
on the old McCormick reaper, my short legs sticking
out at right angles from my body, and I carried water
to the field.

It appears that the blackbirds were very thick that

48

Father Sells the Farm

year and threatened, in August, to destroy the corn.
They came in gleeful clouds, settling with multitudinous
clamor upon the stalks so that it became the duty of
Den Green to scare them away by shooting at them, and
I was permitted to follow and pick up the dead birds and
carry them as "game."

There was joy and keen excitement in this warfare.
Sometimes when Den fired into a flock, a dozen or more
came fluttering down. At other times vast swarms rose
at the sound of the gun with a rush of wings which
sounded like a distant storm. Once Den let me fire the
gun, and I took great pride in this until I came upon
several of the shining little creatures bleeding, dying in
the grass. Then my heart was troubled and I repented
of my cruelty. Mrs. Green put the birds into potpies
but my mother would not do so. "I don't believe in
such game," she said. "It's bad enough to shoot the poor
things without eating them."

Once we came upon a huge mountain rattlesnake and
Den killed it with a shot of his gun. How we escaped
being bitten is a mystery, for we explored every path
of the hills and meadows in our bare feet, our trousers
rolled to the knee. We hunted plums and picked black
berries and hazel nuts with very little fear of snakes,
and yet we must have always been on guard. We loved
our valley, and while occasionally we yielded to the
lure of "Freedom's star," we were really content with
Green's Coulee and its surrounding hills.

CHAPTER V
The Last Threshing in the Coulee

K'E on a Wisconsin farm, even for the women, had
its compensations. There were times when the
daily routine of lonely and monotonous housework gave
place to an agreeable bustle, and human intercourse
lightened the toil. In the midst of the slow progress of
the fall's plowing, the gathering of the threshing crew
was a most dramatic event to my mother, as to us, for
it not only brought unwonted clamor, it fetched her
brothers William and David and Frank, who owned and
ran a threshing machine, and their coming gave the
house an air of festivity which offset the burden of extra
work which fell upon us all.

In those days the grain, after being brought in and
stacked around the barn, was allowed to remain until
October or November when all the other work was fin
ished.

Of course some men got the machine earlier, for all
could not thresh at the same time, and a good part of
every man's fall activities consisted in "changing works"
with his neighbors, thus laying up a stock of unpaid
labor against the home job. Day after day, therefore,
father or the hired man shouldered a fork and went to
help thresh, and all through the autumn months, the
ceaseless ringing hum and the bow-ouw, ouw-woo, boo-oo-
oom of the great balance wheels on the separator and the
deep bass purr of its cylinder could be heard in every
valley like the droning song of some sullen and gigantic
autumnal insect.

Last Threshing in the Coulee

I recall with especial clearness the events of that last
threshing in the coulee. — I was eight, my brother was
six. For days we had looked forward to the coming of
"the threshers," listening with the greatest eagerness to
father's report of the crew. At last he said, "Well,
Belle, get ready. The machine will be here tomorrow."

All day we hung on the gate, gazing down the road,
watching, waiting for the crew, and even after supper,
we stood at the windows still hoping to hear the rattle
of the ponderous separator.

Father explained that the men usually worked all day
at one farm and moved after dark, and we were just
starting to "climb the wooden hill" when we heard a
far-off faint halloo.

"There they are," shouted father, catching up his old
square tin lantern and hurriedly lighting the candle
within it. "That's Frank's voice."

The night air was sharp, and as we had taken off our
boots we could only stand at the window and watch
father as he piloted the teamsters through the gate.
The light threw fantastic shadows here and there, now
lighting up a face, now bringing out the separator which
seemed a weary and sullen monster awaiting its den.
The men's voices sounded loud in the still night, caus
ing the roused turkeys in the oaks to peer about on their
perches, uneasy silhouettes against the sky.

We would gladly have stayed awake to greet our be
loved uncles, but mother said, "You must go to sleep
in order to be up early in the morning," and reluctantly
we turned away.

Lying thus in our cot under the sloping raftered roof
we could hear the squawk of the hens as father wrung
their innocent necks, and the crash of the "sweeps"
being unloaded sounded loud and clear and strange.
We longed to be out there, but at last the dance of lights

A Son of the Middle Border

and shadows on the plastered wall died away, and we
fell into childish dreamless sleep.

We were awakened at dawn by the ringing beat of
the iron mauls as Frank and David drove the stakes to
hold the "power" to the ground. The rattle of trace
chains, the clash of iron rods, the clang of steel bars,
intermixed with the laughter of the men, came sharply
through the frosty air, and the smell of sizzling sausage
from the kitchen warned us that our busy mother was
hurrying the breakfast forward. Knowing that it was
time to get up, although it was not yet light, I had a
sense of being awakened into a romantic new world, a
world of heroic action.

As we stumbled down the stairs, we found the lamp-lit
kitchen empty of the men. They had finished their
coffee and were out in the stack-yard oiling the machine
and hitching the horses to the power. Shivering yet
entranced by the beauty of the frosty dawn we crept out
to stand and watch the play. The frost lay white on
every surface, the frozen ground rang like iron under
the steel-shod feet of the horses, and the breath of the
men rose up in little white puffs of steam.

Uncle David on the feeder's stand was impatiently
awaiting the coming of the fifth team. The pitchers
were climbing the stacks like blackbirds, and the straw-
stackers were scuffling about the stable door. — Finally,
just as the east began to bloom, and long streamers of
red began to unroll along the vast gray dome of sky
Uncle Frank, the driver, lifted his voice in a "Chippewa
war-whoop."

On a still morning like this his signal could be heard
for miles. Long drawn and musical, it sped away over
the fields, announcing to all the world that the McClin-
tocks were ready for the day's race. Answers came back
faintly from the frosty fields where dim figures of lag-

52

Last Threshing in the Coulee

gard hands could be seen hurrying over the plowed
ground, the last team came clattering in and was hooked
into its place, David called "All right!" and the cylinder
began to hum.

In those days the machine was either a "J. I. Case"
or a "Buffalo Pitts," and was moved by five pairs of horses
attached to a "power" staked to the ground, round
which they travelled pulling at the ends of long levers
or sweeps, and to me the force seemed tremendous.
"Tumbling rods" with "knuckle joints" carried the
motion to the cylinder, and the driver who stood upon a
square platform above the huge, greasy cog-wheels
(round which the horses moved) was a grand figure in
my eyes.

Driving, to us, looked like a pleasant job, but Uncle
Frank thought it very tiresome, and I can now see that
it was. To stand on that small platform all through the
long hours of a cold November day, when the cutting
wind roared down the valley sweeping the dust and
leaves along the road, was work. Even I perceived that
it was far pleasanter to sit on the south side of the stack
and watch the horses go round.

It was necessary that the "driver" should be a man
of judgment, for the horses had to be kept at just the
right speed, and to do this he must gauge the motion of
the cylinder by the pitch of its deep bass song.

The three men in command of the machine, were set
apart as "the threshers." — William and David alter
nately "fed" or "tended," that is, one of them "fed"
the grain into the howling cylinder while the other, oil
can in hand, watched the sieves, felt of the pinions and
so kept the machine in good order. The feeder's position
was the high place to which all boys aspired, and on this
day I stood in silent admiration of Uncle David's easy
powerful attitudes as he caught each bundle in the crook

A Son of the Middle Border

of his arm and spread it out into a broad, smooth band
of yellow straw on which the whirling teeth caught and
tore with monstrous fury. He was the ideal man in
my eyes, grander in some ways than my father, and to
be able to stand where he stood was the highest honor
in the world.

It was all poetry for us and we wished every day were
threshing day. The wind blew cold, the clouds went
flying across the bright blue sky, and the straw glistened
in the sun. With jarring snarl the circling zone of cogs
dipped into the sturdy greasy wheels, and the single
trees and pulley-chains chirped clear and sweet as
crickets. The dust flew, the whip cracked, and the men
working swiftly to get the sheaves to the feeder or to
take the straw away from the tail-end of the machine,
were like warriors, urged to desperate action by battle
cries. The stackers wallowing to their waists in the
fluffy straw-pile seemed gnomes acting for our amuse
ment.

The straw-pile! What delight we had in that! What
joy it was to go up to the top where the men were sta
tioned, one behind the other, and to have them toss
huge forkfuls of the light fragrant stalks upon us, laugh
ing to see us emerge from our golden cover. We were
especially impressed by the bravery of Ed Green who
stood in the midst of the thick dust and flying chaff
close to the tail of the stacker. His teeth shone like a
negro's out of his dust-blackened face and his shirt was
wet with sweat, but he motioned for "more straw" and
David, accepting the challenge, signalled for more speed.
Frank swung his lash and yelled at the straining horses,
the sleepy growl of the cylinder rose to a howl and the
wheat came pulsing out at the spout in such a stream
that the carriers were forced to trot on their path to and
from the granary in order to keep the grain from piling

54

Last Threshing in the Coulee

up around the measurer. — There was a kind of splendid
rivalry in this backbreaking toil — for each sack weighed
ninety pounds.

We got tired of wallowing in the straw at last, and
went down to help Rover catch the rats which were
being uncovered by the pitchers as they reached the
stack bottom. — The horses, with their straining, out
stretched necks, the loud and cheery shouts, the whistling
of the driver, the roar and hum of the great wheel, the
flourishing of the forks, the supple movement of brawny
arms, the shouts of the men, all blended with the wild
sound of the wind in the creaking branches of the oaks,
forming a glorious poem in our unforgetting minds.

At last the call for dinner sounded. The driver began
to call, "Whoa there, boys! Steady, Tom," and to hold
his long whip before the eyes of the more spirited of the
teams in order to convince them that he really meant
"stop." The pitchers stuck their forks upright in the
stack and leaped to the ground. Randal, the band-cutter,
drew from his wrist the looped string of his big knife,
the stackers slid down from the straw-pile, and a race
began among the teamsters to see whose span would
be first unhitched and at the watering trough. What
joyous rivalry it seemed to us ! —

Mother and Mrs. Randal, wife of our neighbor, who
was "changing works," stood ready to serve the food as
soon as the men were seated. — The table had been
lengthened to its utmost and pieced out with boards,
and planks had been laid on stout wooden chairs at
either side.

The men came in with a rush, and took seats wherever
they could find them, and their attack on the boiled po
tatoes and chicken should have been appalling to the
women, but it was not. They enjoyed seeing them eat.
Ed Green was prodigious. One cut at a big potato, fol-

55

A Son of the Middle Border

Jowed by two stabbing motions, and it was gone. — Twa
bites laid a leg of chicken as bare as a slate pencil. To
us standing in the corner waiting our turn, it seemed that
every "smitch" of the dinner was in danger, for the
others were not far behind Ed and Dan.

At last even the gauntest of them filled up and left
the room and we were free to sit at "the second table"
and eat, while the men rested outside. David and
William, however, generally had a belt to sew or a bent
tooth to take out of the "concave." This seemed of
grave dignity to us and we respected their self-Gacrificing
labor.

Nooning was brief. As soon as the horses had finished
their oats, the roar and hum of the machine began again
and continued steadily all the afternoon, till by and by
the sun grew big and red, the night began to fall, and
the wind died out.

This was the most impressive hour of a marvellous
day. Through the falling dusk, the machine boomed
steadily with a new sound, a solemn roar, rising at in
tervals to a rattling impatient yell as the cylinder ran
momentarily empty. The men moved now in silence,
looming dim and gigantic in the half-light. The straw-
pile mountain high, the pitchers in the chaff, the feeder
on his platform, and especially the driver on his power,
seemed almost super-human to my childish eyes. Gray
dust covered the handsome face of David, changing it
into something both sad and stern, but Frank's cheery
voice rang out musically as he called to the weary
horses, "Come on, Tom! Hup there, Dan!"

The track in which they walked had been worn into
two deep circles and they all moved mechanically round
and round, like parts of a machine, dull-eyed and covered
with sweat.

At last William raised the welcome cry, "All done!"—

56

Last Threshing in the Coulee

the men threw down their forks. Uncle Frank began to
call in a gentle, soothing voice, "Whoa, lads! Steady,
boys! Whoa, there!"

But the horses had been going so long and so steadily
that they could not at once check their speed. They
kept moving, though slowly, on and on till their owners
slid from the stacks and seizing the ends of the sweeps,
held them. Even then, after the power was still, the
cylinder kept its hum, till David throwing a last sheaf
into its open maw, choked it into silence.

Now came the sound of dropping chains, the clang
of iron rods, and the thud of hoofs as the horses walked
with laggard gait and weary down-falling heads to the
barn. The men, more subdued than at dinner, washed
with greater care, and combed the chaff from their
beards. The air was still and cool, and the sky a deep
cloudless blue starred with faint fire.

Supper though quiet was more dramatic than dinner
had been. The table lighted with kerosene lamps, the
clean white linen, the fragrant dishes, the women flying
about with steaming platters, all seemed very cheery
and very beautiful, and the men who came into the
light and warmth of the kitchen with aching muscles
and empty stomachs, seemed gentler and finer than at
noon. They were nearly all from neighboring farms,
and my mother treated even the few hired men like
visitors, and the talk was all hearty and good tempered
though a little subdued.

One by one the men rose and slipped away, and father
withdrew to milk the cows and bed down the horses,
leaving the women and the youngsters to eat what was
left and "do up the dishes/

After we had eaten our fill Frank and I also went out
to the barn (all wonderfully changed now to our minds
by the great stack of straw) , there to listen to David and

57

A Son of the Middle Border

father chatting as they rubbed their tired horses. — Tha
lantern threw a dim red light on the harness and on the
rumps of the cattle, but left mysterious shadows in the
corners. I could hear the mice rustling in the straw of
the roof, and from the farther end of the dimly-lighted
shed came the regular strim-stram of the streams of milk
falling into the bottom of a tin pail as the hired hand
milked the big roan cow.

All this was very momentous to me as I sat on the oat
box, shivering in the cold air, listening with all my ears,
and when we finally went toward the house, the stars
were big and sparkling. The frost had already begun
to glisten on the fences and well-curb, and high in the
air, dark against the sky, the turkeys were roosting un
easily, as if disturbed by premonitions of approaching
Thanksgiving. Rover pattered along by my side on the
crisp grass and my brother clung to my hand.

How bright and warm it was in the kitchen with
mother putting things to rights while father and my
uncles leaned their chairs against the wall and talked
of the west and of moving. "I can't get away till after
New Year's," father said. "But I'm going. I'll never
put in another crop on these hills."

With speechless content I listened to Uncle William's
stories of bears and Indians, and other episodes of fron
tier life, until at last we were ordered to bed and the
glorious day was done.

Oh, those blessed days, those entrancing nights! How
fine they were then, and how mellow they are now, for
the slow-paced years have dropped nearly fifty other
golden mists upon that far-off valley. From this distance
I cannot understand how my father brought himself to
leave that lovely farm and those good and noble friends.

CHAPTER VI
David and His Violin

MOST of the events of our last autumn in Green's
Coulee have slipped into the fathomless gulf,
but the experiences of Thanksgiving day, which followed
closely on our threshing day, are in my treasure house.
Like a canvas by Rembrandt only one side of the figures
therein is defined, the other side melts away into shad
ow — a luminous shadow, through which faint light
pulses, luring my wistful gaze on and on, back into the
vanished world where the springs of my life lie hidden.

It is a raw November evening. Frank and Harriet
and I are riding into a strange land in a clattering farm
wagon. Father and mother are seated before us on the
spring seat. The ground is frozen and the floor of the
carriage pounds and jars. We cling to the iron-lined
sides of the box to soften the blows. It is growing dark.
Before us (in a similar vehicle) my Uncle David is lead
ing the way. I catch momentary glimpses of him out
lined against the pale yellow sky. He stands erect,
holding the reins of his swiftly-moving horses in his
powerful left hand. Occasionally he shouts back to
my father, whose chin is buried in a thick buffalo-skin
coat. Mother is only a vague mass, a figure wrapped in
shawls. The wind is keen, the world gray and cheerless.

My sister is close beside me in the straw. Frank is
asleep. I am on my knees looking ahead. Suddenly
with rush of wind and clatter of hoofs, we enter the gloom
of a forest and the road begins to climb. I see the hills

59

A Son of the Middle Border

on the right. I catch the sound of wheels on a bridge.
I am cold. I snuggle down under the robes and the
gurgle of ice-bound water is fused with my dreams.

I am roused at last by Uncle David's pleasant voice,
"Wake up, boys, and pay y'r lodging!" I look out and
perceive him standing beside the wheel. I see a house
and I hear the sound of Deborah's voice from the warmly-
lighted open door.

I climb down, heavy with cold and sleep. As I stand
there my uncle reaches up his arms to take my mother
down. Not knowing that she has a rheumatic elbow,
he squeezes her playfully. She gives a sharp screamr
and his team starts away on a swift run around the curve
of the road toward the gate. Dropping my mother,
he dashes across the yard to intercept the runaways.
We all stand in silence, watching the flying horses and
the wonderful race he is making toward the gate. He
runs with magnificent action, his head thrown high. As
the team dashes through the gate his outflung left hand
catches the end-board of the wagon, — he leaps into the
box, and so passes from our sight.

We go into the cottage. It is a small building with
four rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, but in
the sitting room we come upon an open fireplace, — the
first I had ever seen, and in the light of it sits Grand
father McClintock, the glory of the flaming logs gilding
the edges of his cloud of bushy white hair. He does not
rise to greet us, but smiles and calls out, "Come in!
Come in! Draw a cheer. Sit ye down."

A clamor of welcome fills the place. Harriet and I are
put to warm before the blaze. Grandad takes Frank
upon his knee and the cutting wind of the gray outside
world is forgotten.

This house in which the McClintocks were living at
this time, belonged to a rented farm. Grandad had

60

Last Threshing in the Coulee

sold the original homestead on the LaCrosse River, and
David who had lately married a charming young Cana
dian girl, was the head of the family. Deborah, it seems,
was also living with him and Frank was there — as a visitor
probably.

The room in which we sat was small and bare but to
me it was very beautiful, because of the fire, and by
reason of the merry voices which filled my ears with
music. Aunt Rebecca brought to us a handful of crackers
and told us that we were to have oyster soup for supper.
This gave us great pleasure even in anticipation, for
oysters were a delicious treat in those days.

"Well, Dick/' Grandad began, "so ye're plannin' to
go west, air ye?"

"Yes, as soon as I get all my grain and hogs marketed
I'm going to pull out for my new farm over in Iowa."

"Ye'd better stick to the old coulee," warned my
grandfather, a touch of sadness in his voice. "Ye'll
find none better."

My father was disposed to resent this. "That's
ail very well for the few who have the level land in
the middle of the valley," he retorted, "but how
about those of us who are crowded against the hills?
You should see the farm I have in Winneshiek ! Not
a hill on it big enough for a boy to coast on. It's
right on the edge of Looking Glass Prairie, and I have a
spring of water, and a fine grove of trees just where I
want them, not where they have to be grubbed out."

"But ye belong here," repeated Grandfather. "You
were married here, your children were born here. Ye'li
find no such friends in the west as you have here in
Neshonoc. And Belle will miss the family."

My father laughed. "Oh, you'll all come along. Dave
has the fever already. Even William is likely to catch
it."

61

A Son of the Middle Border

Old Hugh sighed deeply. "I hope ye're wrong," he
said. "I'd like to spend me last days here with me sons
and daughters around me, sich as are left to me," here
his voice became sterner. "It's the curse of our country,
• — this constant moving, moving. I'd have been better
off had I stayed in Ohio, though this valley seemed very
beautiful to me the first time I saw it."

At this point David came in, and everybody shouted,
"Did you stop them? " referring of course to the runaway
team.

"I did," he replied with a smile. "But how about the
oysters. I'm holler as a beech log."

The fragrance of the soup thoroughly awakened even
little Frank, and when we drew around the table, each
face shone with the light of peace and plenty, and all
our elders tried to forget that this was the last Thanks
giving festival which the McClintocks and Garlands
would be able to enjoy in the old valley. How good
those oysters were! They made up the entire meal, —
excepting mince pie which came as a closing sweet.

Slowly, one by one, the men drew back and returned
to the sitting room, leaving the women to wash up the
dishes and put the kitchen to rights. David seized the
opportunity to ask my father to tell once again of the
trip he had made, of the lands he had seen, and the
farm he had purchased, for his young heart was also
fired with desire of exploration. The level lands toward
the sunset allured him. In his visions the wild meadows
were filled with game, and the free lands needed only to
be tickled with a hoe to laugh into harvest.

He said, "As soon as Dad and Frank are settled on a
farm here, I'm going west also. I'm as tired of climbing
these hills as you are. I want a place of my own — and
besides, from all you say of that wheat country out
there, a threshing machine would pay wonderfully well,'*

62

David and His Violin

As the women came in, my father called out, "Come,
Belle, sing 'O'er the Hills in Legions Boys! ' — Dave get
out your fiddle — and tune us all up."

David tuned up his fiddle and while he twanged on the
strings mother lifted her voice in our fine old marching
song.

Cheer up, brothers, as we go,
O'er the mountains, westward ho —

and we all joined in the jubilant chorus —

Then o'er the hills in legions, boys,
Fair freedom's star
Points to the sunset regions, boys,
Ha, ha, ha-ha! —

My father's face shone with the light of the explorer,
the pioneer. The words of this song appealed to him
as the finest poetry. It meant all that was fine and
hopeful and buoyant in American life, to him — but
on my mother's sweet face a wistful expression deep
ened and in her fine eyes a reflective shadow lay. To \
her this song meant not so much the acquisition of a
new home as the loss of all her friends and relatives.
She sang it submissively, not exultantly, and 1 think the
other women were of the same mood though their faces ,
were less expressive to me. To all of the pioneer wives
of the past that song had meant deprivation, suffering,
loneliness, heart-ache.

From this they passed to other of my father's favorite
songs, and it is highly significant to note that even in
this choice of songs he generally had his way. He was
the dominating force. "Sing ' Nellie Wild wood,'" he
said, and they sang it. — This power of getting his will
respected was due partly to his military training but

63

A Son of the Middle Border

more to a distinctive trait in him. He was a man of
power, of decision, a natural commander of men.

They sang "Minnie Minturn" to his request, and the
refrain, —

I have heard the angels warning,

I have seen the golden shore —

meant much to me. So did the line,

But I only hear the drummers
As the armies march away.

Aunt Deb was also a soul of decision. She called out,
"No more of these sad tones," and struck up "The Year
of Jubilo," and we all shouted till the walls shook with
the exultant words:

OF massa run — ha-ha!

De darkies stay, — ho-ho!

It must be now is the kingdom a-comin'

In the year of Jubilo.

At this point the fire suggested an old English ballad
which I loved, and so I piped up, "Mother, sing, 'Pile
the Wood on Higher I'" and she complied with pleasure,
for this was a song of home, of the unbroken fire-side

circle.

Oh, the winds howl mad outdoors,

The snow clouds hurry past,
The giant trees sway to and fro

Beneath the sweeping blast.

and we children joined in the chorus:

Then we'll gather round the fire

And we'll pile the wood on higher,
Let the song and jest go round;

What care we for the storm,

When the fireside is so warm,

And pleasure here is found?

64

David and His Violin

Never before did this song mean so much to me as
at this moment when the winds were actually howling
outdoors, and Uncle Frank was in very truth piling
the logs higher. It seemed as though my stuffed bosom
could not receive anything deeper and finer, but it did,
for father was saying, "Well, Dave, now for some tunes."

This was the best part of David to me. He could
make any room mystical with the magic of his bow.
True, his pieces were mainly venerable dance tunes,
cotillions, hornpipes, — melodies which had passed from
fiddler to fiddler until they had become veritable folk
songs, — pieces like "Money Musk," "Honest John,"
"Haste to the Wedding," and many others whose names
I have forgotten, but with a gift of putting into even
the simplest song an emotion which subdued us and
silenced us, he played on, absorbed and intent. From
these familiar pieces he passed to others for which he
had no names, melodies strangely sweet and sad, full
of longing crks, voicing something which I dimly felt
but could not understand.

At the moment he was the somber Scotch Highlander,
the true Celt, and as he bent above his instrument his
black ey<5s glowing, his fine head drooping low, my heart
bowed down in worship of his skill. He was my hero,
the handsomest, most romantic figure in all my world.

He played, "Maggie, Air Ye Sleepin," and the wind
outside went to my soul. Voices wailed to me out of
the illimitable hill-land forests, voices that pleaded:

Oh, let me in, for loud the linn

Goes roarin' o'er the moorland craggy.

He appeared to forget us, even his young wife. His
eyes looked away into gray storms. Vague longing
ached in his throat. Life was a struggle, love a torment.

He stopped abruptly, and put the violin into its box,

65

A Son of the Middle Border

fumbling with the catch to hide his emotion and my
father broke the tense silence with a prosaic word.
"Well, well! Look here, it's time you youngsters were
asleep. Beckie, where are you going to put these chil
dren?"

Aunt Rebecca, a trim little woman with brown eyes,
looked at us reflectively, "Well, now, I don't know. I
guess we'll have to make a bed for them on the floor."

This was done, and for the first time in my life, I
slept before an open fire. As I snuggled into my blankets
with my face turned to the blaze, the darkness of the
night and the denizens of the pineland wilderness to the
north had no terrors for me.

I was awakened in the early light by Uncle David
building the fire, and then came my father's call, and
the hurly burly of jovial greeting from old and young.
The tumult lasted till breakfast was called, and every
body who could find place sat around the table and at
tacked the venison and potatoes which formed the meal.
I do not remember our leave-taking or the ride home
ward. I bring to mind only the desolate cold of our own
kitchen into which we tramped late in the afternoon,
sitting in our wraps until the fire began to roar within
its iron cage.

Oh, winds of the winter night! Oh, firelight and the
shine of tender eyes! How far away you seem tonight!

So faint and far,

Each dear face shineth as a star.

Oh, you by the western sea, and you of the south beyond
the reach of Christmas snow, do not your hearts hunger,
like mine tonight for that Thanksgiving Day among the
trees? For the glance of eyes undimmed of tears, for
the hair untouched with gray?

66

David and His Violin

It all lies in the unchanging realm of the past — this
land of my childhood. Its charm, its strange dominion
cannot return save in the poet's reminiscent dream.
No money, no railway train can take us back to it. It
did not in truth exist — it was a magical world, born of
the vibrant union of youth and firelight, of music and the
voice of moaning winds — a union which can never come
again to you or me, father, uncle, brother, till the coulee
meadows bloom again unscarred of spade or plow.

CHAPTER

Winnesheik "Woods and Prairie
Lands"

OUR last winter in the Coulee was given over to
preparations for our removal but it made very
little impression on my mind which was deeply engaged
on my school work. As it was out of the question for
us to attend the village school the elders arranged for a
neighborhood school at the home of John Roche, who
had an unusually large living room. John is but a
shadowy figure in this chronicle but his daughter In
diana, whom we called "Ingie, " stands out as the big girl
of my class.

Books were scarce in this house as well as in our own.
I remember piles of newspapers but no bound volumes
other than the Bible and certain small Sunday school
books. All the homes of the valley were equally barren.
My sister and I jointly possessed a very limp and soiled
cloth edition of " Mother Goose." Our stories all came
to us by way of the conversation of our elders. No one
but grandmother Garland ever deliberately told us a
tale — except the hired girls, and their romances were of
such dark and gruesome texture that we often went to
bed shivering with fear of the dark.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, miraculously, I came into

possession of two books, one called Beauty and The

\^ Beast, and the other Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp.

"These volumes mark a distinct epoch in my life. The

grace of the lovely Lady as she stood above the cringing

68

"Woods and Prairie Lands"

Beast gave me my first clear notion of feminine dignity
and charm. On the magic Flying Carpet I rose into the
wide air of Oriental romance. I attended the building
of towered cities and the laying of gorgeous feasts. I
carried in my hand the shell from which, at the word of
command, the cool clear water gushed. My feet were
shod with winged boots, and on my head was the Cap
of Invisibility. My body was captive in our snow-bound
little cabin but my mind ranged the golden palaces of
Persia — so much I know. Where the wonder-working
romances came from I cannot now tell but I think they
were Christmas presents, for Christmas came this year
with unusual splendor.

The sale of the farm had put into my father's hands a
considerable sum of money and I assume that some small
part of this went to make our holiday glorious. In one
of my stockings was a noble red and blue tin horse with
a flowing mane and tail, and in the other was a monkey
who could be made to climb a stick. Harriet had a
new china doll and Frank a horn and china dog, and all
the corners of our stockings were stuffed with nuts and
candies. I hope mother got something beside the pota
toes and onions which I remember seeing her pull out
and unwrap with delightful humor — an old and rather
pathetic joke but new to us.

The snow fell deep in January and I have many glori
ous pictures of the whirling flakes outlined against the
darkly wooded hills across the marsh. Father was busy
with his team drawing off wheat and hogs and hay, and
often came into the house at night, white with the storms
through which he had passed. My trips to school were
often interrupted by the cold, and the path which my
sister and I trod was along the ever-deepening furrows
made by the bob-sleighs of the farmers. Often when
we met a team or were overtaken by one, we were forced

69

A Son of the Middle Border

out of the road into the drifts, and I can feel to this
moment, the wedge of snow which caught in the tops
of my tall boots and slowly melted into my gray socks.

We were not afraid of the drifts, however. On the
contrary mother had to fight to keep us from wallowing
beyond our depth. I had now a sled which was my in
separable companion. I could not feed the hens or
bring in a pan of chips without taking it with me. My
heart swelled with pride and joy whenever I regarded it,
and yet it was but a sober-colored thing, a frame of
hickory built by the village blacksmith in exchange for
a cord of wood — delivered. I took it to school one dayv
but Ed Roche abused it, took it up and threw it into
the deep snow among the weeds. — Had I been large
enough, I would have killed that boy with pleasure,
but being small and fat and numb with cold I merely
rescued my treasure as quickly as I could and hurried
home to pour my indignant story into my mother's
sympathetic ears.

I seldom spoke of my defeats to my father for he had
once said, "Fight your own battles, my son. If I hear
of your being licked by a boy of anything like your own
size, I'll give you another when you get home." He didn't
believe in molly-coddling, you will perceive. His was
a stern school, the school of self-reliance and resolution.

Neighbors came in now and again to talk of our migra
tion, and yet in spite of all that, in spite of our song, in
spite of my father's preparation I had no definite pre
monition of coming change, and when the day of depar
ture actually dawned, I was as surprised, as unprepared
as though it had all happened without the slightest
warning.

So long as the kettle sang on the hearth and the clock
ticked on its shelf, the idea of "moving" was pleasantly
diverting, but when one raw winter day I saw the faithful

70

"Woods and Prairie Lands"

clock stuffed with rags and laid on its back in a box, and
the chairs and dishes being loaded into a big sleigh, I
began to experience something very disturbing and very
uncomfortable. "O'er the hills in legions, boys," did
not sound so inspiring to me then. "The woods and
prairie lands" of Iowa became of less account to me
than the little cabin in which I had lived all my short
life.

Harriet and I wandered around, whining and shivering,
our own misery augmented by the worried look on
mother's face. It was February, and she very properly
resented leaving her home for a long, cold ride into an
unknown world, but as a dutiful wife she worked hard
and silently in packing away her treasures, and clothing
her children for the journey.

At last the great sleigh-load of bedding and furniture
stood ready at the door, the stove, still warm with
cheerful service, was lifted in, and the time for saying
good-bye to our coulee home had come.

"Forward march!" shouted father and led the way
with the big bob-sled, followed by cousin Jim and our
little herd of kine, while mother and the children brought
up the rear in a "pung" drawn by old Josh, a flea-bit
gray. — It is probable that at the moment the master
himself was slightly regretful.

A couple of hours' march brought us to LaCrosse, the
great city whose wonders I had longed to confront. It
stood on the bank of a wide river and had all the value
of a sea-port to me for in summer-time great hoarsely
bellowing steamboats came and went from its quay, and
all about it rose high wooded hills. Halting there, we
overlooked a wide expanse of snow-covered ice in the
midst of which a dark, swift, threatening current of
open water ran. Across this chasm stretching from one
ice-field to another lay a flexible narrow bridge over

A Son of the Middle Border

which my father led the way toward hills of the western
shore. There was something especially terrifying in
the boiling heave of that black flood, and I shivered
with terror as I passed it, having vividly in my mind
certain grim stories of men whose teams had broken
through and been swept beneath the ice never to re
appear.

It was a long ride to my mother, for she too was in
terror of the ice, but at last the Minnesota bank was
reached, La Crescent was passed, and our guide entering
a narrow valley began to climb the snowy hills. All that
was familiar was put behind; all that was strange and
dark, all that was wonderful and unknown, spread out
before us, and as we crawled along that slippery, slanting
road, it seemed that we were entering on a new and
marvellous world.

We lodged that night in Hokah, a little town in a
deep valley. The tavern stood near a river which flowed
over its dam with resounding roar and to its sound I
slept. Next day at noon we reached Caledonia, a town
high on the snowy prairie. Caledonia! For years that
word was a poem in my ear, part of a marvellous and epic
march. Actually it consisted of a few frame houses and
a grocery store. But no matter. Its name shall ring
like a peal of bells in this book.

It grew colder as we rose, and that night, the night of
the second day, we reached Hesper and entered a long
stretch of woods, and at last turned in towards a friendly
light shining from a low house beneath a splendid oak.

As we drew near my father raised a signal shout,
"Hallo-o-o the House! " and a man in a long gray coat
came out. "Is that thee, friend Richard?" he called,
and my father replied, "Yea, neighbor Barley, here we
are!"

I do not know how this stranger whose manner of

72

"Woods and JPrairie Lands"

speech was so peculiar, came to be there, but he was and
in answer to my question, father replied, "Barley is a
Quaker," an answer which explained nothing at that
time. Being too sleepy to pursue the matter, or to re^
mark upon anything connected with the exterior, I
dumbly followed Harriet into the kitchen which was
still in possession of good Mrs. Barley.

Having filled our stomachs with warm food mother
put us to bed, and when we awoke late the next day the
Barleys were gone, our own stove was in its place, and
our faithful clock was ticking calmly on the shelf. So
far as we knew, mother was again at home and entirely
content.

This farm, which was situated two miles west of the
village of Hesper, immediately won our love. It was a
glorious place for boys. Broad-armed white oaks stood
about the yard, and to the east and north a deep forest
invited to exploration. The house was of logs and for
that reason was much more attractive to us than to our
mother. It was, I suspect, both dark and cold. I know
the roof was poor, for one morning I awoke to find a
miniature peak of snow on the floor at my bedside. It
was only a rude little frontier cabin, but it was perfectly
satisfactory to me.

Harriet and I learned much in the way of woodcraft
during the months which followed. Night by night the
rabbits, in countless numbers printed their tell-tale rec
ords in the snow, and quail and partridges nested be
neath the down-drooping branches of the red oaks.
Squirrels ran from tree to tree and we were soon able to
distinguish and name most of the tracks made by the
birds and small animals, and we took a never-failing
delight in this study of the wild. In most of my excur
sions my sister was my companion. My brother was too
small.

73

\

A Son of the Middle Border

All my memories of this farm are of the fiber of poetry.
The silence of the snowy aisles of the forest, the whirring
flight of partridges, the impudent bark of squirrels, the
quavering voices of owls and coons, the music of the
winds in the high trees, — all these impressions unite in
my mind like parts of a woodland symphony. I soon
learned to distinguish the raccoon's mournful call from
the quavering cry of the owl, and I joined the hired man
in hunting rabbits from under the piles of brush in the
clearing. Once or twice some ferocious, larger animal,
possibly a panther, hungrily yowled in the impenetrable
thickets to the north, but this only lent a still more
enthralling interest to the forest.

To the east, an hour's walk through the timber, stood
the village, built and named by the " Friends" who had
a meeting house not far away, and though I saw much
of them, I never attended their services.

Our closest neighbor was a gruff loud-voiced old Nor
wegian and from his children (our playmates) we learned
many curious facts. All Norwegians, it appeared, ate
from wooden plates or wooden bowls. Their food was
soup which they called "bean swaagen" and they were
all yellow haired and blue-eyed.

Harriet and I and one Lars Peterson gave a great
deal of time to an attempt to train a yoke of yearling
calves to draw our handsled. I call it an attempt, for
we hardly got beyond a struggle to overcome the stub
born resentment of the stupid beasts, who very naturally
objected to being forced into service before their time.
Harriet was ten, I was not quite nine, and Lars was
only twelve, hence we spent long hours in yoking and
unyoking our unruly span. I believe we did actually
haul several loads of firewood to the kitchen door, but
at last Buck and Brin "turned the yoke" and broke it,
and that ended our teaming.

74 f

"Woods and Prairie Lands"

The man from whom we acquired our farm had in
some way domesticated a flock of wild geese, and though
they must have been a part of the farm-yard during the
winter, they made no deep impression on my mind till
in the spring when as the migratory instinct stirred in
their blood they all rose on the surface of the water in
a little pool near the barn and with beating wings lifted
their voices in brazen clamor calling to their fellows
driving by high overhead. At tunes their cries halted
the flocks in their arrowy flight and brought them down
to mix indistingujshably with the captive birds.

The wings of these had been clipped but as the weeks
went on their pinions grew again and one morning when
I went out to see what had happened to them, I found
the pool empty and silent. We all missed their fine
voices and yet we could not blame them for a reassertion
of their freeborn nature. They had gone back to their
summer camping grounds on the lakes of the far north.

Early in April my father hired a couple of raw Nor
wegians to assist in clearing the land, and although
neither of these immigrants could speak a word of
English, I was greatly interested in them. They slept in
the granary but this did not prevent them from com
municating to our house-maid a virulent case of small
pox. Several days passed before my mother realized
what ailed the girl. The discovery must have horrified
her, for she had been through an epidemic of this dread
disease in Wisconsin, and knew its danger.

It was a fearsome plague in those days, much more
fatal than now, and my mother with three unvaccinated
children, a helpless handmaid to be nursed, was in de
spair when father developed the disease and took to his
bed. Surely it must have seemed to her as though the
Lord had visited upon her more punishment than be
longed to her, for to add the final touch, in the midst of

75

A Son of the Middle Border

all her other afflictions she was expecting the birth of
another child.

I do not know what we would have done had not a
noble woman of the neighborhood volunteered to come
in and help us. She was not a friend, hardly an ac
quaintance, and yet she served us like an angel of mercy.
Whether she still lives or not I cannot say, but I wish
to acknowledge here the splendid heroism which brought
Mary Briggs, a stranger, into our stricken home at a
time when all our other neighbors beat their horses into
a mad gallop whenever forced to pass our gate.

Young as I was I realized something of the burden
which had fallen upon my mother, and when one night
I was awakened from deep sleep by hearing her calling
out in pain, begging piteously for help, I shuddered in
my bed, realizing with childish, intuitive knowledge
that she was passing through a cruel convulsion which
could not be softened or put aside. I went to sleep
again at last, and when I woke, I had a little sister.

Harriet and I having been vaccinated, escaped with
what was called the "verylide" but father was ill for
several weeks. Fortunately he was spared, as we all
were, the "pitting" which usually follows this dreaded
disease, and in a week or two we children had forgotten
all about it. Spring was upon us and the world was
waiting to be explored.

One of the noblest features of this farm was a large
spring which boiled forth from the limestone rock about
eighty rods north of the house, and this was a wonder-
spot to us. There was something magical in this never-
failing fountain, and we loved to play beside its waters.
One of our delightful tasks was riding the horses to
water at this spring, and I took many lessons in horse
manship on these trips.

As the seeding time came on, enormous flocks of

"Woods and Prairie Lands'"

pigeons, in clouds which almost filled the sky, made it
necessary for some one to sentinel the new-sown grain,
and although I was but nine years of age, my father put
a double-barrelled shotgun into my hands, and sent me
out to defend the fields.

This commission filled me with the spirit of the soldier.
Proudly walking my rounds I menaced the flocks as
they circled warily over my head, taking shot at them
now and again as they came near enough, feeling as duty
bound and as martial as any Roman sentry standing
guard over a city. Up to this time I had not been al
lowed to carry arms, although I had been the companion
of Den Green and Ellis Usher on their hunting expedi
tions in the coulee — now with entire discretion over my
weapon, I loaded it, capped it and fired it, marching
with sedate and manly tread, while little Frank at my
heels, served as subordinate in his turn.

The pigeons passed after a few days, but my warlike
duties continued, for the ground-squirrels, called "goph
ers" by the settlers, were almost as destructive of the
seed corn as the pigeons had been of the wheat. Day
after day I patrolled the edge of the field listening to the
saucy whistle of the striped little rascals, tracking them
to their burrows and shooting them as they lifted their
heads above the ground. I had moments of being sorry
for them, but the sight of one digging up the seed,
silenced my complaining conscience and I continued
to slay.

The school-house of this district stood out upon the
prairie to the west a mile distant, and during May we
trudged our way over a pleasant road, each carrying a
small tin pail filled with luncheon. Here I came in con
tact with the Norwegian boys from the colony to the
north, and a bitter feud arose (or existed) between the
"Yankees," as they called us, and "the Norskies," as

n

A Son of the Middle Border

we called them. Often when we met on the road, showers
of sticks and stones filled the air, and our hearts burned
with the heat of savage conflict. War usually broke out
at the moment of parting. Often after a fairly amicable
half-mile together we suddenly split into hostile ranks,
and warred with true tribal frenzy as long as we could
find a stone or a clod to serve as missile. I had no per
sonal animosity in this, I was merely a Pict willing to
destroy my Angle enemies.

As I look back upon my life on that woodland farm,
it all seems very colorful and sweet. I am re-living days
when the warm sun, falling on radiant slopes of grass, lit
the meadow phlox and tall tiger lilies into flaming torches
of color. I think of blackberry thickets and odorous
grapevines and cherry trees and the delicious nuts which
grew in profusion throughout the forest to the north.
This forest which seemed endless and was of enchanted
solemnity served as our wilderness. We explored it at
every opportunity. We loved every day for the color it
brought, each season for the wealth of its experience,
and we welcomed the thought of spending all our years
in this beautiful home where the wood and the prairie
of our song did actually meet and mingle.

CHAPTER
We Move Again

ONE day there came into our home a strange man
who spoke in a fashion new to me. He was a
middle-aged rather formal individual, dressed in a rough
gray suit, and father alluded to him privately as "that
English duke." I didn't know exactly what he meant
by this, but our visitor's talk gave me a vague notion of
"the old country."

"My home," he said, "is near Manchester. I have
come to try farming in the American wilderness."

He was kindly, and did his best to be democratic,
but we children stood away from him, wondering what
he was doing in our house. My mother disliked him
from the start for as he took his seat at our dinner table,
he drew from his pocket a case in which he earned a
silver fork and spoon and a silver-handled knife. Our
cutlery was not good enough for him!

Every family that we knew at that time used three-
tined steel forks and my mother naturally resented the
implied criticism of her table ware. I heard her say to
my father, "If our ways don't suit your English friend
he'd better go somewhere else for his meals."

This fastidious pioneer also carried a revolver, for he
believed that having penetrated far into a dangerous
country, he was in danger, and I am not at all sure but
that he was right, for the Minnesota woods at this
time were filled with horse-thieves and counterfeiters,
and it was known that many of these landhunting

79

A Son of the Middle Border

Englishmen carried large sums of gold on their per
sons.

We resented our guest still more when we found that
he was trying to buy our lovely farm and that father
was already half -persuaded. We loved this farm. We
loved the log house, and the oaks which sheltered it, and
we especially valued the glorious spring and the plum
trees which stood near it, but father was still dreaming
of the free lands of the farther west, and early in March
he sold to the Englishman and moved us all to a rented
place some six miles directly west, in the township of
Burr Oak.

This was but a temporary lodging, a kind of camping
place, for no sooner were his fields seeded than he set
forth once again with a covered wagon, eager to explore
the open country to the north and west of us. The wood
and prairie land of Winnishiek County did not satisfy
him, although it seemed to me then, as it does now, the
fulfillment of his vision, the realization of our song.

For several weeks he travelled through southern
Minnesota and northern Iowa, always in search of the
perfect farm, and when he returned, just before harvest,
he was able to report that he had purchased a quarter
section of "the best land in Mitchell County" and that
after harvest we would all move again.

If my mother resented this third removal she made
no comment which I can now recall. I suspect that she
went rather willingly this time, for her brother David
wrote that he had also located in Mitchell County, not
two miles from the place my father had decided upon
for our future home, and Samantha, her younger sister,
had settled in Minnesota. The circle in Neshonoc seemed
about to break up. A mighty spreading and shifting
was going on all over the west, and no doubt my mother
accepted her part in it without especial protest.

80

We Move Again

Our life in Burr Oak township that summer was
joyous for us children. It seems to have been almost all
sunshine and play. As I reflect upon it I relive many
delightful excursions into the northern woods. It ap
pears that Harriet and I were in continual harvest of
nuts and berries. Our walks to school were explorations
and we spent nearly every Saturday and Sunday in
minute study of the country-side, devouring everything
which was remotely edible. We gorged upon May-
apples until we were ill, and munched black cherries
until we were dizzy with their fumes. We clambered
high trees to collect baskets of wild grapes which our
mother could not use, and we garnered nuts with the
insatiable greed of squirrels. We ate oak-shoots, fern-
roots, leaves, bark, seed-balls, — everything! — not be
cause we were hungry but because we loved to experi
ment, and we came home, only when hungry or worn
out or in awe of the darkness.

It was a delightful season, full of the most satisfying
companionship and yet of the names of my playmates
I can seize upon only two — the others have faded from
the tablets of my memory. I remember Ned who per
mitted me to hold his plow, and Perry who taught me
how to tame the half-wild colts that filled his father's
pasture. Together we spent long days lassoing — or
rather snaring — the feet of these horses and subduing
them to the halter. We had many fierce struggles but
came out of them all without a serious injury.

Late in August my father again loaded our household
goods into wagons, and with our small herd of cattle
following, set out toward the west, bound once again
to overtake the actual line of the middle border.

This journey has an unforgettable epic charm as I
look back upon it. Each mile took us farther and farther
into the unsettled prairie until in the afternoon of the

81

A Son of the Middle Border

\

second day, we came to a meadow so wide that its
western rim touched the sky without revealing a sign
of man's habitation other than the road in which we
travelled.

The plain was covered with grass tall as ripe wheat
and when my father stopped his team and came back
to us and said, "Well, children, here we are on The Big
Prairie," we looked about us with awe, so endless seemed
this spread of wild oats and waving blue-joint.

Far away dim clumps of trees showed, but no chimney
was in sight, and no living thing moved save our own
cattle and the hawks lazily wheeling in the air. My heart
filled with awe as well as wonder. The majesty of this
primeval world exalted me. I felt for the first time the
poetry of the unplowed spaces. It seemed that the
"herds of deer and buffalo" of our song might, at any
moment, present themselves, — but they did not, and
my father took no account even of the marsh fowl.

"Forward march!" he shouted, and on we went.

Hour after hour he pushed into the west, the heads
of his tired horses hanging ever lower, and on my mother's
face the shadow deepened, but her chieftain's voice
cheerily urging his team lost nothing of its clarion resolu
tion. He was in his element. He loved this shelterless
sweep of prairie. This westward march entranced him,
I think he would have gladly kept on until the snowy
wall of the Rocky Mountains met his eyes, for he was
a natural explorer.

Sunset came at last, but still he drove steadily on
through the sparse settlements. Just at nightfall we
came to a beautiful little stream, and stopped to let the
horses drink. I heard its rippling, reassuring song on
the pebbles. Thereafter all is dim and vague to me
until my mother called out sharply, "Wake up, children!
Here we are!"

Si

We Move Again

Struggling to my feet I looked about me. Nothing
could be seen but the dim form of a small house. — On
every side the land melted into blackness, silent arid
without boundary.

Driving into the yard, father hastily unloaded one of
the wagons and taking mother and Harriet and Jessie
drove away to spend the night with Uncle David who
had preceded us, as I now learned, and was living on a
farm not far away. My brother and I were left to camp
as best we could with the hired man.

Spreading a rude bed on the floor, he told us to "hop
in" and in ten minutes we were all fast asleep.

The sound of a clattering poker awakened me next
morning and when I opened my sleepy eyes and looked
out a new world displayed itself before me.

The cabin faced a level plain with no tree in sight.
A mile away to the west stood a low stone house and
immediately in front of us opened a half-section of un-
fenced sod. To the north, as far as I could see, the land
billowed like a russet ocean, with scarcely a roof to fleck
its lonely spread. — I cannot say that I liked or disliked
it. I merely marvelled at it, and while I wandered about
the yard, the hired man scorched some cornmeal mush
in a skillet and this with some butter and gingerbread,
made up my first breakfast in Mitchell County.

An hour or two later father and mother and the girls
returned and the work of setting up the stove and getting
the furniture in place began. In a very short time the
experienced clock was voicing its contentment on a
new shelf, and the kettle was singing busily on its familiar
stove. Once more and for the sixth time since her
marriage, Belle Garland adjusted herself to a pioneer
environment, comforted no doubt by the knowledge that
David and Deborah were near and that her father was

A Son of the Middle Border

coming soon. No doubt she also congratulated herself
on the fact that she had not been carried beyond the
Missouri River — and that her house was not " surrounded
by Indians who murder by night."

A few hours later, while my brother and I were on the
roof of the house with intent to peer "over the edge of
the prairie" something grandly significant happened.
Upon a low hill to the west a herd of horses suddenly
appeared running swiftly, led by a beautiful sorrel pony
with shining white mane. On they came, like a platoon
of cavalry rushing down across the open sod which lay
before our door. The leader moved with lofty and
graceful action, easily out-stretching all his fellows.
Forward they swept, their long tails floating in the wind
like banners, — on in a great curve as if scenting danger
in the smoke of our fire. The thunder of their feet filled
me with delight. Surely, next to a herd of buffalo this
squadron of wild horses was the most satisfactory evi
dence of the wilderness into which we had been thrust.

Riding as if to intercept the leader, a solitary herder
now appeared, mounted upon a horse which very evi
dently was the mate of the leader. He rode magnifi
cently, and under him the lithe mare strove resolutely
to overtake and head off the leader. — All to no purpose!
The halterless steeds of the prairie snorted derisively
at their former companion, bridled and saddled, and
carrying the weight of a master. Swiftly they thundered
across the sod, dropped into a ravine, and disappeared
in a cloud of dust.

Silently we watched the rider turn and ride slowly
homeward. The plain had become our new domain,
the horseman our ideal.

CHAPTER IX
Our First Winter on the Prairie

TT^OR a few days my brother and I had little to do
Jj other than to keep the cattle from straying, and
we used our leisure in becoming acquainted with the
region round about.

It burned deep into our memories, this wide, sunny,
windy country. The sky so big, and the horizon line
so low and so far away, made this new world of the plain
more majestic than the world of the Coulee. — The grasses
and many of the flowers were also new to us. On the
uplands the herbage was short and dry and the plants
stiff and woody, but in the swales the wild oat shook
its quivers of barbed and twisted arrows, and the crow's
foot, tall and sere, bowed softly under the feet of the
wind, while everywhere, in the lowlands as well as on
the ridges, the bleaching white antlers of by-gone herbiv-
ora lay scattered, testifying to "the herds of deer and
buffalo" which once fed there. We were just a few
years too late to see them.

To the south the sections were nearly all settled upon,
for in that direction lay the county town, but to the
north and on into Minnesota rolled the unplowed sod,
the feeding ground of the cattle, the home of foxes and
wolves, and to the west, just beyond the highest ridges,
we loved to think the bison might still be seen.

The cabin on this rented farm was a mere shanty, a
shell of pine boards, which needed re-enforcing to make
it habitable and one day my father said, "Well, Hamlin,

8*

A Son of the Middle Border

I guess you'll have to run the plow- team this fall. I
must help neighbor Button wall up the house and I
can't afford to hire another man."

This seemed a fine commission for a lad of ten, and
I drove my horses into the field that first morning with
a manly pride which added an inch to my stature. I
took my initial "round" at a "land" which stretched
from one side of the quarter section to the other, in
confident mood. I was grown up!

But alas! my sense of elation did not last long. To
guide a team for a few minutes as an experiment was
one thing — to plow all day like a hired hand was another.
It was not a chore, it was a job. It meant moving to
and fro hour after hour, day after day, with no one to
talk to but the horses. It meant trudging eight or nine
miles in the forenoon and as many more in the afternoon,
with less than an hour off at noon. It meant dragging
the heavy implement around the corners, and it meant
also many ship-wrecks, for the thick, wet stubble matted
with wild buckwheat often rolled up between the coulter
and the standard and threw the share completely out of
the ground, making it necessary for me to halt the team
and jerk the heavy plow backward for a new start.

Although strong and active I was rather short, even
for a ten-year-old, and to reach the plow handles I was
obliged to lift my hands above my shoulders; and so
with the guiding lines crossed over my back and my
worn straw hat bobbing just above the cross-brace I
must have made a comical figure. At any rate nothing
like it had been seen in the neighborhood and the people
on the road to town looking across the field, laughed
and called to me, and neighbor Button said to my father
in my hearing, "That chap's too young to run a plow,"
a judgment which pleased and flattered me greatly.

Harriet cheered me by running out occasionally to

86

Our First Winter on the Prairie

meet me as I turned the nearest corner, and sometimes
Frank consented to go all the way around, chatting
breathlessly as he trotted along behind. At other times
he was prevailed upon to bring to me a cookie and a glass
of milk, a deed which helped to shorten the forenoon.
And yet, notwithstanding all these ameliorations,
plowing became tedious.

The flies were savage, especially in the middle of the
day, and the horses, tortured by their lances, drove
badly, twisting and turning in their despairing rage.
Their tails were continually getting over the lines, and
in stopping to kick their tormentors from their bellies
they often got astride the traces, and in other ways
made trouble for me. Only in the early morning or
when the sun sank low at night were they able to move
quietly along their ways.

The soil was the kind my father had been seeking, a
smooth dark sandy loam, which made it possible for a
lad to do the work of a man. Often the share would go
the entire "round" without striking a root or a pebble
as big as a walnut, the steel running steadily with a
crisp craunching ripping sound which I rather liked to
hear. In truth work would have been quite tolerable
had it not been so long drawn out. Ten hours of it even
on a fine day made about twice too many for a boy.

Meanwhile I cheered myself in every imaginable way.
I whistled. I sang. I studied the clouds. I gnawed
the beautiful red skin from the seed vessels which hung
upon the wild rose bushes, and I counted the prairie
chickens as they began to come together in winter flocks
running through the stubble in search of food. I stopped
now and again to examine the lizards unhoused by the
share, tormenting them to make them sweat their milky
drops (they were curiously repulsive to me), and I
measured the little granaries of wheat which the mice

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A Son of the Middle Border

and gophers had deposited deep under the ground,
storehouses which the plow had violated. My eyes dwelt
enviously upon the sailing hawk, and on the passing of
ducks. The occasional shadowy figure of a prairie wolf
made me wish for Uncle David and his rifle.

On certain days nothing could cheer me. When the
bitter wind blew from the north, and the sky was filled
with wild geese racing southward, with swiftly-hurrying
clouds, winter seemed about to spring upon me. The
horses' tails streamed in the wind. Flurries of snow
covered me with clinging flakes, and the mud "gummed "
my boots and trouser legs, clogging my steps. At such
times I suffered from cold and loneliness — all sense of
being a man evaporated. I was just a little boy, longing
for the leisure of boyhood.

Day after day, through the month of October and
deep into November, I followed that team, turning over
two acres of stubble each day. I would not believe this
without proof, but it is true! At last it grew so cold that
in the early morning everything was white with frost
and I was obliged to put one hand in my pocket to keep
it warm, while holding the plow with the other, but I
didn't mind this so much, for it hinted at the close of
autumn. I've no doubt facing the wind in this way
was excellent discipline, but I didn't think it necessary
then and my heart was sometimes bitter and rebellious.

The soldier did not intend to be severe. As he had
always been an early riser and a busy toiler it seemed
perfectly natural and good discipline, that his sons
should also plow and husk corn at ten years of age. He
often told of beginning life as a "bound boy" at nine,
and these stories helped me to perform my own tasks
without whining. I feared to voice my weakness.

At last there came a morning when by striking my
heel upon the ground I convinced my boss that the soil

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Our First Winter on the Prairie

was frozen too deep for the mold-board to break. "All
right," he said, "you may lay off this forenoon."

Oh, those beautiful hours of respite! With time to
play or read I usually read, devouring anything I could
lay my hands upon. Newspapers, whether old or new,
or pasted on the wall or piled up in the attic, — anything
in print was wonderful to me. One enthralling book,
borrowed from Neighbor Button, was The Female Spy,
a Tale of the Rebellion. Another treasure was a story
called Cast Ashore, but this volume unfortunately was
badly torn and fifty pages were missing so that I never
knew, and do not know to this day, how those indomi
table shipwrecked seamen reached their English homes.
I dimly recall that one man carried a pet monkey on
his back and that they all lived on "Bustards."

Finally the day came when the ground rang like iron
under the feet of the horses, and a bitter wind, raw and
gusty, swept out of the northwest, bearing gray veils
of sleet. Winter had come! Work in the furrow had
ended. The plow was brought in, cleaned and greased
to prevent its rusting, and while the horses munched
their hay in well-earned holiday, father and I helped
farmer Button husk the last of his corn.

Osman Button, a quaint and interesting man of
middle age, was a native of York State and retained
many of the traditions of his old home strangely blent
with a store of vivid memories of Colorado, Utah and
California, for he had been one of the gold-seekers of
the early fifties. He loved to spin yarns of "When I
was in gold camps," and he spun them well. He was
short and bent and spoke in a low voice with a curious
nervous sniff, but his diction was notably precise and
clear. He was a man of judgment, and a citizen of weight
and influence. From O. Button I got my first definite
notion of Bret Harte's country, and of the long journey

A Son of the Middle Border

which they of the ox team had made in search of El
dorado.

His family "mostly boys and girls" was large, yet they
all lived in a low limestone house which he had built
(he said) to serve as a granary till he should find time
to erect a suitable dwelling. In order to make the point
dramatic, I will say that he was still living in the " gran
ary" when last I called on him thirty years later!

A warm friendship sprang up between him and my
father, and he was often at our house but his gaunt and
silent wife seldom accompanied him. She was kindly
and hospitable, but a great sufferer. She never laughed,
and seldom smiled, and so remains a pathetic figure in
all my memories of the household.

The younger Button children, Eva and Cyrus, became
our companions in certain of our activities, but as they
were both very sedate and slow of motion, they seldom
joined us in our livelier sports. They were both much
older than their years. Cyrus at this time was almost
as venerable as his father, although his years were, I
suppose, about seventeen. Albert and Lavinia, we
heard, were much given to dancing and parties.

One night as we were all seated around the kerosene
lamp my father said, "Well, Belle, I suppose we'll have
to take these young ones down to town and fit 'em out
for school." These words so calmly uttered filled our
minds with visions of new boots, new caps and new
books, and though we went obediently to bed we hardly
slept, so excited were we, and at breakfast next morning
not one of us could think of food. All our desires con
verged upon the wondrous expedition — our first visit to
town.

Our only carriage was still the lumber wagon but it
had now two spring seats, one for father, mother and
Jessie, and one for Harriet, Frank and myself. No

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Our First Winter on the Prairie

one else had anything better, hence we had no sense of
being poorly out-fitted. We drove away across the
frosty prairie toward Osage — moderately comfortable
and perfectly happy.

Osage was only a little town, a village of perhaps twelve
hundred inhabitants, but to me as we drove down its
Main Street, it was almost as impressive as LaCrosse
had been. Frank clung close to father, and mother led
Jessie, leaving Harriet and me to stumble over nail-kegs
and dodge whiffle trees what time our eyes absorbed
jars of pink and white candy, and sought out boots and
buckskin mittens. Whenever Harriet spoke she whis
pered, and we pointed at each shining object with cau
tious care. — Oh! the marvellous exotic smells! Odors
of salt codfish and spices, calico and kerosene, apples
and ginger-snaps mingle in my mind as I write.

Each of us soon carried a candy marble in his or her
cheek (as a chipmunk carries a nut) and Frank and I
stood like sturdy hitching posts whilst the storekeeper
with heavy hands screwed cotton-plush caps upon our
heads, — but the most exciting moment, the crowning
joy of the day, came with the buying of our new boots. —
If only father had not insisted on our taking those which
were a size too large for us!

They were real boots. No one but a Congressman
wore " gaiters" in those days. War fashions still domi
nated the shoe-shops, and high-topped cavalry boots were
all but universal. They were kept in boxes under the
counter or ranged in rows on a shelf and were of all
weights and degrees of fineness. The ones I selected
had red tops with a golden moon in the center but my
brother's taste ran to blue tops decorated with a golden
flag. Oh! that deliciously oily new smell! My heart
glowed every time I looked at mine. I was especially
pleased because they did not have copper toes. Copper

A Son of the Middle Border

toes belonged to little boys. A youth who had plowed
seventy acres of land could not reasonably be expected
to dress like a child. — How smooth and delightfully stiff
they felt on my feet.

Then came our new books, a McGuffey reader, a
Mitchell geography, a Ray's arithmetic, and a slate.
The books had a delightful new smell also, and there
was singular charm in the smooth surface of the un
marked slates. I was eager to carve my name in the
frame. At last with our treasures under the seat (so
near that we could feel them), with our slates and
books in our laps we jolted home, dreaming of school and
snow. To wade in the drifts with our fine high-topped
boots was now our desire.

It is strange but I cannot recall how my mother looked
on this trip. Even my father's image is faint and vague
(I remember only his keen eagle-gray terrifying eyes),
but I can see every acre of that rented farm. I can tell
you exactly how the house looked. It was an unpainted
square cottage and stood bare on the sod at the edge
of Dry Run ravine. It had a small lean-to on the eastern
side and a sitting room and bedroom below. Overhead
was a low unplastered chamber in which we children
slept. As it grew too cold to use the summer kitchen
we cooked, ate and lived in the square room which oc
cupied the entire front of the two story upright, and
which was, I suppose, sixteen feet square. As our attic
was warmed only by the stove-pipe, we older children of
a frosty morning made extremely simple and hurried
toilets. On very cold days we hurried down stairs to
dress beside the kitchen fire.

Our furniture was of the rudest sort. I cannot recall
a single piece in our house or in our neighbors' houses
that had either beauty or distinction. It was all cheap
and worn, for this was the middle border, and nearly all

02

Our First Winter on the Prairie

our neighbors had moved as we had done in covered
wagons. Farms were new, houses were mere shanties,
and money was scarce. "War times" and "war prices"
were only just beginning to change. Our clothing was
all cheap and ill fitting. The women and children wore
home-made "cotton flannel" underclothing for the most
part, and the men wore rough, ready-made suits over
which they drew brown denim blouses or overalls to
keep them clean.

Father owned a fine buffalo overcoat (so much of his
song's promise was redeemed) and we possessed two
buffalo robes for use in our winter sleigh, but mother
had only a sad coat and a woolen shawl. How she kept
warm I cannot now understand — I think she stayed at
home on cold days.

All of the boys wore long trousers, and even my eight
year old brother looked like a miniature man with his
full-length overalls, high-topped boots and real sus
penders. As for me I carried a bandanna in my
hip pocket and walked with determined masculine
stride.

My mother, like all her brothers and sisters, was
musical and played the violin — or fiddle, as we called it, — •
and I have many dear remembrances of her playing.
Napoleon's March, Money Musk, The Devil's Dream
and half-a-dozen other simple tunes made up her reper
toire. It was very crude music of course but it added to
the love and admiration in which her children always
held her. Also in some way we had fallen heir to a
Prince melodeon — one that had belonged to the McClin-
tocks, but only my sister played on that.

Once at a dance in neighbor Button's house, mother
took the "dare" of the fiddler and with shy smile played
The Fisher's Hornpipe or some other simple melody and
was mightily cheered at the close of it, a brief perform-

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A Son of the Middle Border

ance which she refused to repeat. Afterward she and
my father danced and this seemed a very wonderful
performance, for to us they were "old" — far past
such frolicking, although he was but forty and she thirty-
one!

At this dance I heard, for the first time, the local pro
fessional fiddler, old Daddy Fairbanks, as quaint a char
acter as ever entered fiction, for he was not only butcher
and horse doctor but a renowned musician as well. Tall,
gaunt and sandy, with enormous nose and sparse pro
jecting teeth, he was to me the most enthralling figure
at this dance and his queer "Calls" and his "York
State" accent filled us all with delight. "Ally man
left," "Chassay by your pardners," "Dozy-do" were
some of the phrases he used as he played Honest John
and Haste to the Wedding. At times he sang his calls
in high nasal chant, "First lady lead to the right, deedle,
deedle dum-dum — gent foller after — dally-deedle-do-do—
three hands round" — and everybody laughed with frank
enjoyment of his words and action.

It was a joy to watch him "start the set." With
fiddle under his chin he took his seat in a big chair on the
kitchen table in order to command the floor. "Farm
on, farm on!" he called disgustedly. "Lively now!"
and then, when all the couples were in position, with
one mighty No. 14 boot uplifted, with bow laid to strings
he snarled, "Already — GELANG!" and with a thundering
crash his foot came down, "Honors TEW your pardners — •
right and left FOUR!" And the dance was on!

I suspect his fiddlin' was not even "middling" but he
beat time fairly well and kept the dancers somewhere
near to rhythm, and so when his ragged old cap went
round he often got a handful of quarters for his toil.
He always ate two suppers, one at the beginning of the
party and another at the end. He had a high respect

94

Our First Winter on the Prairie

for the skill of my Uncle David and was grateful to him
and other better musicians for their noninterference
with his professional engagements.

The school-house which was to be the center of our
social life stood on the bare prairie about a mile to the
southwest and like thousands of other similar buildings
in the west, had not a leaf to shade it in summer nor a
branch to break the winds of savage winter. "There's
been a good deal of talk about setting out a wind-break,"
neighbor Button explained to us, "but nothing has as
yet been done." It was merely a square pine box painted
a glaring white on the outside and a desolate drab within;
at least drab was the original color, but the benches
were mainly so greasy and hacked that original inten
tions were obscured. It had two doors on the eastern
end and three windows on each side.

A long square stove (standing on slender legs in a
puddle of bricks), a wooden chair, and a rude table in
one corner, for the use of the teacher, completed the
movable furniture. The walls were roughly plastered
and the windows had no curtains.

It was a barren temple of the arts even to the resi
dents of Dry Run, and Harriet and I, stealing across
the prairie one Sunday morning to look in, came away
vaguely depressed. We were fond of school and never
missed a day if we could help it, but this neighborhood
center seemed small and bleak and poor.

With what fear, what excitement we approached the
door on that first day, I can only faintly indicate. All
the scholars were strange to me except Albert and Cyrus
Button, and I was prepared for rough treatment. How
ever, the experience was not so harsh as I had feared.
True, Rangely Field did throw me down and wash my
face in snow, and Jack Sweet tripped me up once or
twice, but I bore these indignities with such grace and

95

A Son of the Middle Border

could command, and soon made a place for myself among
the boys.

Burton Babcock was my seat-mate, and at once be
came my chum. You will hear much of him in this
chronicle. He was two years older than I and though
pale and slim was unusually swift and strong for his
age. He was a silent lad, curiously timid in his classes
and not at ease with his teachers.

I cannot recover much of that first winter of school.
It was not an experience to remember for its charm. Not
one line of grace, not one touch of color relieved the
room's bare walls or softened its harsh windows. Per
haps this very barrenness gave to the poetry in our
readers an appeal that seems magical, certainly it threw
over the faces of Frances Babcock and Mary Abbie
Gammons a lovelier halo. — They were "the big girls" of
the school, that is to say, they were seventeen or eighteen
years old, — and Frances was the special terror of the
teacher, a pale and studious pigeon-toed young man
who was preparing for college.

In spite of the cold, the boys played open air games all
winter. "Dog and Deer," "Dare Gool" and "Fox and
Geese" were our favorite diversions, and the wonder is
that we did not all die of pneumonia, for we battled so
furiously during each recess that we often came in wet
with perspiration and coughing so hard that for several
minutes recitations were quite impossible. — But we
were a hardy lot and none of us seemed the worse for
our colds.

There was not much chivalry in the school — quite
the contrary, for it was dominated by two or three big
rough boys and the rest of us took our tone from
them. To protect a girl, to shield her from remark
or indignity required a good deal of bravery and few
of us were strong enough to do it. Girls were foolish,

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Our First Winter on the Prairie

ridiculous creatures, set apart to be laughed at or preyed
upon at will. To shame them was a great joke. — How
far I shared in these barbarities I cannot say but that I
did share in them I know, for I had very little to do
with my sister Harriet after crossing the school-house
yard. She kept to her tribe as I to mine.

This winter was made memorable also by a "revival"
which came over the district with sudden fury. It began
late in the winter — fortunately, for it ended all dancing
and merry-making for the time. It silenced Daddy
Fairbanks' fiddle and subdued my mother's glorious
voice to a wail. A cloud of puritanical gloom settled
upon almost every household. Youth and love became
furtive and hypocritic.

The evangelist, one of the old-fashioned shouting,
hysterical, ungrammatical, gasping sort, took charge of
the services, and in his exhortations phrases descriptive
of lakes of burning brimstone and ages of endless torment
abounded. Some of the figures of speech and violent
gestures of the man still linger in my mind, but I will
not set them down on paper. They are too dreadful to
perpetuate. At times he roared with such power that
he could have been heard for half a mile.

And yet we went, night by night, mother, father,
Jessie, all of us. It was our theater. Some of the rough
est characters in the neighborhood rose and professed
repentance, for a season, even old Barton, the profanest
man in the township, experienced a "change of heart."

We all enjoyed the singing, and joined most lustily
in the tunes. Even little Jessie learned to sing Heavenly
Wings , There is a Fountain filled with Bloody and Old
Hundred.

As I peer back into that crowded little school-room,
smothering hot and reeking with lamp smoke, and recall
the half-lit, familiar faces of the congregation, it all has

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A Son of the Middle Border

the quality of a vision, something experienced in an
other world. The preacher, leaping, sweating, roaring
till the windows rattle, the mothers with sleeping babes
in their arms, the sweet, strained faces of the girls, the
immobile wondering men, are spectral shadows, figures
encountered in the phantasmagoria of disordered sleep.

98

CHAPTER X
The Homestead on the Knoll

SPRING came to us that year with such sudden
beauty, such sweet significance after our long and
depressing winter, that it seemed a release from prison,
and when at the close of a warm day in March we heard,
pulsing down through the golden haze of sunset, the
mellow boom, boom, boom of the prairie cock our hearts
quickened, for this, we were told, was the certain sign
of spring.

Day by day the call of this gay herald of spring was
taken up by others until at last the whole horizon was
ringing with a sunrise symphony of exultant song.
11 Boom, boom, boom!" called the roosters; "cutta, cutta,
wha-whoop-squaw, squawk! " answered the hens as they
fluttered and danced on the ridges — and mingled with
their jocund hymn we heard at last the slender, wistful
piping of the prairie lark.

With the coming of spring my duties as a teamster
returned. My father put me in charge of a harrow, and
with old Doll and Queen — quiet and faithful span — I
drove upon the field which I had plowed the previous
October, there to plod to and fro behind my drag, while
in the sky above rny head and around me on the mellow
ing soil the life of the season thickened.

Aided by my team I was able to study at close range
the prairie roosters as they assembled for their parade.
They had regular "stamping grounds" on certain ridges,
where the soil was beaten smooth by the pressure of

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A Son of the Middle Border

their restless feet. I often passed within a few yards of
them. — I can see them now, the cocks leaping and
strutting, with trailing wings and down-thrust Leads,
displaying their bulbous orange-colored neck ornaments
yhile the hens flutter and squawk in silly delight. All
ihe charm and mystery of that prairie world comes ba-ck
io me, and I ache with an illogical desire to recover it
and hold it, and preserve it in some form for my chil
dren. — It seems an injustice that they should miss it,
and yet it is probable that they are getting an equal
joy of life, an equal exaltation from the opening flowers
of the single lilac bush in our city back-yard or from an
occasional visit to the lake in Central Park.

Dragging is even more wearisome than plowing, in
some respects, for you have no handles to assist you and
your heels sinking deep into the soft loam bring such
unwonted strain upon the tendons of your legs that you
can scarcely limp home to supper, and it seems that you
cannot possibly go on another day, — but you do — at
least I did.

There was something relentless as the weather in the
way my soldier father ruled his sons, and yet he was
neither hard-hearted nor unsympathetic. The fact is
easily explained. His own boyhood had been task-filled
and he saw nothing unnatural in the regular employment
of his children. Having had little play-time himself, he
considered that we were having a very comfortable
boyhood. Furthermore the country was new and labor
scarce. Every hand and foot must count under such
conditions.

There are certain ameliorations to child-labor on a
farm. Air and sunshine and food are plentiful. I never
lacked for meat or clothing, and mingled with my records
of toil are exquisite memories of the joy I took in
following the changes in the landscape, in the notes

100

The Homestead on the Knoll

of birds, and in the play of small animals on the sunny
soil.

There were no pigeons on the prairie but. enormous
flocks of ducks came sweeping nordiwai d, alighting at
sunset to feed in the fields of stubble. They. c?n?e in
countless myriads and often when they settle d;to-e^: th
they covered acres of meadow like some prodigious
cataract from the sky. When alarmed they rose with a
sound like the rumbling of thunder.

At times the lines of their cloud-like flocks were so
unending that those in the front rank were lost in the
northern sky, while those in the rear were but dim bands
beneath the southern sun. — I tried many times to shoot
some of them, but never succeeded, so wary were they.
Brant and geese in formal flocks followed and to watch
these noble birds pushing their arrowy lines straight
into the north always gave me special joy. On fine
days they flew high — so high they were but faint lines
against the shining clouds.

I learned to imitate their cries, and often caused the
leaders to turn, to waver in their course as I uttered my
resounding call.

The sand-hill crane came last of all, loitering north
in lonely easeful flight. Often of a warm day, I heard
his sovereign cry falling from the azure dome, so high,
so far his form could not be seen, so close to the sun
that my eyes could not detect his solitary, majestic
circling sweep. He came after the geese. He was the
herald of summer. His brazen, reverberating call will
forever remain associated in my mind with mellow,
pulsating earth, springing grass and cloudless glorious
May-time skies.

As my team moved to and fro over the field, ground
sparrows rose in countless thousands, flinging themselves
against the sky like grains of wheat from out a sower's

101

A Son of the Middle Border

hand, and their chatter fell upon me like the voices of
fairy sprites, invisible and multitudinous. Long swift
narrpw flocks of a bird we called "the prairie-pigeon"
swooped aver the swells on sounding wing, winding so
close to the ground, they seemed at times like slender
air-borne "Seipents,— and always the brown lark whistled
as if to cheer my lonely task.

Back and forth across the wide field I drove, while the
sun crawled slowly up the sky. It was tedious work
and I was always hungry by nine, and famished at ten.
Thereafter the sun appeared to stand still. My chest
caved in and my knees trembled with weakness, but
when at last the white flag fluttering from a chamber
window summoned to the mid-day meal, I started with
strength miraculously renewed and called, "Dinner!"
to the hired hand. Unhitching my team, with eager
haste I climbed upon old Queen, and rode at ease toward
the barn.

Oh, it was good to enter the kitchen, odorous with
fresh biscuit and hot coffee! We all ate like dragons,
devouring potatoes and salt pork without end, till mother
mildly remarked, "Boys, boys! Don't ' founder7 your
selves!"

From such a meal I withdrew torpid as a gorged snake,
but luckily I had half an hour in which to get my courage
back, — and besides, there was always the stirring power
of father's clarion call. His energy appeared super
human to me. I was in awe of him. He kept track of
everything, seemed hardly to sleep and never com
plained of weariness. Long before the nooning was up,
(or so it seemed to me) he began to shout: "Time's upt
boys. Grab a root!"

And so, lame, stiff and sore, with the sinews of my legs
shortened, so that my knees were bent like an old man's,
I hobbled away to the barn and took charge of my team.

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The Homestead on the Knoll

Once in the field, I felt better. A subtle change, a mel
lower charm came over the afternoon earth. The ground
was warmer, the sky more genial, the wind more amiable,
and before I had finished my second "round" my joints
were moderately pliable and my sinews relaxed.

Nevertheless the temptation to sit on the corner of the
harrow and dream the moments away was very great,
and sometimes as I laid my tired body down on the
tawny, sunlit grass at the edge of the field, and gazed
up at the beautiful clouds sailing by, I wished for leisure
to explore their purple valleys. — The wind whispered
in the tall weeds, and sighed in the hazel bushes. The
dried blades touching one another in the passing winds,
spoke to me, and the gophers, glad of escape from their
dark, underground prisons, chirped a cheery greeting.
Such respites were strangely sweet.

So day by day, as I walked my monotonous round
upon the ever mellowing soil, the prairie spring unrolled
its beauties before me. I saw the last goose pass on to the
north, and watched the green grass creeping up the
sunny slopes. I answered the splendid challenge of the
loitering crane, and studied the ground sparrow building
her grassy nest. The prairie hens began to seek seclu
sion in the swales, and the pocket gopher, busily mining
the sod, threw up his purple-brown mounds of cool
fresh earth. Larks, blue-birds and king-birds followed
the robins, and at last the full tide of May covered the
world with luscious green.

Harriet and Frank returned to school but I was too
valuable to be spared. The unbroken land of our new
farm demanded the plow and no sooner was the planting
on our rented place finished than my father began the
work of fencing and breaking the sod of the homestead
which lay a mile to the south, glowing like a garden under
the summer sun. One day late in May my uncle David

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A Son of the Middle Border

(who had taken a farm not far away), drove over with
four horses hitched to a big breaking plow and to
gether with my father set to work overturning the
primeval sward whereon we were to be "lords of the
soil."

I confess that as I saw the tender plants and shining
flowers bow beneath the remorseless beam, civilization
seemed a sad business, and yet there was something
epic, something large-gestured and splendid in the
" breaking" season. Smooth, glossy, almost unwrinkled
the thick ribbon of jet-black sod rose upon the share
and rolled away from the mold-board's glistening curve
to tuck itself upside down into the furrow behind the
horse's heels, and the picture which my uncle made,
gave me pleasure in spite of the sad changes he was
making.

The land was not all clear prairie and every ounce
of David's great strength was required to guide that
eighteen-inch plow as it went ripping and snarling
through the matted roots of the hazel thickets, and
sometimes my father came and sat on the beam in order
to hold the coulter to its work, while the giant driver
braced himself to the shock and the four horses strained
desperately at their traces. These contests had the
quality of a wrestling match but the men always won.
My own job was to rake and burn the brush which my
father mowed with a heavy scythe. — Later we dug post-
holes and built fences but each day was spent on the new
land.

Around us, on the swells, gray gophers whistled, and
the nesting plover quaveringly called. Blackbirds
clucked in the furrow and squat badgers watched with
jealous eye the plow's inexorable progress toward their
dens. The weather was perfect June. Fleecy clouds
sailed like snowy galleons from west to east, the wind

104

The Homestead on the Knoll

was strong but kind, and we worked in a glow of satisfied
ownership.

Many rattlesnakes (" massasaugas " Mr. Button called
them), inhabited the moist spots and father and I killed
several as we cleared the ground. Prairie wolves lurked
in the groves and swales, but as foot by foot and rod by
rod, the steady steel rolled the grass and the hazel brush
under, all of these wild things died or hurried away,
never to return. Some part of this tragedy I was able
even then to understand and regret.

At last the wide " quarter section" lay upturned, black
to the sun and the garden that had bloomed and fruited
for millions of years, waiting for man, lay torn and
ravaged. The tender plants, the sweet flowers, the
fragrant fruits, the busy insects, all the swarming lives
which had been native here for untold centuries were
utterly destroyed. It was sad and yet it was not all loss,
even to my thinking, for I realized that over this desola
tion the green wheat would wave and the corn silks shed
their pollen. It was not precisely the romantic valley
of our song, but it was a rich and promiseful plot and
my father seemed entirely content.

Meanwhile, on a little rise of ground near the road,
neighbor Gammons and John Bowers were building our
next home. It did not in the least resemble the founda
tion of an everlasting family seat, but it deeply excited
us all. It was of pine and had the usual three rooms
below and a long garret above and as it stood on a plain,
bare to the winds, my father took the precaution of
lining it with brick to hold it down. It was as good as
most of the dwellings round about us but it stood naked
on the sod, devoid of grace as a dry goods box. Its
walls were rough plaster, its floor of white pine, its furni
ture poor, scanty and worn. There was a little picture
on the face of the clock, a chromo on the wall, and a

A Son of the Middle Border

printed portrait of General Grant — nothing more. It
was home by reason of my mother's brave and cheery
presence, and the prattle of Jessie's clear voice filled
it with music. Dear child, — with her it was always
spring!

ic6

CHAPTER XI
School Life

OUR new house was completed during July but we
did not move into it till in September. There
was much to be done in way of building sheds, granaries
and corn-cribs and in this work father was both car
penter and stone-mason. An amusing incident comes
to my mind in connection with the digging of our
well.

Uncle David and I were "tending mason," and father
was down in the well laying or trying to lay the curbing.
It was a tedious and difficult job and he was about to
give it up in despair when one of our neighbors, a quaint
old Englishman named Barker, came driving along. He
was one of these men who take a minute inquisitive
interest in the affairs of others; therefore he pulled his
team to a halt and came in.

Peering into the well he drawled out, " Hello, Gar
land. Wat ye doin' down there?"

"Tryin' to lay a curb," replied my father lifting a
gloomy face, "and I guess it's too complicated for
me." '

"No thin' easier," retorted the old man with a wink
at my uncle, "jest putt two a-top o' one and one a-toppo
two — and the big eend out," — and with a broad grin on
his red face he went back to his team and drove away.

My father afterwards said, "I saw the whole process
in a flash of light. He had given me all the rule I needed.
I laid the rest of that wall without a particle of trouble."

107

A Son of the Middle Border

Many times after this Barker stopped to offer advice
but he never quite equalled the startling success of his
rule for masonry.

The events of this harvest, even the process of moving
into the new house, are obscured in my mind by the
clouds of smoke which rose from calamitous fires all
over the west. It was an unprecedentedly dry season
so that not merely the prairie, but many weedy cornfields
burned. I had a good deal of time to meditate upon this
for I was again the plow-boy. Every day I drove away
from the rented farm to the new land where I was cross-
cutting the breaking, and the thickening haze through
which the sun shone with a hellish red glare, produced
in me a growing uneasiness which became terror when
the news came to us that Chicago was on fire. It seemed
to me then that the earth was about to go up in a flaming
cloud just as my grandad had so often prophesied.

This general sense of impending disaster was made
keenly personal by the destruction of uncle David's
stable with all his horses. This building like most of
the barns of the region was not only roofed with straw
but banked with straw, and it burned so swiftly that
David was trapped in a stall while trying to save one
of his teams. He saved himself by burrowing like a
gigantic mole through the side of the shed, and so, hat-
less, covered with dust and chaff, emerged as if from a
fiery burial after he had been given up for dead.

This incident combined with others so filled my child
ish mind that I lived in apprehension of similar disaster.
I feared the hot wind which roared up from the
south, and I never entered our own stable in the mid
dle of the day without a sense of danger. Then came
the rains — the blessed rains — and put an end to my
fears.

In a week we had forgotten all the "conflagrations"

108

School Life

except that in Chicago. There was something grandiose
and unforgettable in the tales which told of the madly
fleeing crowds in the narrow streets. These accounts
pushed back the walls of my universe till its far edge
included the ruined metropolis whose rebuilding was of
the highest importance to us, for it was not only the
source of all our supplies, but the great central market
to which we sent our corn and hogs and wheat.

My world was splendidly romantic. It was bounded
on the west by THE PLAINS with their Indians and buf
falo; on the north by THE GREAT WOODS, filled with
thieves and counterfeiters; on the south by OSAGE AND
CHICAGO; and on the east by HESPER, ONALASKA and
BOSTON. A luminous trail ran from Dry Run Prairie
to Neshonoc — all else was " chaos and black night."

For seventy days I walked behind my plow on the new
farm while my father finished the harvest on the rented
farm and moved to the house on the knoll. It was lonely
work for a boy of eleven but there were frequent breaks
in the monotony and I did not greatly suffer. I disliked
cross-cutting for the reason that the unrotted sods would
often pile up in front of the coulter and make me a great
deal of trouble. There is a certain pathos in the sight
of that small boy tugging and kicking at the stubborn
turf in the effort to free his plow. Such misfortunes loom
large in a lad's horizon.

One of the interludes, and a lovely one, was given over
to gathering the hay from one of the wild meadows to
the north of us. Another was the threshing from the
shock on the rented farm. This was the first time we
had seen this done and it interested us keenly. A great
many teams were necessary and the crew of men was
correspondingly large. Uncle David was again the
thresher with a fine new separator, and I would have
enjoyed the season with almost perfect contentment

109

A Son of the Middle Border

had it not been for the fact that I was detailed to hold
sacks for Daddy Fairbanks who was the measurer.

Our first winter had been without much wind but
our second taught us the meaning of the word
" blizzard" which we had just begun to hear about.
The winds of Wisconsin were "gentle zephyrs" com
pared to the blasts which now swept down over the
plain to hammer upon our desolate little cabin and pile
the drifts around our sheds and granaries, and even my
pioneer father was forced to admit that the hills of
Green's Coulee had their uses after all.

One such storm which leaped upon us at the close of
a warm and beautiful day in February lasted for two
days and three nights, making life on the open prairie
impossible even to the strongest man. The thermometer
fell to thirty degrees below zero and the snow-laden air
moving at a rate of eighty miles an hour pressed upon
the walls of our house with giant power. The sky of
noon was darkened, so that we moved in a pallid half-
light, and the windows thick with frost shut us in as if
with gray shrouds.

Hour after hour those winds and snows in furious
battle, howled and roared and whistled around our
frail shelter, slashing at the windows and piping on the
chimney, till it seemed as if the Lord Sun had been
wholly blotted out and that the world would never again
be warm. Twice each day my father made a desperate
sally toward the stable to feed the imprisoned cows and
horses or to replenish our fuel — for the remainder of the
long pallid day he sat beside the fire with gloomy face.
Even his indomitable spirit was awed by the fury of
that storm. (

So long and so continuously did those immitigable
winds howl in our ears that their tumult persisted, in
imagination, when on the third morning, we thawed

210

S chool Life

holes in the thickened rime of the window panes and
looked forth on a world silent as a marble sea and flam
ing with sunlight. My own relief was mingled with sur
prise — surprise to find the landscape so unchanged.
True, the yard was piled high with drifts and the barns
were almost lost to view but the far fields and the dark
lines of Burr Oak Grove remained unchanged.

We met our school-mates that day, like survivors of
shipwreck, and for many days we listened to gruesome
stories of disaster, tales of stages frozen deep in snow
with all their passengers sitting in their seats, and of
herders with their silent flocks around them, lying stark
as granite among the hazel bushes in which they had
sought shelter. It was long before we shook off the awe
with which this tempest filled our hearts.

The school-house which stood at the corner of our new
farm was less than half a mile away, and yet on many of
the winter days which followed, we found it quite far
enough. Hattie was now thirteen, Frank nine and I a
little past eleven but nothing, except a blizzard such as
I have described, could keep us away from school. Fac
ing the cutting wind, wallowing through the drifts, bat
tling like small intrepid animals, we often arrived at the
door moaning with pain yet unsubdued, our ears frosted,
our toes numb in our boots, to meet others in similar
case around the roaring hot stove.

Often after we reached the school-house another
form of suffering overtook us in the " thawing out"
process. Our fingers and toes, swollen with blood,
ached and itched, and our ears burned. Nearly all of
us carried sloughing ears and scaling noses. Some of
the pupils came two miles against these winds.

The natural result of all this exposure was of course,
chilblains! Every foot in the school was more or less
touched with this disease to which our elders alluded

in

A Son of the Middle Border

as if it were an amusing trifle, but to us it was no
joke.

After getting thoroughly warmed up, along about the
middle of the forenoon, there came into our feet a most
intense itching and burning and aching, a sensation so
acute that keeping still was impossible, and all over the
room an uneasy shuffling and drumming arose as we
pounded our throbbing heels against the floor or scraped
our itching toes against the edge of our benches. The
teacher understood and was kind enough to overlook
this disorder.

The wonder is that any of us lived through that win
ter, for at recess, no matter what the weather might be
we flung ourselves out of doors to play "fox and geese" or
e'dare goal," until, damp with perspiration, we responded
to the teacher's bell, and came pouring back into the entry
ways to lay aside our wraps for another hour's study.

Our readers were almost the only counterchecks to
the current of vulgarity and baseness which ran
through the talk of the older boys, and I wish to acknowl
edge my deep obligation to Professor McGuffey, who
ever he may have been, for the dignity and literary
grace of his selections. From the pages of his reader?
I learned to know and love the poems of Scott, Byron,
Southey, Wordsworth and a long line of the English
masters. I got my first taste of Shakespeare from the
selected scenes which I read in these books.

With terror as well as delight I rose to read LochieVs
Warning, The Battle of Waterloo or The Roman Captive.
Marco Bozzaris and William Tell were alike glorious to
me. I soon knew not only my own reader, the fourth,
but all the selections in the fifth and sixth as well. I
could follow almost word for word the recitations of the
older pupils and at such times I forgot my squat little
body and my mop of hair, and became imaginatively a

112

School Life

page in the train of Ivanhoe, or a bowman hi the army
of Richard the Lion Heart battling the Saracen in the
Holy Land.

With a high ideal of the way in which these grand se
lections should be read, I was scared almost voiceless
when it came my turn to read them before the class.
"STRIKE FOR YOUR ALTARS AND YOUR FIRES. STRIKE
FOR THE GREEN GRAVES OF YOUR SIRES — GOD AND
YOUR NATIVE LAND," always reduced me to a trembling
breathlessness. The sight of the emphatic print was a
call to the best that was in me and yet I could not meet
the test. Excess of desire to do it just right often brought
a ludicrous gasp and I often fell back into my seat in dis
grace, the titter of the girls adding to my pain.

Then there was the famous passage, "Did ye not
hear it?" and the careless answer, "No, it was but the
wind or the car rattling o'er the stony street." — I knew
exactly how those opposing emotions should be expressed
but to do it after I rose to my feet was impossible. Bur
ton was even more terrified than I. Stricken blind
as well as dumb he usually ended by helplessly staring
at the words which, I conceive, had suddenly become
a blur to him.

No matter, we were taught to feel the force of these
poems and to reverence the genius that produced them,
and that was worth while. Falstaff and Prince Hal,
Henry and his wooing of Kate, Wolsey and his downfall,
Shylock and his pound of flesh all became a part of our
thinking and helped us to measure the large figures of
our own literature, for Whittier, Bryant and Longfellow
also had place in these volumes. It is probable that
Professor McGuffey, being a Southern man, did not
value New England writers as highly as my grand
mother did, nevertheless Thanatopsis was there and
The Village Blacksmith, and extracts from The Deer

"3

A Son of the Middle Border

Slayer and The Pilot gave us a notion that in Cooper
we had a novelist of weight and importance, one to
put beside Scott and Dickens.

A by-product of my acquaintance with one of the
older boys was a stack of copies of the New York Weekly,
a paper filled with stories of noble life in England and
hair-breadth escapes on the plain, a shrewd mixture,
designed to meet the needs of the entire membership of
a prairie household. The pleasure I took in these tales
should fill me with shame, but it doesn't — I rejoice in
the memory of it.

I soon began, also, to purchase and trade "Beadle's
Dime Novels" and, to tell the truth, I took an exquisite
delight in Old Sleuth and Jack Harkaway. My taste
was catholic. I ranged from Lady Gwendolin to Buckskin
Bill and so far as I can now distinguish one was quite as
enthralling as the other. It is impossible for any print
to be as magical to any boy these days as those weeklies
were to me in 1871.

One day a singular test was made of us all. Through
some agency now lost to me my father was brought to
subscribe for The Hearth and Home or some such paper
for the farmer, and in this I read my first chronicle of
everyday life.

In the midst of my dreams of lords and ladies, queens
and dukes, I found myself deeply concerned with back
woods farming, spelling schools, protracted meetings
and the like familiar homely scenes. This serial (which
involved my sister and myself in many a spat as to who
should read it first) was The Hoosier Schoolmaster, by
Edward Eggleston, and a perfectly successful attempt
to interest western readers in a story of the middle border.

To us "Mandy" and "Bud Means," "Ralph Hart-
sook," the teacher, "Little Shocky" and sweet patient
"Hannah," were as real as Cyrus Button and Daddy

114

School Life

Fairbanks. We could hardly wait for the next numbel
of the paper, so concerned were we about " Hannah"
and " Ralph." We quoted old lady Means and we
made bets on "Bud" in his fight with the villainous
drover. I hardly knew where Indiana was in those days,
but Eggleston's characters were near neighbors.

The illustrations were dreadful, even in my eyes, but
the artist contrived to give a slight virginal charm to
Hannah and a certain childish sweetness to Shocky, so
that we accepted the more than mortal ugliness of old
man Means and his daughter Mirandy (who simpered
over her book at us as she did at Ralph), as a just inter
pretation of their worthlessness.

This book is a milestone in my literary progress as it is in
the development of distinctive western fiction, and years
afterward I was glad to say so to the aged author who lived
a long and honored life as a teacher and writer of fiction.

It was always too hot or too cold in our school
room and on certain days when a savage wind beat and
clamored at the loose windows, the girls, humped and
shivering, sat upon their feet to keep them warm, and
the younger children with shawls over their shoulders
sought permission to gather close about the stove.

Our dinner pails (stored in the entry way) were often
frozen solid and it was necessary to thaw out our mince
pie as well as our bread and butter by putting it on
the stove. I recall, vividly, gnawing, dog-like, at the
mollified outside of a doughnut while still its frosty heart
made my teeth ache.

[ Happily all days were not like this. There were after
noons when the sun streamed warmly into the room,
when long icicles formed on the eaves, adding a touch
of grace to the desolate building, moments when the
jingling bells of passing wood-sleighs expressed the
natural cheer and buoyancy of our youthful hearts.

US

CHAPTER XII
Chores and Almanacs

farmyard would have been uninhabitable
during this winter had it not been for the long
ricks of straw which we had piled up as a shield against
the prairie winds. Our horse-barn, roofed with hay
and banked with chaff, formed the west wall of the
cowpen, and a long low shed gave shelter to the
north.

In this triangular space, in the lee of shed and straw-
rick, the cattle passed a dolorous winter. Mostly they
burrowed in the chaff, or stood about humped and
shivering — only on sunny days did their arching backs
subside. Naturally each animal grew a thick coat of
long hair, and succeeded in coming through to grass
again, but the cows of some of our neighbors were less
fortunate. Some of them got so weak that they had
to be " tailed" up as it was called. This meant that
they were dying of hunger and the sight of them crawling
about filled me with indignant wrath. I could not under
stand how a man, otherwise kind, could let his stock
suffer for lack of hay when wild grass was plentiful.

One of my duties, and one that I dreaded, was pump
ing water for our herd. This was no light job, especially
on a stinging windy morning, for the cows, having only
dry fodder, required an enormous amount of liquid, and
as they could only drink while the water was fresh from
the well, some one must work the handle till the last
calf had absorbed his fill — and this had to be done when

116

Chores and Almanacs

the thermometer was thirty below, just the same as at
any other time.

And this brings up an almost forgotten phase of bovine
psychology. The order in which the cows drank as well
as that in which they entered the stable was carefully
determined and rigidly observed. There was always one
old dowager who took precedence, all the others gave
way before her. Then came the second in rank who
feared the leader but insisted on ruling all the others,
and so on down to the heifer. This order, once estab
lished, was seldom broken (at least by the females of
the herd, the males were more unstable) even when the
leader grew old and almost helpless.

We took advantage of this loyalty when putting them
into the barn. The stall furthest from the door belonged
to "old Spot," the second to " Daisy" and so on, hence
all I had to do was to open the door and let them in —
for if any rash young thing got out of her proper place
she was set right, very quickly, by her superiors.

Some farms had ponds or streams to which their
flocks were driven for water but this to me was a melan
choly winter function, and sometimes as I joined Burt
or Cyrus in driving the poor humped and shivering beasts
down over the snowy plain to a hole chopped in the ice,
and watched them lay their aching teeth to the frigid
draught, trying a dozen times to temper their mouths to
the chill I suffered with them. As they streamed along
homeward, heavy with their sloshing load, they seemed
the personification of a desolate and abused race.

Winter mornings were a time of trial for us all. It
required stern military command to get us out of bed
before daylight, in a chamber warmed only by the stove
pipe, to draw on icy socks and frosty boots and go to
the milking of cows and the currying of horses. Other
boys did not rise by candle-light but I did, not because

717

A Son of the Middle Border x

I was eager to make a record but for the very good
reason that my commander believed in early rising. I
groaned and whined but I rose — and always I found
mother in the kitchen before me, putting the ket
tle on.

It ought not to surprise the reader when I say that
my morning toilet was hasty — something less than "a,
lick and a promise." I couldn't (or didn't) stop to wash
my face or comb my hair; such refinements seem useless
in an attic bed-chamber at five in the morning of a
December day — I put them off till breakfast time.
Getting up at five A. M. even in June was a hardship,
in winter it was a punishment.

Our discomforts had their compensations! As we
came back to the house at six, the kitchen was always
cheery with the smell of browning flap-jacks, sizzling
sausages and steaming coffee, and mother had plenty
of hot water on the stove so that in "half a jiffy," with
shining faces and sleek hair we sat down to a noble feast.
By this time also the eastern sky was gorgeous with
light, and two misty "sun dogs" dimly loomed, watching
at the gate of the new day.

Now that I think of it, father was the one who took
the brunt of our "revellee." He always built the fire in
the kitchen stove before calling the family. Mother,
silent, sleepy, came second. Sometimes she was just
combing her hair as I passed through the kitchen, at
other times she would be at the biscuit dough or stirring
the pan-cake batter — but she was always there!

"What did you gain by this disagreeable habit of
early rising?" — This is a question I have often asked
myself since. Was it only a useless obsession on the
part of my pioneer dad? Why couldn't we have slept
till six, or even seven? Why rise before the sun? i

I cannot answer this, I only know such was our habit

118

Chores and Almanacs

summer and winter, and that most of /our neighbors
conformed to the same rigorous tradition. None of us
got rich, and as I look back on the situation, I cannot
recall that those "sluggards" who rose an hour or two
later were any poorer than we. I am inclined to think
it was all a convention of the border, a custom which
might very well have been broken by us all.

My mother would have found these winter days very
long had it not been for baby Jessie, for father was
busily hauling wood from the Cedar River some six or
seven miles away, and the almost incessant, mournful
piping of the wind in the chimney was dispiriting.
Occasionally Mrs. Button, Mrs. Gammons or some
other of the neighbors would drop in for a visit, but
generally mother and Jessie were alone till Harriet and
Frank and I came home from school at half-past
four.

Our evenings were more cheerful. My sister Hat tie
was able to play a few simple tunes on the melodeon
and Cyrus and Eva or Mary Abbie and John occasion
ally came in to sing. In this my mother often took part.
In church her clear soprano rose above all the others
like the voice of some serene great bird. Of this gift
my father often expressed his open admiration.

There was very little dancing during our second winter
but Fred Jewett started a singing school which brought
the young folks together once a week. We boys amused
ourselves with "Dare Gool" and "Dog and Deer."
Cold had little terror for us, provided the air was still.
Often we played "Hi Spy" around the barn with the
thermometer twenty below zero, and not infrequently
we took long walks to visit Burton and other of our boy
friends or to borrow something to read. I was always
on the trail of a book.

Harriet joined me in my search for stories and nothing

lift

A Son of the Middle Border

in the neighborhood homes escaped us. Anything in
print received our most respectful consideration. Jane
Porter's Scottish Chiefs brought to us both anguish and
delight. Tempest and Sunshine was another discovery.
I cannot tell to whom I was indebted for Ivanhoe but I
read and reread it with the most intense pleasure. At
the same time or near it I borrowed a huge bundle of
The New York Saturday Night and TJie New York Ledger
and from them I derived an almost equal enjoyment.
"Old Sleuth" and "Buckskin Bill" were as admirable
in their way as "Cedric the Saxon."

At this time Godey's Ladies Book and Peterson's Maga
zine were the only high-class periodicals known to us.
The Toledo Blade and The New York Tribune were still
my father's political advisers and Horace Greeley and
"Petroleum V. Nasby" were equally corporeal in my
mind.

Almanacs figured largely in my reading at this time,
and were a source of frequent quotation by my father.
They were nothing but small, badly-printed, patent
medicine pamphlets, each with a loop of string at the
corner so that they might be hung on a nail behind the
stove, and of a crude green or yellow or blue. Each of
them made much of a calm-featured man who seemed
unaware of the fact that his internal organs were opened
to the light of day. Lines radiated from his middle
to the signs of the zodiac. I never knew what all this
meant, but it gave me a sense of something esoteric and
remote. Just what "Aries" and "Pisces" had to do with
healing or the weather is still a mystery.

These advertising bulletins could be seen in heaps on
the counter at the drug store especially in the spring
months when "Healey's Bitters" and "Allen's Cherry
Pectoral " were most needed to "purify the blood." They
were given out freely, but the price of the marvellous

120

Chores and Almanacs

mixtures they celebrated was always one dollar a bottle,
and many a broad coin went for a "bitter" which should
have gone to buy a new dress for an overworked
wife.

These little books contained, also, concise aphorisms
and weighty words of advice like "After dinner rest
awhile; after supper run a mile," and "Be vigilant, be
truthful and your life will never be ruthful." "Take
care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of
themselves" (which needed a little translating to us)
probably came down a long line of English copy books.
No doubt they were all stolen from Poor Richard.

Incidentally they called attention to the aches and
pains of humankind, and each page presented the face,
signature and address of some far-off person who had
been miraculously relieved by the particular "balsam"
or "bitter" which that pamphlet presented. Hollow-
cheeked folk were shown "before taking," and the same
individuals plump and hearty "after taking," followed
by very realistic accounts of the diseases from which
they had been relieved gave encouragement to others
suffering from the same "complaints."

Generally the almanac which presented the claims of
a "pectoral" also had a "salve" that was "sovereign
for burns" and some of them humanely took into ac
count the ills of farm animals and presented a cure for
bots or a liniment for spavins. I spent a great deal of
tune with these publications and to them a large part
of my education is due.

It is impossible that printed matter of any kind should
possess for any child of today the enchantment which
came to me, from a grimy, half-dismembered copy of
Scott or Cooper. The Life of P. T. Barnum, and Frank
lin's Autobiography we owned and they were also well-
springs of joy to me. Sometimes I hold with the Lacede-

121

A Son of the Middle Border

monians that " hunger is the best sauce" for the mind
as well as for the palate. Certainly we made the most
of all that came our way.

Naturally the school-house continued to be the center
of our interest by day and the scene of our occasional
neighborhood recreation by night. In its small way it
was our Forum as well as our Academy and my memories
of it are mostly pleasant.

Early one bright winter day Charles Babcock and
Albert Button, two of our big boys, suddenly appeared
at the school-house door with their best teams hitched
to great bob-sleds, and amid much shouting and laughter,
the entire school (including the teacher) piled in on the
straw which softened the bottom of the box, and away
we raced with jangling bells, along the bright winter
roads with intent to "surprise" the Burr Oak teacher
and his flock.

I particularly enjoyed this expedition for the Burr Oak
School was larger than ours and stood on the edge of a
forest and was protected by noble trees. A deep ravine
near it furnished a mild form of coasting. The school
room had fine new desks with iron legs and the teacher's
desk occupied a deep recess at the front. Altogether it
possessed something of the dignity of a church. To go
there was almost like going to town, for at the corners
where the three roads met, four or five houses stood and
in one of these was a post-office.

That day is memorable to me for the reason that I
first saw Bettie and Hattie and Agnes, the prettiest girls
in the township. Hattie and Bettie were both fair-haired
and blue-eyed but Agnes was dark with great velvety
black eyes. Neither of them was over sixteen, but they
had all taken on the airs of young ladies and looked with
amused contempt on lads of my age. Nevertheless, I
had the right to admire them in secret for they added the

122

Chores and Almanacs

final touch of poetry to this visit to "the Grove School
House."

Often, thereafter, on a clear night when the ther
mometer stood twenty below zero, Burton and I would
trot away toward the Grove to join in some meeting or
to coast with the boys on the banks of the creek. I feel
again the iron clutch of my frozen boots. The tippet
around my neck is solid ice before my lips. My ears
sting. Low-hung, blazing, the stars light the sky, and
over the diamond-dusted snow-crust the moonbeams
splinter.

Though sensing the glory of such nights as these I
was careful about referring to it. Restraint in such
matters was the rule. If you said, "It is a fine day," or
"The night is as clear as a bell," you had gone quite
as far as the proprieties permitted. Love was also a
forbidden word. You might say, "I love pie," but to
say "I love Bettie," was mawkish if not actually im
proper.

Caresses or terms of endearment even between parents
and their children were very seldom used. People who
said "Daddy dear," or "Jim dear," were under suspicion.
"They fight like cats and dogs when no one else is
around" was the universal comment on a family whose
members were very free of their terms of affection. We
were a Spartan lot. We did not believe in letting our
wives and children know that they were an important'
part of our contentment.

Social changes were in progress. We held no more
quilting bees or barn-raisings. Women visited less than
in Wisconsin. The work on the new farms was never
ending, and all teams were in constant use during week
days. The young people got together on one excuse or
another, but their elders met only at public meetings.

Singing, even among the young people was almost

123

A Son of the Middle Border

entirely confined to hymn-tunes. The new Moody
and Sankey Song Book was in every home. Tell
Me the Old Old Story did not refer to courtship but
to salvation, and Hold the Fort for I am Coming
was no longer a signal from Sherman, but a Message
from Jesus. We often spent a joyous evening singing
O, Bear Me Away on Your Snowy Wings, although
we had no real desire to be taken "to our immortal
home." Father no longer asked for Minnie Minium
and Nellie Wildwood, — but his love for Smith's Grand
March persisted and my sister Harriet was often called
upon to play it for him while he explained its mean
ing. The war was passing into the mellow, rem
iniscent haze of memory and he loved the splendid
pictures which this descriptive piece of martial music
recalled to mind. So far as we then knew his pursuit of
the Sunset was at an end.

124

CHAPTER Xin
Boy Life on the Prairie

TIE snows fell deep in February and when at last
the warm March winds began to blow, lakes de
veloped with magical swiftness in the fields, and streams
filled every swale, transforming the landscape into
something unexpected and enchanting. At night these
waters froze, bringing fields of ice almost to our door.
We forgot all our other interests in the joy of the games
which we played thereon at every respite from school,
or from the wood-pile, for splitting fire-wood was our
first spring task.

From time to time as the weather permitted, father
had been cutting and hauling maple and hickory logs
from the forests of the Cedar River, and these logs must
now be made into stove-wood and piled for summer use.
Even before the school term ended we began to take
a hand at this work, after four o'clock and on Saturdays.
While the hired man and father ran the cross-cut saw,
whose pleasant song had much of the seed-time sugges
tion which vibrated in the caw-caw of the hens as they
burrowed in the dust of the chip-yard, I split the easy
blocks and my brother helped to pile the finished product.

The place where the wood-pile lay was slightly higher
than the barnyard and was the first dry ground to appear
in the almost universal slush and mud. Delightful
memories are associated with this sunny spot and with
a pond which appeared as if by some conjury, on the
very field where I had husked the down-row so painfully

125

A Son of the Middle Border.

in November. From the wood-pile I was often permitted
to go skating and Burton was my constant companion
in these excursions. However, my joy in his companion
ship was not unmixed with bitterness, for I deeply en
vied him the skates which he wore. They weie trimmed
with brass and their runners came up over his toes in
beautiful curves and ended in brass acorns which trans
figured their wearer. To own a pair of such skates seemed
to me the summit of all earthly glory.

My own wooden "contraptions" went on with straps
and I could not make the runners stay in the middle
of my soles where they belonged, hence my ankles not
only tipped in awkwardly but the stiff outer edges cf
my boot counters dug holes in my skin so that my out
ing was a kind of torture after all. Nevertheless, I per
sisted and, while Burton circled and swooped like a
hawk, I sprawled with flapping arms in a mist of
ignoble rage. That I learned to skate fairly well even
under these disadvantages argues a high degree of
enthusiasm.

Father was always willing to release us from labor at
times when the ice was fine, and at night we were free
to explore the whole country round about, finding new
places for our games. Sometimes the girls joined us,
and we built fires on the edges of the swales and played
"gool" and a kind of "shinny" till hunger drove us
home.

We held to this sport to the last — till the ice with
prodigious booming and cracking fell away in the swales
and broke through the icy drifts (which lay like dams
along the fences) and vanished, leaving the corn-rows
littered with huge blocks of ice. Often we came in from
the pond, wet to the middle, our boots completely soaked
with water. They often grew hard as iron during the
night, and we experienced the greatest trouble in getting

126

Boy Life on the Prairie

them on again. Greasing them with hot tallow was a
regular morning job.

Then came the fanning mill. The seed grain had to
be fanned up, and that was a dark and dusty "trick"
which we did not like anything near as well as we did
skating or even piling wood. The hired man turned the
mill, I dipped the wheat into the hopper, Franklin held
sacks and father scooped the grain in. I don't suppose
we gave up many hours to this work, but it seems to
me that we spent weeks at it. Probably we took spells
at the mill in the midst of the work on the chip pile.

Meanwhile, above our heads the wild ducks again
pursued their northward flight, and the far honking of
the geese fell to our ears from the solemn deeps of the
windless night. On the first dry warm ridges the prairie
cocks began to boom, and then at last came the day
when father's imperious voice rang high in familiar
command. "Out with the drags, boys! We start seed
ing tomorrow."

Again we went forth on the land, this time to wrestle
with the tough, unrotted sod of the new breaking, while
all around us the larks and plover called and the gray
badgers stared with disapproving bitterness from their
ravaged hills.

Maledictions on that tough northwest forty! How
many times I harrowed and cross-harrowed it I cannot
say, but I well remember the maddening persistency
with which the masses of hazel roots clogged the teeth
of the drag, making it necessary for me to raise the
corner of it — a million times a day! This had to be
done while the team was in motion, and you can see I
did not lack for exercise. It was necessary also to "lap-
half" and this requirement made careful driving needful
for father could not be fooled. He saw every "balk."

As the ground dried off the dust arose from undel

127

A Son of the Middle Border

the teeth of the harrow and flew so thickly that my face
was not only coated with it but tears of rebellious rage
stained my cheeks with comic lines. At such times it
seemed unprofitable to be the twelve-year-old son of a
western farmer.

One day, just as the early sown wheat was beginning
to throw a tinge of green over the brown earth, a tre
mendous wind arose from the southwest and blew with
such devastating fury that the soil, caught up from the
field, formed a cloud, hundreds of feet high, — a cloud
which darkened the sky, turning noon into dusk and
sending us all to shelter. All the forenoon this blizzard
of loam raged, filling the house with dust, almost smoth
ering the cattle in the stable. Work was impossible,
even for the men. The growing grain, its roots exposed
to the air, withered and died. Many of the smaller
plants were carried bodily away.

As the day wore on father fell into dumb, despairing
rage. His rigid face and smoldering eyes, his grim lips,
terrified us all. It seemed to him (as to us), that the
entire farm was about to take flight and the bitterest
part of the tragic circumstance lay in the reflection that
our loss (which was much greater than any of our neigh
bors) was due to the extra care with which we had pul«
verized the ground.

"If only I hadn't gone over it that last time," I
heard him groan in reference to the "smooch" with
which I had crushed all the lumps making every acre
friable as a garden. "Look at Woodring's!"

Sure enough. The cloud was thinner over on Wood-
ring's side of the line fence. His rough clods were hardly
touched. My father's bitter revolt, his impotent fury
appalled me, for it seemed to me (as to him), that na
ture was, at the moment, an enemy. More than seventj
acres of this land had to be resown.

128

Boy Life on the Prairie

Most authors in writing of "the merry merry farmer"
leave out experiences like this — they omit the mud and
the dust and the grime, they forget the army worm,
the flies, the heat, as well as the smells and drudgery of
the barns. Milking the cows is spoken of in the tradi
tional fashion as a lovely pastoral recreation, when as a
matter of fact it is a tedious job. We all hated it. We
saw no poetry in it. We hated it in summer when the
mosquitoes bit and the cows slashed us with their tails,
and we hated it still more in the winter time when they
stood in crowded malodorous stalls.

In summer when the flies were particularly savage
we had a way of jamming our heads into the cows'
flanks to prevent them from kicking into the pail, and
sometimes we tied their tails to their legs so that they
could not lash our ears. Humboldt Bunn tied a heifer's
tail to his boot straps once — and regretted it almost
instantly. — No, no, it won't do to talk to me of "the
sweet breath of kine." I know them too well — and
calves are not "the lovely, fawn-like creatures" they
are supposed to be. To the boy who is teaching them
to drink out of a pail they are nasty brutes — quite un
like fawns. They have a way of filling their nostrils with
milk and blowing it all over their nurse. They are greedy,
noisy, ill-smelling and stupid. They look well when
running with their mothers in the pasture, but as soon
as they are weaned they lose all their charm — for me.

Attendance on swine was less humiliating for the
reason that we could keep them at arm's length, but
we didn't enjoy that. We liked teaming and pitching
hay and harvesting and making fence, and we did not
greatly resent plowing or husking corn but we did hate
the smell, the filth of the cow-yard. Even hostling had
its "outs," especially in spring when the horses were
shedding their hair. I never fully enjoyed the taste oi

129

A Son of the Middle Border

equine dandruff, and the eternal smell of manure irked
me, especially at the table.

Clearing out from behind the animals was one of our
never ending jobs, and hauling the compost out on the
fields was one of the tasks which, as my father grimly
said, "We always put off till it rains so hard we can't
work out doors." This was no joke to us, for not only
did we work out doors, we worked while standing ankle
deep in the slime of the yard, getting full benefit of the
drizzle. Our new land did not need the fertilizer, but
we were forced to haul it away or move the barn. Some
folks moved the barn. But then my father was an
idealist.

Life was not all currying or muck-raking for Burt or
for me. Herding the cows c¥ame in to relieve the monot
ony of farm-work. Wide tracts of unbroken sod still
lay open to the north and west, and these were the
common grazing grounds for the community. Every
farmer kept from twenty-five to a hundred head of
cattle and half as many colts, and no sooner did the
green begin to show on the fire-blackened sod in April
than the winter-worn beasts left the straw-piles under
whose lee they had fed during the cold months, and
crawled out to nip the first tender spears of grass in the
sheltered swales. They were still "free commoners"
in the eyes of the law.

The colts were a fuzzy, ungraceful lot at this season.
Even the best of them had big bellies and carried dirty
and tangled manes, but as the grazing improved, as the
warmth and plenty of May filled their veins with new
blood, they sloughed off their mangy coats and lifted
their wide-blown nostrils to the western wind in exultant
return to freedom. Many of them had never felt the
weight of a man's hand, and even those that had win
tered in and around the barn-yard soon lost all trace of

130

Boy Life on the Prairie

domesticity. It was not unusual to find that the wildest
and wariest of all the leaders bore a collar mark or some
other ineffaceable badge of previous servitude.

They were for the most part Morgan grades or "Ca
nuck," with a strain of broncho to give them fire. It was
curious, it was glorious to see how deeply-buried in
stincts broke out in these halterless herds. In a few
days, after many trials of speed and power the bands of
all the region united into one drove, and a leader, the
swiftest and most tireless of them all, appeared from the
ranks and led them at will.

Often without apparent cause, merely for the joy of
it, they left their feeding grounds to wheel and charge
and race for hours over the swells, across the creeks and
through the hazel thickets. Sometimes their movements
arose from the stinging of gadflies, sometimes from a
battle between two jealous leaders, sometimes from the
passing of a wolf — often from no cause at all other than
that of abounding vitality.

In much the same fashion, but less rapidly, the cattle
went forth upon the plain and as each herd not only
contained the growing steers, but the family cows, it
became the duty of one boy from each farm to mount a
horse at five o'clock every afternoon and "hunt the
cattle," a task seldom shirked. My brother and I took
turn and turn about at this delightful task, and soon
learned to ride like Comanches. In fact we lived in the
saddle, when freed from duty in the field. Burton often
met us on the feeding grounds, and at such times the
prairie seemed an excellent place for boys. As we gal
loped along together it was easy to imagine ourselves
Wild Bill and Buckskin Joe in pursuit of Indians or
buffalo.

We became, by force of unconscious observation,
deeply learned in the language and the psychology of

A Son of the Middle Border

kine as well as colts. We watched the big bull-necked
stags as they challenged one another, pawing the dust
or kneeling to tear the sod with their horns. We pos
sessed perfect understanding of their battle signs. Their
boastful, defiant cries were as intelligible to us as those
of men. Every note, every motion had a perfectly def
inite meaning. The foolish, inquisitive young heifers,
the staid self-absorbed dowagers wearing their bells with
dignity, the frisky two-year-olds and the lithe-bodied
wide-horned truculent three-year-olds all came in for
interpretation.

Sometimes a lone steer ranging the sod came suddenly
upon a trace of blood. Like a hound he paused, snuffling
the earth. Then with wide mouth and outthrust, curl
ing tongue, uttered voice. Wild as the tiger's food-sick
cry, his warning roar burst forth, ending in a strange,
upward explosive whine. Instantly every head in the
herd was lifted, even the old cows heavy with milk stood
as if suddenly renewing their youth, alert and watchful.

Again it came, that prehistoric bawling cry, and with
one mind the herd began to center, rushing with menac
ing swiftness, like warriors answering their chieftain's
call for aid. With awkward lope or jolting trot, snort
ing with fury they hastened to the rescue, only to meet
in blind bewildered mass, swirling to and fro in search
of an imaginary cause of some ancestral danger.

At such moments we were glad of our swift ponies.
From our saddles we could study these outbreaks of
atavistic rage with serene enjoyment.

In herding the cattle we came to know all the open
country round about and found it very beautiful. On
the uplands a short, light-green, hair-like grass grew,
intermixed with various resinous weeds, while in the
lowland feeding grounds luxuriant patches of blue-joint,
wild oats, and other tall forage plants waved in the

132

Boy Life on the Prairie

wind. Along the streams and in the "sloos" cat-tails
and tiger-lilies nodded above thick mats of wide-bladed
marsh grass. — Almost without realizing it, I came to
know the character of every weed, every flower, every
living thing big enough to be seen from the back of a
horse.

Nothing could be more generous, more joyous, than
these natural meadows in summer. The flash and ripple
and glimmer of the tall sunflowers, the myriad voices of
gleeful bobolinks, the chirp and gurgle of red-winged
blackbirds swaying on the willows, the meadow-larks
piping from grassy bogs, the peep of the prairie chick
and the wailing call of plover on the flowery green slopes
of the uplands made it all an ecstatic world to me. It
was a wide world with a big, big sky which gave alluring
hint of the still more glorious unknown wilderness be
yond.

Sometimes of a Sunday afternoon, Harriet and I wan
dered away to the meadows along Dry Run, gathering
bouquets of pinks, sweet-williams, tiger-lilies and lady-
slippers, thus attaining a vague perception of another
and sweeter side of life. The sun flamed across the splen
did serial waves of the grasses and the perfumes of a
hundred spicy plants rose in the shimmering mid-day air.
At such times the mere joy of living filled our young
hearts with wordless satisfaction.

Nor were the upland ridges less interesting, for huge
antlers lying bleached and bare in countless numbers on
the slopes told of the herds of elk and bison that had
once fed in these splendid savannahs, living and dying in
the days when the tall Sioux were the only hunters.

The gray hermit, the badger, still clung to his deep
den on the rocky unplowed ridges, and on sunny April
days the mother fox lay out with her young, on south
ward-sloping swells. Often we met the prairie wolf or

133

A Son of the Middle Border

startled him from his sleep in hazel copse, finding in him
the spirit of the wilderness. To us it seemed that just
over the next long swell toward the sunset the shaggy
brown bulls still fed in myriads, and in our hearts was a
longing to ride away into the "sunset regions" of our
song.

All the boys I knew talked of Colorado, never of
New England. We dreamed of the plains, of the Black
Hills, discussing cattle raising and mining and hunting.
"We'll have our rifles ready, boys, ha, ha, ha-ha!" was
still our favorite chorus, "Newbrasky" and Wyoming
our far-off wonderlands, Buffalo Bill our hero.

David, my hunter uncle who lived near us, still retained
his long old-fashioned, muzzle-loading rifle, and one day
offered it to me, but as I could not hold it at arm's length,
I sorrowfully returned it. We owned a shotgun, how
ever, and this I used with all the confidence of a man.
I was able to kill a few ducks with it and I also hunted
gophers during May when the sprouting corn was in
most danger. Later I became quite expert in catching
chickens on the wing.

On a long ridge to the north and west, the soil, too wet
and cold to cultivate easily, remained unplowed for
several years and scattered over these clay lands stood
small groves of popple trees which we called " tow-heads."
They were usually only two or three hundred feet in
diameter, but they stood out like islands in the waving
seas of grasses. Against these dark-green masses,
breakers of blue- joint radiantly rolled. — To the east
some four miles ran the Little Cedar River, and plum
trees and crabapples and haws bloomed along its banks.
In June immense crops of strawberries offered from
many meadows. Their delicious odor rose to us as we
rode our way, tempting us to dismount and gather
and eat.

134

Boy Life on the Prairie

Over these uplands, through these thickets of hazel
brush, and around these coverts of popple, Burton and
I careered, hunting the cows, chasing rabbits, killing
rattlesnakes, watching the battles of bulls, racing the
half-wild colts and pursuing the prowling wolves. It
was an alluring life, and Harriet, who rode with us occa
sionally, seemed to enjoy it quite as much as any boy.
She could ride almost as well as Burton, and we were
all expert horse-tamers.

We all rode like cavalrymen, — that is to say, while
holding the reins in our left hands we guided our horses
by the pressure of the strap across the neck, rather than
by pulling at the bit. Our ponies were never allowed to
trot. We taught them a peculiar gait which we called
"the lope," which was an easy canter in front and a trot
behind (a very good gait for long distances), and we
drilled them to keep this pace steadily and to fall at
command into a swift walk without any jolting inter
vening trot. — We learned to ride like circus performers
standing on our saddles, and practised other of the tricks
\ve had seen, and through it all my mother remained un-
alarmed. To her a boy on a horse was as natural as a
babe in the cradle. The chances we took of getting killed
were so numerous that she could not afford to worry.

Burton continued to be my almost inseparable com
panion at school and whenever we could get together,
and while to others he seemed only a shy, dull boy, to
me he was something more. His strength and skill were
remarkable and his self-command amazing. Although
a lad of instant, white-hot, dangerous temper, he sud
denly, at fifteen years of age, took himself in hand in a
fashion miraculous to me. He decided (I never knew
just why or how) — that he would never again use an
obscene or profane word. He kept his vow. I knew him
for over thirty years and I never heard him raise his

135

A Son of the Middle Border

voice in anger or utter a word a woman would have
shrunk from, — and yet he became one of the most fear
less and indomitable mountaineers I ever knew.

This change in him profoundly influenced me and
though I said nothing about it, I resolved to do as well.
I never quite succeeded, although I discouraged as well
as I could the stories which some of the men and boys
were so fond of telling, but alas! when the old cow kicked
over my pail of milk, I fell from grace and told her just
what I thought of her in phrases that Burton would have
repressed. Still, I manfully tried to follow his good trail.

Cornplanting, which followed wheat-seeding, was done
by hand, for a year or two, and this was a joyous task. — •
We "changed works" with neighbor Button, and in
return Cyrus and Eva came to help us. Harriet and
Eva and I worked side by side, " dropping" the corn,
while Cyrus and the hired man followed with the hoes
to cover it. Little Frank skittered about, planting with
desultory action such pumpkin seeds as he did not eat.
The presence of our young friends gave the job some
thing of the nature of a party and we were sorry when
it was over.

After the planting a fortnight of less strenuous labor
came on, a period which had almost the character of a
holiday. The wheat needed no cultivation and the
corn was not high enough to plow. This was a time for
building fence and fixing up things generally. This, too,
was the season of the circus. Each year one came along
from the east, trailing clouds of glorified dust and filling
our minds with the color of romance.

From the time the "advance man" flung his highly
colored posters over the fence till the coming of the
glorious day we thought of little else. It was India and
Arabia and the jungle to us. History and the magic

Boy Life on the Prairie

and pomp of chivalry mingled in the parade of the morn*
ing, and the crowds, the clanging band, the haughty and
alien beauty of the women, the gold embroidered hous
ings, the stark majesty of the acrobats subdued us into
silent worship.

I here pay tribute to the men who brought these mar
vels to my eyes. To rob me of my memories of the
circus would leave me as poor as those to whom life
was a drab and hopeless round of toil. It was our brief
season of imaginative life. In one day — in a part of
one day — we gained a thousand new conceptions of the
world and of human nature. It was an embodiment of
all that was skillful and beautiful in manly action. It
was a compendium of biologic research but more im
portant still, it brought to our ears the latest band pieces
and taught us the most popular songs. It furnished us
with jokes. It relieved our dullness. It gave us some
thing to talk about.

We always went home wearied with excitement, and
dusty and fretful — but content. We had seen it. We
had grasped as much of it as anybody and could re
member it as well as the best. Next day as we resumed
work in the field the memory of its splendors went with
us like a golden cloud.

Most of the duties of the farmer's life require the lapse
of years to seem beautiful in my eyes, but haying was
a season of well-defined charm. In Iowa, summer
was at its most exuberant stage of vitality during the
last days of June, and it was not strange that the facul
ties of even the toiling hay-maker, dulled and deadened
with never ending drudgery, caught something of the
superabundant glow and throb of nature's life.

As I write I am back in that marvellous time. — The
cornfield, dark-green and sweetly cool, is beginning to

137

A Son of the Middle Border

ripple in the wind with multitudinous stir of shining^
swirling leaf. Waves of dusk and green and gold, circle
across the ripening barley, and long leaves upthrust, at
intervals, like spears. The trees are in heaviest foliage,
insect life is at its height, and the shimmering air is filled
with buzzing, dancing forms, and the clover is gay with
the sheen of innumerable gauzy wings.

The west wind comes to me laden with ecstatic voices?
The bobolinks sail and tinkle in the sensuous hush, now
sinking, now rising, their exquisite notes filling the air
as with the sound of fairy bells. The king-bird, alert,
aggressive, cries out sharply as he launches from the top
of a poplar tree upon some buzzing insect, and the
plover makes the prairie sad with his wailing call. Vast
purple-and-white clouds move like stately ships before
the breeze, dark with rain, which they drop momentarily
in trailing garments upon the earth, and so pass in maj
esty amidst a roll of thunder.

The grasshoppers move in clouds with snap and buzz,
and out of the luxurious stagnant marshes comes the
ever-thickening chorus of the toads, while above them
the kildees and the snipe shuttle to and fro in sounding
flight. The blackbirds on the cat-tails sway and swing,
uttering through lifted throats their liquid gurgle, mad
with delight of the sun and the season — and over all,
and laving all, moves the slow wind, heavy with the
breath of the far-off blooms of other lands, a wind which
covers the sunset plain with a golden entrancing haze.

At such times it seemed to me that we had reached the
"sunset region" of our song, and that we were indeed
11 lords of the soil."

I am not so sure that haying brought to our mothers
anything like this rapture, for the men added to our crew
made the duties of the kitchens just that much heavier.
I doubt if the women — any of them — got out into the

Boy Life on the Prairie

fields or meadows long enough to enjoy the birds and the
breezes. Even on Sunday as they rode away to church,
they were too tired and too worried to re-act to the
beauties of the landscape.

I now began to dimly perceive that my mother was
not well. Although large and seemingly strong, her in
creasing weight made her long days of housework a
torture. She grew very tired and her sweet face was
often knotted with physical pain.

She still made most of our garments as well as her own.
She tailored father's shirts and underclothing,' sewed
carpet rags, pieced quilts and made butter for market, —
and yet, in the midst of it all, found time to put covers
on our baseball, and to do up all our burns and bruises.
Being a farmer's wife in those days, meant laboring out
side any regulation of the hours of toil. I recall hearing
one of the tired housewives say, "Seems like I never
get a day off, not even on Sunday," a protest which my
mother thoroughly understood and sympathized with,
notwithstanding its seeming inhospitality.

No history of this time would be complete without a
reference to the doctor. We were a vigorous and on the
whole a healthy tribe but accidents sometimes happened
and "Go for the doctor!" was the first command when
the band-cutter slashed the hand of the thresher or one
of the children fell from the hay-rick.

One night as I lay buried in deep sleep close to the
garret eaves I heard my mother call me — and something
in her voice pierced me, roused me. A poignant note of
alarm was in it.

"Hamlin," she called, "get up — at once. You must
go for the doctor. Your father is very sick. Hurry! "

I sprang from my bed, dizzy with sleep, yet under
standing her appeal. "I hear you, I'm coming," I called
down to her as I started to dress.

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A Son of the Middle Border

"CallHattie. I need her too."

The rain was pattering on the roof, and as I dressed
I had a disturbing vision of the long cold ride which lay
before me. I hoped the case was not so bad as mother
thought. With limbs still numb and weak I stumbled
down the stairs to the sitting room where a faint light
shone.

Mother met me with white, strained face. "Your
father is suffering terribly. Go for the doctor at once."

I could hear the sufferer groan even as I moved about
the kitchen, putting on my coat and lighting the lantern.
It was about one o'clock of the morning, and the wind
was cold as I picked my way through the mud to the
barn. The thought of the long miles to town made me
shiver but as the son of a soldier I could not falter in my
duty.

In their warm stalls the horses were resting in dreamful
doze. Dan and Dick, the big plow team, stood near
the door. Jule and Dolly came next. Wild Frank, a
fleet but treacherous Morgan, stood fifth and for a mo
ment I considered taking him. He was strong and of
wonderful staying powers but so savage and unreliable
that I dared not risk an accident. I passed on to bay
Kittie whose bright eyes seemed to inquire, "What is
the matter?"

Flinging the blanket over her and smoothing it care
fully, I tossed the light saddle to her back and cinched
it tight, so tight that she grunted. "I can't take any
chances of a spill," I explained to her, and she accepted
the bit willingly. She was always ready for action and
fully dependable.

Blowing out my lantern I hung it on a peg, led Kit
from her stall out into the night, and swung to the saddle.
She made off with a spattering rush through the yard, out
into the road. It was dark as pitch but I was fully awake

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Boy Life on the Prairie

now. The dash of the rain in my face had cleared my
brain but I trusted to the keener senses of the mare to
find the road which showed only in the strips of water
which filled the wagon tracks.

We made way slowly for a few minutes until my eyes
expanded to take in the faint lines of light along the lane.
The road at last became a river of ink running between
faint gray banks of sward, and my heart rose in con
fidence. I took on dignity. I was a courier riding
through the night to save a city, a messenger on whose
courage and skill thousands of lives depended.

"Get out o' this!" I shouted to Kit, and she leaped
away like a wolf, at a tearing gallop.

She knew her rider. We had herded the cattle many
days on the prairie, and in races with the wild colts I
had tested her speed. Snorting with vigor at every leap
she seemed to say, "My heart is brave, my limbs are
strong. Call on me."

Out of the darkness John Martin's Carlo barked. A
hatf-mile had passed. Old Marsh's fox hound clamored
next. Two miles were gone. From here the road ran
diagonally across the prairie, a velvet-black band on the
dim sod. The ground was firmer but there were swales
full of water. Through these Kittie dashed with unhesi
tating confidence, the water flying from her drumming
hooves. Once she went to her knees and almost unseated
me, but I regained my saddle and shouted, "Go on,
Kit."

The fourth mile was in the mud, but the fifth brought
us to the village turnpike and the mare was as glad of it
as I. Her breath was labored now. She snorted no
more in exultation and confident strength. She began
to wonder — to doubt, and I, who knew her ways as well
as I knew those of a human being, realized that she was
beginning to flag. The mud had begun to tell on her.

A Son of the Middle Border

It hurt me to urge her on, but the memory of my
mother's agonized face and the sound of my father's
groan of pain steeled my heart. I set lash to her side
and so kept her to her highest speed.

At last a gleam of light! Someone in the village was
awake. I passed another lighted window. Then the
green and red lamps of the drug store cheered me with
their promise of aid, for the doctor lived next door.
There too a dim ray shone.

Slipping from my weary horse I tied her to the rail and
hurried up the walk toward the doctor's bell. I re
membered just where the knob rested. Twice I pulled
sharply, strongly, putting into it some part of the anx
iety and impatience I felt. I could hear its imperative
jingle as it died away in the silent house.

At last the door opened and the doctor, a big blonde
handsome man in a long night gown, confronted me with
impassive face. " What is it, my boy?" he asked kindly.

As I told him he looked down at my water-soaked form
and wild-eyed countenance with gentle patience. Then he
peered out over my head into the dismal night. He was a
man of resolution but he hesitated for a moment. " Your
father is suffering sharply, is he? "

"Yes, sir. I could hear him groan. — Please hurry."

He mused a moment. "He is a soldier. He would not
complain of a little thing — I will come."

Turning in relief, I ran down the walk and climbed
upon my shivering mare. She wheeled sharply, eager
to be off on her homeward way. Her spirit was not
broken, but she was content to take a slower pace. She
seemed to know that our errand was accomplished and
that the warm shelter of the stall was to be her reward.

Holding her down to a slow trot I turned often to see
if I could detect the lights of the doctor's buggy which was
a familiar sight on our road. I had heard that he kept

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Boy Life on the Prairie

one of his teams harnessed ready for calls like this, and I
confidently expected him to overtake me. "It's a ter
rible night to go out, but he said he would come," I
repeated as I rode.

At last the lights of a carriage, crazily rocking, came
into view and pulling Kit to a walk I twisted in my
saddle, ready to shout with admiration of the speed of
his team. "He's driving the 'Clay-Banks/ " I called
in great excitement.

The Clay-Banks were famous throughout the county as
the doctor's swiftest and wildest team, a span of bronchos
whose savage spirits no journey could entirely subdue,
a team he did not spare, a team that scorned petting
and pity, bony, sinewy, big-headed. They never walked
and had little care of mud or snow.

They came rushing now with splashing feet and foam
ing, half -open jaws, the big doctor, calm, iron-handed,
masterful, sitting in the swaying top of his light buggy,
his feet against the dash board, keeping his furious span
in hand as easily as if they were a pair of Shetland ponies.
The nigh horse was running, the off horse pacing, and the
splatter of their feet, the slash of the wheels and the
roaring of their heavy breathing, made my boyish heart
leap. I could hardly repress a yell of delight.

As I drew aside to let him pass the doctor called out with
mellow cheer, "Take your time, boy, take your time! "

Before I could even think of an answer, he was gone
and I was alone with Kit and the night.

My anxiety vanished with him. I had done all that
could humanly be done, I had fetched the doctor. What
ever happened I was guiltless. I knew also that in a few
minutes a sweet relief would come to my tortured mother,
and with full faith and loving confidence in the man of
science, I jogged along homeward, wet to the bone but
triumphant.

CHAPTER XIV

Wheat and the Harvest

^TT^HE early seventies were years of swift change on
JL the Middle Border. Day by day the settlement
thickened. Section by section the prairie was blackened
by the plow. Month by month the sweet wild meadows
were fenced and pastured and so at last the colts and
cows all came into captivity, and our horseback riding
ceased, cut short as if by some imperial decree. Lanes
of barbed wire replaced the winding wagon trails, our
saddles gathered dust in the grain-sheds, and groves of
Lombardy poplar and European larch replaced the
tow-heads of aspen and hazel through which we had
pursued the wolf and fox.

I will not say that this produced in me any keen sense of
sorrow at the time, for though I missed our horse-herds
and the charm of the open spaces, I turned to tamer sports
with the resilient adaptability of youth. If I could not
ride I could at least play baseball, and the swimming
hole in the Little Cedar remained untouched. The com
ing in of numerous Eastern settlers brought added charm
to neighborhood life. Picnics, conventions, Fourth of
July celebrations — all intensified our interest, and in
their increasing drama we were compensated, in some
degree at least, for the delights which were passing with
the prairie.

Our school-house did not change — except for the worse.
No one thought of adding a tree or a vine to its ugly yard,

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Wheat and the Harvest

Sun-smit, bare as a nose it stood at the cross-roads, re
ceiving us through its drab door-way as it had done from
the first. Its benches, hideously hacked and thick with
grime, were as hard and uncomfortable as when I first
saw them, and the windows remained unshaded and un
washed. Most of the farm-houses in the region remained
equally unadorned, but Deacon Gammons had added an
"ell" and established a "parlor," and Anson Burtch
had painted his barn. The plain began to take on a
comfortable look, for some of the trees of the wind
breaks had risen above the roofs, and growing maples
softened the effect of the bleak expanse.

My mother, like most of her neighbors, still cooked
and served meals in our one living room during the winter
but moved into a "summer kitchen" in April. This
change always gave us a sense of luxury — which is pa
thetic, if you look at it that way. Our front room be
came suddenly and happily a parlor, and was so treated.
Mother at once got down the rag carpet and gave orders
for us to shake out and bring in some clean straw to put
under it, and when we had tacked it down and re-ar
ranged the furniture, it was no longer a place for muddy
boots and shirt-sleeved shiftlessness, it had an air of
being in perpetual Sabbath leisure.

The Garlands were not so poor as all this would seem
to imply, for we were now farming over three hundred
acres of land and caring for a herd of cattle and many
swine. It merely meant that my father did not feel the
need of a "best room" and mother and Harriet were not
yet able to change his mind. Harriet wanted an organ
like Mary Abby Gammons, mother longed for a real "in
grain" carpet and we all clamored for a spring wagon.
We got the wagon first.

That bleak little house is clearly defined in my mind at
this moment. The low lean-to kitchen, the rag-carpeted

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A Son of the Middle Border

sitting room with its two chromos of Wide Awake and
Fast Asleep — its steel engraving of General Grant, and its
tiny melodeon in the corner — all these come back to me.
There are very few books or magazines in the scene, but
there are piles of newspapers, for my father was an
omnivorous reader of all things political. It was not a
hovel, it was a pioneer cabin persisting into a settled
community, that was all.

During these years the whole middle border was men
aced by bands of horse-thieves operating under a secret
well-organized system. Horses disappeared night by
night and were never recovered, till at last the farmers,
in despair of the local authorities, organized a Horse
Thief Protective Association which undertook to pursue
and punish the robbers and to pay for such animals as
were not returned. Our county had an association of this
sort and shortly after we opened our new farm my father
became a member. My first knowledge of this fact came
when he nailed on our barn-door the white cloth poster
which proclaimed in bold black letters a warning and
a threat signed by "the Committee." — I was always a
little in doubt as to whether the horse-thieves or ourselves
were to be protected, for the notice was fair warning
to them as well as an assurance to us. Anyhow very
few horses were stolen from barns thus protected.

The campaign against the thieves gave rise to many
stirring stories which lost nothing in my father's telling
of them. Jim McCarty was agent for our association and
its effectiveness was largely due to his swift and fearless
action. We all had a pleasant sense of the mystery of
the night riding which went on during this period arid no
man could pass with a led horse without being under
suspicion of being either a thief or a deputy. Then, too,
the thieves were supposed to have in every community a
spy who gave information as to the best horses, and

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Wheat and the Harvest

Informed the gang as to the membership of the Pro
tective Society.

One of our neighbors fell under suspicion at this time
and never got clear of it. I hope we did him no injustice
in this for never after could I bring myself to enter his
house, and he was clearly ostracized by all the neighbors.

As I look back over my life on that Iowa farm the song
of the reaper fills large place in my mind. We were all
worshippers of wheat in those days. The men thought
and talked of little else between seeding and harvest,
and you will not wonder at this if you have known and
bowed down before such abundance as we then enjoyed.

Deep as the breast of a man, wide as the sea, heavy-
headed, supple-stocked, many-voiced, full of multitudi
nous, secret, whispered colloquies, — a meeting place of
winds and of sunlight, — our fields ran to the world's
end.

We trembled when the storm lay hard upon the wheat,
we exulted as the lilac shadows of noon-day drifted over
it! We went out into it at noon when all was still — so
still we could hear the pulse of the transforming sap as it
crept from cool root to swaying plume. We stood before
it at evening when the setting sun flooded it with crim
son, the bearded heads lazily swirling under the wings
of the wind, the mousing hawk dipping into its green
deeps like the eagle into the sea, and our hearts expanded
with the beauty and the mystery of it, — and back of all
this was the knowledge that its abundance meant a new
carriage, an addition to the house or a new suit of clothes.

Haying was over, and day by day we boys watched
with deepening interest while the hot sun transformed the
juices of the soil into those stately stalks. I loved to go
out into the fairy forest of it, and lying there, silent in
its swaying deeps, hear the wild chickens peep and the

147

A Son of the Middle Border

wind sing its subtle song over our heads. Day by day I
studied the barley as it turned yellow, first at the root
and then at the neck (while the middle joints, rank and
sappy, retained their blue-green sheen), until at last the
lower leaves began to wither and the stems to stiffen in
order to uphold the daily increasing weight of the milky
berries, and then almost in an hour — lo! the edge of the
field became a banded ribbon of green and yellow, lan
guidly waving in and out with every rush of the breeze.

Now we got out the reaper, put the sickles in order,
and father laid in a store of provisions. Extra hands
were hired, and at last, early on a hot July morning, the
boss mounted to his seat on the self-rake "McCormick"
and drove into the field. Frank rode the lead horse,
four stalwart hands and myself took "stations" behind
the reaper and the battle was on!

Reaping generally came about the 2oth of July, the
hottest and dryest part of the summer, and was the most
pressing work of the year. It demanded early rising for
the men, and it meant an all day broiling over the kitchen
stove for the women. Stern, incessant toil went on inside
and out from dawn till sunset, no matter how the ther
mometer sizzled. On many days the mercury mounted
to ninety-five in the shade, but with wide fields all
yellowing at the same moment, no one thought of laying
off. A storm might sweep it flat, or if neglected too long,
it might "crinkle."

Our reaper in 1874 was a new model of the McCormick
self-rake, — the Marsh Harvester was not yet in general
use. The Woods Dropper, the Seymour and Morgan
hand-rake "contraptions" seemed a long way in the
past. True the McCormick required four horses to drag
it but it was effective. It was hard to believe that any
thing more cunning would ever come to claim the farm
er's money. Weird tales of a machine on which two men

148

Wheat and the Harvest

rode and bound twelve acres of wheat in ten hours came
to us, but we did not potently believe these reports — •
on the contrary we accepted the self-rake as quite the
final word in harvesting machinery and cheerily bent
to the binding of sheaves with their own straw in the
good old time-honored way.

No task save that of "cradling" surpassed in severity
"binding on a station." It was a full-grown man's job,
but every boy was ambitious to try his hand, and when
at fourteen years of age I was promoted from "bundle
boy" to be one of the five hands to bind after the reaper,
I went to my corner with joy and confidence. For two
years I had been serving as binder on the corners, (to
keep the grain out of the way of the horses) and I knew
my job.

I was short and broad-shouldered with large strong
hands admirably adapted for this work, and for the first
two hours, easily held my own with the rest of the crew,
but as the morning wore on and the sun grew hotter,
my enthusiasm waned. A painful void developed in my
chest. My breakfast had been ample, but no mere
stomachful of food could carry a growing boy through
five hours of desperate toil. Along about a quarter to
ten, I began to scan the field with anxious eye, longing
to see Harriet and the promised luncheon basket.

Just when it seemed that I could endure the strain no
longer she came bearing a jug of cool milk, some cheese
and some deliciously fresh fried-cakes. With keen joy
I set a couple of tall sheaves together like a tent and
flung myself down flat on my back in their shadow to
devour my lunch.

Tired as I was, my dim eyes apprehended something
of the splendor of the shining clouds which rolled like
storms of snow through the deep-blue spaces of sky and
so, resting silently as a clod I could hear the chirp of the

149

A Son of the Middle Border

crickets, the buzzing wings of flies and the faint, fairy-
like tread of smaller unseen insects hurrying their way
just beneath my ear in the stubble. Strange green worms,
grasshoppers and shining beetles crept over me as I
dozed.

This delicious, dreamful respite was broken by the
far-off approaching purr of the sickle, flicked by the faint
snap of the driver's whip, and out of the low rustle of the
everstirring lilliputian forest came the wailing cry of a
baby wild chicken lost from its mother — a falling, thrill
ing, piteous little pipe.

Such momentary communion with nature seemed all
the sweeter for the work which had preceded it, as well as
that which was to follow it. It took resolution to rise
and go back to my work, but I did it, sustained by a
kind of soldierly pride.

At noon we hurried to the house, surrounded the kitch
en table and fell upon our boiled beef and potatoes
with such ferocity that in fifteen minutes our meal was
over. There was no ceremony and very little talking
till the hid wolf was appeased. Then came a heavenly
half-hour of rest on the cool grass in the shade of the
trees, a siesta as luxurious as that of a Spanish mon
arch — but alas! — this "nooning," as we called it, was
always cut short by father's word of sharp command,
"Roll out, boys!" and again the big white jugs were
filled at the well, the horses, lazy with food, led the way
back to the field, and the stern contest began again.

All nature at this hour seemed to invite to repose rather
than to labor, and as the heat increased I longed with
wordless fervor for the green woods of the Cedar River.
At times the gentle wind hardly moved the bended heads
of the barley, and the hawks hung in the air like trout
sleeping in deep pools. The sunlight was a golden,
silent, scorching cataract — yet each of us must strain

Wheat and the Harvest

his tired muscles and bend his aching back to the
harvest.

Supper came at five, another delicious interval — and
then at six we all went out again for another hour or
two in the cool of the sunset. — However, the pace was
more leisurely now for the end of the day was near. I
always enjoyed this period, for the shadows lengthening
across the stubble, and the fiery sun, veiled by the gray
clouds of the west, had wondrous charm. The air be
gan to moisten and grow cool. The voices of the men
pulsed powerfully and cheerfully across the narrowing
field of unreaped grain, the prairie hens led forth their
broods to feed, and at last, father's long-drawn and musi
cal cry, "Turn OUT! All hands TURN OUT!" rang with
restful significance through the dusk. Then, slowly,
with low-hung heads the freed horses moved toward the
barn, walking with lagging steps like weary warriors
going into camp.

In all the toil of the harvest field, the water jug filled
a large place. It was a source of anxiety as well as com
fort. To keep it cool, to keep it well filled was a part of
my job. No man passed it at the "home corner" of the
field. It is a delightful part of my recollections of the
harvest.

0 cool gray jug that touched the lips
In kiss that softly closed and clung,
No Spanish wine the tippler sips,
No port the poet's praise has sung —
Such pure, untainted sweetness yields
As cool gray jug in harvest fields.

1 see it now! — a clover leaf
Out-spread upon its sweating side!—
As from the sheltering sheaf

I pluck and swing it high, the wide
Field glows with noon-day heat,
The winds are tangled in the wheat.

A Son of the Middle Border

The swarming crickets blithely cheep,
Across the stir of waving grain
I see the burnished reaper creep —
The lunch-boy comes, and once again
The jug its crystal coolness yields —
O cool gray jug in harvest fields!

My father did not believe in serving strong liquor to
fds men, and seldom treated them to even beer. While
not a teetotaler he was strongly opposed to all that in
temperance represented. He furnished the best of food,
and tea and coffee, but no liquor, and the men respected
him for it.

The reaping on our farm that year lasted about four
weeks. Barley came first, wheat followed, the oats came
last of all. No sooner was the final swath cut than the
barley was ready to be put under cover, and "stacking,"
a new and less exacting phase of the harvest, began.

This job required less men than reaping, hence a
part of our hands were paid off, only the more respon
sible ones were retained. The rush, the strain of the
reaping gave place to a leisurely, steady, day-by-day
garnering of the thoroughly seasoned shocks into great
conical piles, four in a place in the midst of the stubble,
which was already growing green with swiftly-springing
weeds.

A full crew consisted of a stacker, a boy to pass bun
dles, two drivers for the heavy wagon-racks, and a pitcher
in the field who lifted the sheaves from the shock with
a three-lined fork and threw them to the man on the
load.

At the age of ten I had been taught to "handle bun
dles" on the stack, but now at fourteen I took my father's
place as stacker, whilst he passed the sheaves and told
me how to lay them. This exalted me at the same time
that it increased my responsibility. It made a man of

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Wheat and the Harvest

me — not only in my own estimation, but in the eyes oi
my boy companions to whom I discoursed loftily on the
value of "bulges" and the advantages of the stack over
the rick.

No sooner was the stacking ended than the dreaded
task of plowing began for Burton and John and me.
Every morning while our fathers and the hired men
shouldered their forks and went away to help some neigh
bor thrash — (" changing works") we drove our teams
into the field, there to plod round and round in solitary
course. Here I acquired the feeling which I afterward
put into verse —

A lonely task it is to plow!

All day the black and shining soil

Rolls like a ribbon from the mold-board's

Glistening curve. All day the horses toil,

Battling with savage flies, and strain

Their creaking single-trees. All day

The crickets peer from wind-blown stacks of grain.

Franklin's job was almost as lonely. He was set to
herd the cattle on the harvested stubble and keep them
out of the corn field. A little later, in October, when I
was called to take my place as corn-husker, he was pro
moted to the plow. Our only respite during the months
of October and November was the occasional cold
rain which permitted us to read or play cards in the
kitchen.

Cards! I never look at a certain type of playing card
without experiencing a return of the wonder and the
guilty joy with which I bought of Metellus Kirby my
first "deck," and slipped it into my pocket. There was
an alluring oriental imaginative quality in the drawing
on the face cards. They brought to me vague hints of
mad monarchs, desperate stakes, and huge sudden re-

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A Son of the Middle Border

wards. All that I had heard or read of Mississippi
gamblers came back to make those gaudy bits of paste
board marvellous.

My father did not play cards, hence, although I had no
reason to think he would forbid them to me, I took a fear
some joy in assuming his bitter opposition. For a time
my brother and I played in secret, and then one day,
one cold bleak day as we were seated on the floor of the
granary playing on an upturned half-bushel measure,
shivering with the chill, our fingers numb and blue, the
door opened and father looked in.

We waited, while his round, eagle-gray eyes took in the
situation and it seemed a long, terrifying interval, then
at last he mildly said, "I guess you'd better go in and
play by the stove. This isn't very comfortable."

Stunned by this unexpected concession, I gathered
up the cards, and as I took my way to the house, I
thought deeply. The meaning of that quiet voice, that
friendly invitation was not lost on me. The soldier rose
to grand heights by that single act, and when I showed
the cards to mother and told her that father had con
sented to our playing, she looked grave but made no
objection to our use of the kitchen table. As a matter
of fact they both soon after joined our game. "If you
are going to play," they said, "we'd rather you played
right here with us." Thereafter rainy days were less
dreary, and the evenings shorter.

Everybody played Authors at this time also, and to
this day I cannot entirely rid myself of the estimations
which our pack of cards fixed in my mind. Prue and I
and The Blithedale Romance were on an equal footing,
so far as our game went, and Howells, Bret Harte and
Dickens were all of far-off romantic horizon. Writers
were singular, exalted beings found only in the East —
in splendid cities. They were not folks, they were demi-

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Wheat and the Harvest

gods, men and women living aloof and looking down
benignantly on toiling common creatures like us.

It never entered my mind that anyone I knew could
ever by any chance meet an author, or even hear one
lecture — although it was said that they did sometimes
come west on altruistic educational journeys and that
they sometimes reached our county town.

I am told — I do not know that it is true — that I
am one of the names on a present-day deck of Author
cards. If so, I wish I could call in that small plow-boy
of 1874 and let him play a game with this particular
pack!

The crops on our farms in those first years were enor
mous and prices were good, and yet the homes of the
neighborhood were slow in taking on grace or comfort.
I don't know why this was so, unless it was that the men
were continually buying more land and more machinery.
Our own stables were still straw-roofed sheds, but the
trees which we had planted had grown swiftly into a
grove, and a garden, tended at odd moments by all hands,
brought small fruits and vegetables in season. Although a
constantly improving collection of farm machinery light
ened the burdens of the husbandman, the drudgery of the
house-wife's dish-washing and cooking did not corre
spondingly lessen. I fear it increased, for with the widen
ing of the fields came the doubling of the harvest hands,
and my mother continued to do most of the housework
herself — cooking, sewing, washing, churning, and nursing
the sick from time to time. No one in trouble ever sent
for Isabelle Garland in vain, and I have many recollec
tions of neighbors riding up in the night and calling for
her with agitated voices.

Of course I did not realize, and I am sure my father
did not realize, the heavy burden, the endless grind of her
toil. Harriet helped, of course, and Frank and I churned

155

A Son of the Middle Border

and carried wood and brought water; but even with
such aid, the round of mother's duties must have been
as relentless as a tread-mill. Even on Sunday, when we
were free for a part of the day, she was required to fur
nish forth three meals, and to help Frank and Jessie
dress for church. — She sang less and less, and the songs
we loved were seldom referred to. — If I could only go
back for one little hour and take her in my arms, and
tell her how much I owe her for those grinding days!

Meanwhile we were all growing away from our life
in the old Wisconsin Coulee. We heard from William
but seldom, and David, who had bought a farm of his
own some ten miles to the south of us, came over to see
us only at long intervals. He still owned his long-bar
relled rifle but it hung unused on a peg in the kitchen.
Swiftly the world of the hunter was receding, never to
return. Prairie chickens, rabbits, ducks, and other
small game still abounded but they did not call for the
bullet, and turkey shoots were events of the receding
past. Almost in a year the ideals of the country-side
changed. David was in truth a survival of a more
heroic age, a time which he loved to lament with my
father who was almost as great a lover of the wilderness
as he. None of us sang "O'er the hills in legions, boys."
Our share in the conquest of the west seemed complete.

Threshing time, which was becoming each year less of
a "bee" and more of a job (many of the men were mere
hired hands), was made distinctive by David who came
over from Orchard with his machine — the last time as it
turned out — and stayed to the end. As I cut bands be
side him in the dust and thunder of the cylinder I re
gained something of my boyish worship of his strength
and skill. The tireless easy swing of his great frame was
wonderful to me and when, in my weariness, I failed to
slash a band he smiled and tore the sheaf apart — thus

156

Wheat and the Harvest

deepening my love for him. I looked up at him at such
times as a sailor regards his captain on the bridge. His
handsome immobile bearded face, his air of command, his
large gestures as he rolled the broad sheaves into the
howling maw of the machine made of him a chieftain. —
The touch of melancholy which even then had begun to
develop, added to his manly charm.

One day in late September as I was plowing in the field
at the back of the farm, I encountered a particularly
troublesome thicket of weeds and vines in the stubble,
and decided to burn the way before the coulter. We had
been doing this ever since the frost had killed the vege
tation but always on lands after they had been safe
guarded by strips of plowing. On this particular land
no fire had been set for the reason that four large stacks
of wheat still stood waiting the thresher. In my irrita
tion and self-confidence I decided to clear away the
matted stubble on the same strip though at some distance
from the stacks. This seemed safe enough at the time
for the wind was blowing gently from the opposite direc
tion.

It was a lovely golden day and as I stood watching
the friendly flame clearing the ground for me, I was filled
with satisfaction. Suddenly I observed that the line of
red was moving steadily against the wind and toward
the stacks. My satisfaction changed to alarm. The
matted weeds furnished a thick bed of fuel, and against
the progress of the flame I had nothing to offer. I could
only hope that the thinning stubble would permit me to
trample it out. I tore at the ground in desperation,
hoping to make a bare spot which the flame could not
leap. I trampled the fire with my bare feet. I beat at
it with my hat. I screamed for help.— Too late I
thought of my team and the plow with which I might
have drawn a furrow around the stacks. The flame

157

A Son of the Middle Border

touched the high-piled sheaves. It ran lightly, beauti*
fully up the sides — and as I stood watching it, I thought,
"It is all a dream. It can't be true."

But it was. In less than twenty minutes the towering
piles had melted into four glowing heaps of ashes. Four
hundred dollars had gone up in that blaze.

Slowly, painfully I hobbled to the plow and drove my
team to the house. Although badly burned, my mental
suffering was so much greater that I felt only part of it. — •
Leaving the horses at the well I hobbled into the house
to my mother. She, I knew, would sympathize with me
and shield me from the just wrath of my father who was
away, but was due to return in an hour or two.

Mother received me in silence, bandaged my feet and
put me to bed where I lay in shame and terror.

At last I heard father come in. He questioned, mother's
voice replied. He remained ominously silent. She went
on quietly, but with an eloquence unusual in her. What
she said to him I never knew, but when he came up the
stairs and stood looking down at me his anger had cooled.
He merely asked me how I felt, uncovered my burned
feet, examined them, put the sheet back, and went away,
without a word either of reproof or consolation.

None of us except little Jessie, ever alluded to this
tragic matter again ; she was accustomed to tell my story
as she remembered it, — "an 'nen the moon changed—
the fire ran up the stacks and burned 'em all down — "

When I think of the myriads of opportunities for
committing mistakes of this sort, I wonder that we had
so few accidents. The truth is our captain taught us to
think before we acted at all times, and we had little of the
heedlessness which less experienced children often show.
We were in effect small soldiers and carried some of the
responsibilities of soldiers into all that we did.

While still I was hobbling about, suffering from my

Wheat and tJfte Harvest

wounds my uncles William and Frank McClintock drove
over from Neshonoc bringing with them a cloud of
strangely-moving revived memories of the hills and woods
of our old Wisconsin home. I was peculiarly delighted by
this visit, for while the story of my folly was told, it was
not dwelt upon. They soon forgot me and fell naturally
into discussion of ancient neighbors and far-away events.

To me it was like peering back into a dun, dawn-lit
world wherein all forms were distorted or wondrously
aggrandized. William, big, black-bearded and smiling,
had lost little of his romantic appeal. Frank, still the
wag, was able to turn handsprings and somersaults
almost as well as ever, and the talk which followed
formed an absorbing review of early days in Wisconsin.

It brought up and denned many of the events of our
life in the coulee, pictures which were becoming a little
vague, a little blurred. Al Randal and Ed Green, who
were already almost mythical, were spoken of as living
creatures and thus the far was brought near. Compari
sons between the old and the new methods of seeding
and harvest also gave me a sense of change, a perception
which troubled me a little, especially as a wistful note
had crept into the voices of these giants of the middle
border. They all loved the wilderness too well not to be
a little saddened by the clearing away of bosky coverts
and the drying up of rippling streams.

We sent for Uncle David who came over on Sunday
to spend a night with his brothers and in the argument
which followed, I began to sense in him a spirit of restless
ness, a growing discontent which covered his handsome
face with a deepening shadow. He disliked being tied
down to the dull life of the farm, and his horse-power
threshing machine no longer paid him enough to com
pensate for the loss of time and care on the other phases
of his industry. His voice was still glorious and ha

UO

A Son of the Middle Border

played the violin when strongly urged, though with a
sense of dissatisfaction.

He and mother and Aunt Deborah sang Nellie
Wildwood and Lily Dale and Minnie Minium just as
they used to do in the coulee, and I forgot my dis
grace and the pain of my blistered feet in the rapture
of that exquisite hour of blended melody and memory.
The world they represented was passing and though I did
not fully realize this, I sensed in some degree the transi
tory nature of this reunion. In truth it never came
again. Never again did these three brothers meet, and
when they said good-bye to us next morning, I wondered
why it was, we must be so widely separated from those we
loved the best

160

CHAPTER XV
Harriet Goes Away

GIRLS on the Border came to womanhood early.
At fifteen my sister Harriet considered herself a
young lady and began to go out to dances with Cyrus
and Albert and Frances. She was small, moody and
silent, and as all her interests became feminine I lost
that sense of comradeship with which we used to ride
after the cattle and I turned back to my brother who was
growing into a hollow-chested lanky lad — and in our little
sister Jessie we took increasing interest. She was a
joyous child, always singing like a canary. SHE was never
a " trial/1

Though delicate and fair and pretty, she manifested a
singular indifference to the usual games of girls. Con
temptuous of dolls, she never played house so far as I
know. She took no interest in sewing, or cooking, but
had a whole yard full of " horses," that is to say, sticks
of varying sizes and shapes. Each pole had its name and
its "stall" and she endlessly repeated the chores of lead
ing them to water and feeding them hay. She loved to
go with me to the field and was never so happy as when
riding on old Jule. — Dear little sister, I fear I neglected
you at times, turning away from your sweet face and
pleading smile to lose myself in some worthless book.
I am comforted to remember that I did sometimes lift
you to the back of a real horse and permit you to ride
"a round, " chattering like a sparrow as we plodded back
and forth across the field.

161

A Son of the Middle Border

Frank cared little for books but he could take a hand at
games although he was not strong. Burton who at sixteen
was almost as tall as his father was the last to surrender
his saddle to the ash-bin. He often rode his high-headed
horse past our house on his way to town, and I especially
recall one day, when as Frank and I were walking to town
(one fourth of July) Burt came galloping along with
five dollars in his pocket. — We could not see the five
dollars but we did get the full force and dignity of his
cavalier approach, and his word was sufficient proof of
the cash he had to spend. As he rode on we, in crushed
humility, resumed our silent plodding in the dust of his
horse's hooves.

His round of labor, like my own, was well established.
In spring he drove team and drag. In haying he served
as stacker. In harvest he bound his station. In stacking
he pitched bundles. After stacking he plowed or went
out "changing works" and ended the season's work by
husking corn — a job that increased in severity from year
to year, as the fields grew larger. In '74 it lasted well
into November. Beginning in the warm and golden
September we kept at it (off and on) until sleety rains
coated the ears with ice and the wet soil loaded our boots
with huge balls of clay and grass — till the snow came
whirling by on the wings of the north wind and the last
flock of belated geese went sprawling side- wise down the
ragged sky. Grim business this! At times our wet gloves
froze on our hands.

How primitive all our notions were! Few of the boys
owned overcoats and the same suit served each of us for
summer and winter alike. In lieu of ulsters most of us
wore long, gay-colored woolen scarfs wound about our
heads and necks — scarfs which our mothers, sisters or
sweethearts had knitted for us. Our footwear continued
to be boots of the tall cavalry model with pointed toes

162

Harriet Goes Away

and high heels. Our collars were either hoxne-mada
ginghams or " bough ten" ones of paper at fifteen cents
per box. Some men went so far as to wear "dickies,"
that is to say, false shirt fronts made of paper, but this
was considered a silly cheat. No one in our neighborhood
ever saw a tailor-made suit, and nothing that we wore
fitted, — our clothes merely enclosed us.

Harriet, like the other women, made her own dresses,
assisted by my mother, and her best gowns in summer
were white muslin tied at the waist with ribbons. All
the girls dressed in this simple fashion, but as I write,
recalling the glowing cheeks and shining eyes of Hattie
and Agnes and Bess, I feel again the thrill of admiration
which ran through my blood as they came down the aisle
at church, or when at dancing parties they balanced or
" sashayed " in Honest John or Money Musk. — To me
they were perfectly clothed and divinely fair.

The contrast between the McClintocks, my hunter
uncles, and Addison Garland, my father's brother who
came to visit us at about this time was strikingly sig
nificant even to me. Tall, thoughtful, humorous and of
frail and bloodless body, "A. Garland" as he signed him
self, was of the Yankee merchant type. A general store
in Wisconsin was slowly making him a citizen of sub
stance and his quiet comment brought to me an entirely
new conception of the middle west and its future. He
was a philosopher. He peered into the years that were
to come and paid little heed to the passing glories of the
plain. He predicted astounding inventions and great
cities, and advised my father to go into dairying and
diversified crops. "This is a natural butter country,"
said he.

He was an invalid, and it was through him that we first
learned of graham flour. During his stay (and for some
time after) we suffered an infliction of sticky "gems"

A Son of the Middle Border

and dark soggy bread. We all resented this displace*
ment of our usual salt-rising loaf and delicious saleratus
biscuits but we ate the hot gems, liberally splashed with
butter, just as we would have eaten dog-biscuit or hard
tack had it been put before us.

One of the sayings of my uncle will fix his character in
the mind of the reader. One day, apropos of some public
event which displeased him, he said, "Men can be in
finitely more foolish in their collective capacity than on
their own individual account." His quiet utterance of
these words and especially the phrase "collective ca
pacity" made a deep impression on me. The underlying
truth of the saying came to me only later in my life.

He was full of "citrus-belt" enthusiasm and told us
that he was about to sell out and move to Santa Barbara.
He did not urge my father to accompany him, and if he
had, it would have made no difference. A winterless
climate and the raising of fruit did not appeal to my
Commander. He loved the prairie and the raising of
wheat and cattle, and gave little heed to anything else,
but to me Addison's talk of "the citrus belt" had the
value of a romance, and the occasional Spanish phrases
which he used afforded me an indefinable delight. It
was unthinkable that I should ever see an arroya but I
permitted myself to dream of it while he talked.

I think he must have encouraged my sister in her
growing desire for an education, for in the autumn after
his visit she entered the Cedar Valley Seminary at Osage
and her going produced in me a desire to accompany her.
I said nothing of it at the time, for my father gave but
reluctant consent to Harriet's plan. A district school
education seemed to him ample for any farmer's needs.

Many of our social affairs were now connected with
' ' the Grange. ' ' During these years on the new farm while
we were busied with breaking and fencing and raising

164

Harriet Goes Away

wheat, there had been growing up among the farmers of
the west a social organization officially known as The
Patrons of Husbandry. The places of meeting were
called "Granges" and very naturally the members were
at once called "Grangers."

My father was an early and enthusiastic member of
the order, and during the early seventies its meetings
became very important dates on our calendar. In
winter "oyster suppers," with debates, songs and essays,
drew us all to the Burr Oak Grove school-house, and each
spring, on the twelfth of June, the Grange Picnic was
a grand "turn-out." It was almost as well attended as
the circus.

We all looked forward to it for weeks and every young
man who owned a top-buggy got it out and washed and
polished it for the use of his best girl, and those who were
not so fortunate as to own "a rig" paid high tribute to
the livery stable of the nearest town. Others, less able
or less extravagant, doubled teams with a comrade and
built a "bowery wagon" out of a wagon-box, and with
hampers heaped with food rode away in state, drawn by
a four or six-horse team. It seemed a splendid and daring
thing to do, and some day I hoped to drive a six-horse
bowery wagon myself.

The central place of meeting was usually in some grove
along the Big Cedar to the west and south of us, and
early on the appointed day the various lodges of our
region came together one by one at convenient places,
each one moving in procession and led by great banners
on which the women had blazoned the motto of their
home lodge. Some of the columns had bands and came
preceded by far faint strains of music, with marshals in
red sashes galloping to and fro in fine assumption of
military command.

It was grand, it was inspiring —to us, to see those long

A Son of the Middle Border

lines of carriages winding down the lanes, joining one
to another at the cross roads till at last all the granges
from the northern end of the county were united in one
mighty column advancing on the*picnic ground, where
orators awaited our approach with calm dignity and high
resolve. Nothing more picturesque, more delightful,
more helpful has ever risen out of American rural life.
Each of these assemblies was a most grateful relief from
the sordid loneliness of the farm.

Our winter amusements were also in process of change.
We held no more singing schools — the " Lyceum" had
taken its place. Revival meetings were given up , although
few of the church folk classed them among the amuse
ments. The County Fair on the contrary was becoming
each year more important as farming diversified. It was
even more glorious than the Grange Picnic, was indeed
second only to the fourth of July, and we looked forward
to it all through the autumn.

It came late in September and always lasted three
days. We all went on the second day, (which was con
sidered the best day) and mother, by cooking all the
afternoon before our outing, provided us a dinner of cold
chicken and cake and pie which we ate while sitting on
the grass beside our wagon just off the race-track while
the horses munched hay and oats from the box. All
around us other families were grouped, picnicking in
the same fashion, and a cordial interchange of jellies
and pies made the meal a delightful function. However,
we boys never lingered over it, — we were afraid of miss
ing something of the program.

Our interest in the races was especially keen, for one
of the citizens of our town owned a fine little trotting
horse called " Huckleberry " whose honest friendly striv
ing made him a general favorite. Our survey of fat
sheep, broad-backed bulls and shining colts was a duty,

166

Harriet Goes Away

but to cheer Huckleberry at the home stretch was a
privilege.

To us from the farm the crowds were the most absorb
ing show of all. We met our chums and their sisters
with a curious sense of strangeness, of discovery. Our
playmates seemed alien somehow — especially the girls
in their best dresses walking about two and two, im
personal and haughty of glance.

Cyrus and Walter were there in their top-buggies
with Harriet and Bettie but they seemed to be having a
dull time, for while they sat holding their horses we were
dodging about in freedom — now at the contest of draft
horses, now at the sledge-hammer throwing, now at the
candy-booth. We were comical figures, with our long
trousers, tliick gray coats and faded hats, but we didn't
know it and were happy.

One day as Burton and I were wandering about on
the fair grounds we came upon a patent medicine cart
from which a faker, a handsome fellow with long black
hair and an immense white hat, was addressing the crowd
while a young and beautiful girl with a guitar in her lap
sat in weary relaxation at his feet. A third member of
the " troupe," a short and very plump man of common
place type, was handing out bottles. It was " Doctor"
Lightner, vending his " Magic Oil."

At first I perceived only the doctor whose splendid
gray suit and spotless linen made the men in the crowd
rustic and graceless, but as I studied the woman I began
to read into her face a sadness, a weariness, which ap
pealed to my imagination. Who was she? Why was she
there? I had never seen a girl with such an expression.
She saw no one, was interested in nothing before her —
and when her master, or husband, spoke to her in a low
voice, she raised her guitar and joined in the song which
fee had started, all with the same air of weary disgust

167

A Son of the Middle Border

Her voice, a childishly sweet soprano, mingled with the
robust baritone of the doctor and the shouting tenor of
the fat man, like a thread of silver in a skein of brass.

I forgot my dusty clothes, my rough shoes, — I forgot
that I was a boy. Absorbed and dreaming I listened to
these strange new songs and studied the singular faces
of these alien songsters. Even the shouting tenor had
a far-away gleam in the yellow light of his cat-like eyes.
The leader's skill, the woman's grace and the perfect
blending of their voices made an ineffaceable impres
sion on my sensitive, farm-bred brain.

The songs which they sang were not in themselves of a
character to warrant this ecstasy in me. One of them
ran as follows:

O Mary had a little lamb,

Its fleece was black as jet,
In the little old log cabin in the lane;

And everywhere that Mary went,

The lamb went too, you bet.
In the little old log cabin in the lane.

In the little old log cabin 0!

The little old log cabin O!
The little old log cabin in the lane,

They're hangin' men and women now

For singing songs like this
In the little old log cabin in the lane.

Nevertheless I listened without a smile. It was art
to me. It gave me something I had never known. The
large, white, graceful hand of the doctor sweeping the
strings, the clear ringing shout of the tenor and the
chiming, bird-like voice of the gjrl lent to the absurd
words of this ballad a singular dignity. They made all
other persons and events of the day of no account.

In the intervals between the songs the doctor talked
of catarrh and its cure, and offered his medicines for

1 68

Harriet Goes Away

sale, and in this dull part of the program the tenor as
sisted, but the girl, sinking back in her seat, resumed her
impersonal and weary air.

That was forty years ago, and I can still sing those
songs and imitate the whoop of the shouting tenor, but
I have never been able to put that woman into verse or
fiction although I have tried. In a story called Love or the
Law I once made a laborious attempt to account for her,
but I did not succeed, and the manuscript remains in the
bottom of my desk.

No doubt the doctor has gone to his long account and
the girl is a gray old woman of sixty-five but in this book
they shall be forever young, forever beautiful, noble
with the grace of art. The medicine they peddled was
of doubtful service, but the songs they sang, the story
they suggested were of priceless value to us who came
from the monotony of the farm, and went back to it
like bees laden with the pollen of new intoxicating blooms-

Sorrowfully we left Huckleberry's unfinished race, re
luctantly we climbed into the farm wagon, sticky with
candy, dusty, tired, some of us suffering with sick-head
ache, and rolled away homeward to milk the cows, feed
the pigs and bed down the horses.

As I look at a tintype of myself taken at about this
time, I can hardly detect the physical relationship be
tween that mop-headed, long-lipped lad, and the gray-
haired man of today. But the coat, the tie, the little
stick-pin on the lapel of my coat all unite to bring back
to me with painful stir, the curious debates, the boyish
delights, the dawning desires which led me to these ma
terial expressions of manly pride. There is a kind of
pathos too, in the memory of the keen pleasure I took
in that absurd ornament — and yet my joy was genuine,
my satisfaction complete.

A Son of the Middle Border

Harriet came home from school each Friday night
but we saw little of her, for she was always engaged fof
dances or socials by the neighbors' sons, and had only a
young lady's interest in her cub brothers. I resented this
and was openly hostile to her admirers. She seldom rode
with us to spelling schools or " soshybles." There was
always some youth with a cutter, or some noisy group
in a big bob-sleigh to carry her away, and on Monday
morning father drove her back to the county town
with growing pride in her improving manners.

Her course at the Seminary was cut short in early
spring by a cough which came from a long ride in the
keen wind. She was very ill with a wasting fever, yet
for a time refused to go to bed. She could not resign
herself to the loss of her school-life.

The lack of room in our house is brought painfully
to my mind as I recall that she lay for a week or two in a
corner of our living room with all the noise and bustle
of the family going on around her. Her own attic
chamber was unwarmed (like those of all her girl
friends), and so she was forced to lie near the kitchen
stove.

She grew rapidly worse all through the opening days of
April and as we were necessarily out in the fields at wo^,
and mother was busied with her household affairs, the
lonely sufferer was glad to have her bed in the living
room — and there she lay, her bright eyes following mother
at her work, growing whiter and whiter until one beauti
ful, tragic morning in early May, my father called me in
to say good-bye to her.

She was very weak, but her mind was perfectly clear,
and as she kissed me farewell with a soft word about
being a good boy, I turned away blinded with tears and
fled to the barnyard, there to hide like a wounded ani
mal, appalled by the weight of despair and sorrow which

170

Harriet Goes Away

her transfigured face had suddenly thrust upon me.
All about me the young cattle called, the spring sun
shone and the gay fowls sang, but they could not mitigate
my grief, my dismay, my sense of loss. My sister was
passing from me — that was the agonizing fact which
benumbed me. She who had been my playmate, my
comrade, was about to vanish into air and earth!

This was my first close contact with death, and it
filled me with awe. Human life suddenly seemed fleeting
and of a part with the impermanency and change of the
westward moving Border Line. — Like the wild flowers
she had gathered, Harriet was now a fragrant memory.
Her dust mingled with the soil of the little burial ground
just beyond the village bounds.

My mother's heart was long in recovering from the
pain of this loss, but at last Jessie's sweet face, which
had in it the light of the sky and the color of a flower,
won back her smiles. The child's acceptance of the
funeral as a mere incident of her busy little life, in some
way enabled us all to take up and carry forward the
routine of our shadowed home.

Those years on the plain, from '71 to '75, held much that
was alluring, much that was splendid. I did not live an
exceptional life in any way. My duties and my pleas
ures were those of the boys around me. In all essentials
my life was typical of the time and place. My father
was counted a good and successful farmer. Our neighbors
all lived in the same restricted fashion as ourselves, in
barren little houses of wood or stone, owning few books,
reading only weekly papers. It was a pure democracy
wherein my father was a leader and my mother beloved
by all who knew her. If anybody looked down upon us
we didn't know it, and in all the social affairs of the town
ship we fully shared.

A Son of the Middle Border

Nature was our compensation. As I look back upon
it, I perceive transcendent sunsets, and a mighty sweep
of golden grain beneath a sea of crimson clouds. The
light and song and motion of the prairie return to me.
I hear again the shrill, myriad-voiced choir of leaping
insects whose wings flash fire amid the glorified stubble.
The wind wanders by, lifting my torn hat-rim. The
locusts rise in clouds before my weary feet. The prairie
hen soars out of the unreaped barley and drops into the
sheltering deeps of the tangled oats, green as emerald.
The lone quail pipes in the hazel thicket, and far up the
road the cowbell's steady clang tells of the home-coming
herd.

Even in our hours of toil, and through the sultry skies,
the sacred light of beauty broke; worn and grimed as we
were, $?e still could fall a-dream before the marvel of a
golden earth beneath a crimson sky.

172

CHAPTER XVT
We Move to Town

ONE day, soon after the death of my sister Harriet,
my father came home from a meeting of the
Grange with a message which shook our home with the
force of an earth-quake. The officers of the order had
asked him to become the official grain-buyer for the
county, and he had agreed to do it. "I am to take charge
of the new elevator which is just being completed in
Osage," he said.

The effect of this announcement was far-reaching.
First of all it put an end not merely to our further pioneer
ing but, (as the plan developed) promised to translate
us from the farm to a new and shining world, a town
world where circuses, baseball games and county fairs
were events of almost daily occurrence. It awed while it
delighted us for we felt vaguely our father's perturba
tion.

For the first time since leaving Boston, some thirty
years before, Dick Garland began to dream of making
a living at something less back-breaking than tilling the
soil. It was to him a most abrupt and startling departure
from the fixed plan of his life, and I dimly understood
even then that he came to this decision only after long
and troubled reflection. Mother as usual sat in silence.
If she showed exultation, I do not recall the fashion
of it.

Father assumed his new duties in June and during all
that summer and autumn, drove away immediately
after breakfast each morning, to the elevator some six

A Son of the Middle Border

miles away, leaving me in full charge of the farm and its
tools. All his orders to the hired men were executed
through me. On me fell the supervision of their action,
always with an eye to his general oversight. I never
forgot that fact. He possessed the eye of an eagle.
His uncanny powers of observation kept me terrified.
He could detect at a glance the slightest blunder or wrong
doing in my day's activities. Every afternoon, about
sunset he came whirling into the yard, his team flecked
with foam, his big gray eyes flashing from side to side,
and if any tool was out of place or broken, he discovered
it at once, and his reproof was never a cause of laughter
to me or my brother.

As harvest came on he took command in the field, for
most of the harvest help that year were rough, hardy
wanderers from the south, nomads who had followed the
line of ripening wheat from Missouri northward, and
were not the most profitable companions for boys of
fifteen. They reached our neighborhood in July, arriving
like a flight of alien unclean birds, and vanished into the
north in September as mysteriously as they had appeared.
A few of them had been soldiers, others were the errant
sons of the poor farmers and rough mechanics of older
States, migrating for the adventure of it. One of them
gave his name as "Harry Lee," others were known by
such names as "Big Ed" or "Shorty." Some carried
valises, others had nothing but small bundles containing
a clean shirt and a few socks.

They all had the most appalling yet darkly romantic
conception of women. A "girl" was the most desired
thing in the world, a prize to be worked for, sought for
and enjoyed without remorse. She had no soul. The
maid who yielded to temptation deserved no pity, no con
sideration, no aid. Her sufferings were amusing, her
diseases a joke, her future of no account. From these

174

We Move to Town

men Burton and I acquired a desolating fund of informa
tion concerning South Clark Street in Chicago, and the
river front in St. Louis. Their talk did not allure, it
mostly shocked and horrified us. We had not known that
such cruelty, such baseness was in the world and it stood
away in such violent opposition to the teaching of our
fathers and uncles that it did not corrupt us. That man,
the stronger animal, owed chivalry and care to woman,
had been deeply grounded in our concept of life, and we
shrank from these vile stories as from something dis
loyal to our mothers and sisters.

To those who think of the farm as a sweetly ideal place
in which to bring up a boy, all this may be disturbing —
but the truth is, low-minded men are low-minded every
where, and farm hands are often creatures with enormous
appetites and small remorse, men on whom the beauty
of nature has very little effect.

To most of our harvest hands that year Saturday night
meant a visit to town and a drunken spree, and they did
not hesitate to say so in the presence of Burton and my
self. Some of them did not hesitate to say anything in
our presence. After a hard week's work we all felt that
a trip to town was only a fair reward.

Saturday night in town! How it all comes back to
me! I am a timid visitor in the little frontier village.
It is sunset. A whiskey-crazed farmhand is walking
bare footed up and down the middle of the road defying
the world. — From a corner of the street I watch with
tense interest another lithe, pock-marked bully menacing
with cat-like action, a cowering young farmer in a long
linen coat. The crowd jeers at him for his cowardice — a
burst of shouting is heard. A trampling follows and forth
from the door of a saloon bulges a throng of drunken,
steaming, reeling, cursing ruffians followed by brave Jim
McCarty, the city marshal, with an offender undel

175

A Son of the Middle Border

each hand. — The scene changes to the middle of the
street. I am one of a throng surrounding a smooth-
handed faker who is selling prize boxes of soap and
giving away dollars. — "Now, gentlemen," he says, "if
you will hand me a dollar I will give you a sample pack
age of soap to examine, afterwards if you don't want the
soap, return it to me, and I'll return your dollar." He
repeats this several times, returning the dollars faith
fully, then slightly varies his invitation by saying, "so
that I can return your dollars."

No one appears to observe this significant change, and
as he has hitherto returned the dollars precisely according
to promise, he now proceeds to his harvest. Having
all his boxes out he abruptly closes the lid of his box
and calmly remarks, "I said, 'so that I can return your
dollars/ I didn't say I would. — Gentlemen, I have the
dollars and you have the experience." He drops into his
seat and takes up the reins to drive away. A tall man
who has been standing silently beside the wheel of the
carriage, snatches the whip from its socket, and lashes
the swindler across the face. Red streaks appear on
his cheek. — The crowd surges forward. Up from behind
leaps a furious little Scotchman who snatches off his right
boot and beats the stranger over the head with such
fury that he falls from his carriage to the ground. —
I rejoice in his punishment, and admire the tall man who
led the assault. — The marshal comes, the man is led
away, and the crowd smilingly scatters. —

We are on the way home. Only two of my crew are
with me. The others are roaring from one drinking
place to another, having a "good time." The air is
soothingly clean and sweet after the tumult and the
reek of the town. Appalled, yet fascinated, I listen to
the oft repeated tales of just how Jim McCarty sprang
into the saloon and cleaned out the brawling .

176

We Move to Town

feel very young, very defenceless, and very sleepy as I
listen. —

On Sunday, Burton usually came to visit me or I
went over to his house and together we rode or walked
to service at the Grove school-house. He was now the
owner of a razor, and I was secretly planning to buy one.
The question of dress had begun to trouble us both
acutely. Our best suits were not only made from woolen
cloth, they were of blizzard weight, and as on week
days (in summer) our entire outfit consisted of a straw
hat, a hickory shirt and a pair of brown denim overalls
you may imagine what tortures we endured when fully
encased in our " Sunday best," with starched shirts and
paper collars.

No one, so far as I knew, at that time possessed an
extra, light-weight suit for hot-weather wear, although a
long, yellow, linen robe called a "duster" was in fashion
among the smart dressers. John Gammons, who was
somewhat of a dandy in matters of toilet, was among the
first of my circle to purchase one of these very ultra
garments, and Burton soon followed his lead, and then
my own discontent began. I, too, desired a duster.

Unfortunately my father did not see me as I saw my
self. To him I was still a boy and subject to his will in
matters of dress as in other affairs, and the notion that I
needed a linen coat was absurd. "If you are too warm,
take your coat off," he said, and I not only went without
the duster, but suffered the shame of appearing in a
flat-crown black hat while Burton and all the other
fellows were wearing light brown ones, of a conical
shape.

I was furious. After a period of bitter brooding I
rebelled, and took the matter up with the Commander-in-
Chief. I argued, "As I am not only doing a man's work
on a boy's pay but actually superintending the stock and

177

A Son of the Middle Border

tools, I am entitled to certain individual rights in th«
choice of a hat."

The soldier listened in silence but his glance was stern.
When I had ended he said, "You'll wear the hat I
provide."

For the first time in my life I defied him. "I will
not," I said. "And you can't make me."

He seized me by the arm and for a moment we faced
each other in silent clash of wills. I was desperate now.
"Don't you strike me," I warned. "You can't do that
any more."

His face changed. His eyes softened. He perceived
in my attitude something new, something unconquerable.
He dropped my arm and turned away. After a silent
struggle with himself he took two dollars from his pocket
and extended them to me. "Get your own hat," he
said, and walked away.

This victory forms the most important event of my
fifteenth year. Indeed the chief's recession gave me a
greater shock than any punishment could have done.
Having forced him to admit the claims of my growing
personality as well as the value of my services, I retired
in a panic. The fact that he, the inexorable old soldier,
had surrendered to my furious demands awed me,
making me very careful not to go too fast or too far in
my assumption of the privileges of manhood.

Another of the milestones on my road to manhood
was my first employment of the town barber. Up to
this time my hair had been trimmed by mother or man
gled by one of the hired men, — whereas both John and
Burton enjoyed regular hair-cuts and came to Sunday
school with the backs of their necks neatly shaved. I
wanted to look like that, and so at last, shortly after
my victory concerning the hat, I plucked up courage to
ask my father for a quarter and got it! With my money

178

We Move to Town

tightly clutched in my hand I timidly entered the Ton*
serial Parlor of Ed Mills and took my seat in his marvel*
lous chair — thus touching another high point on the
road to self-respecting manhood. My pleasure, however,
was mixed with ignoble childish terror, for not only did
the barber seem determined to force upon me a shampoo
(which was ten cents extra), but I was in unremitting fear
lest I should lose my quarter, the only one I possessed,
and find myself accused as a swindler.

Nevertheless I came safely away, a neater, older and
graver person, walking with a manlier stride, and when
I confronted my class-mates at the Grove school-house
on Sunday, I gave evidence of an accession of self-con
fidence. The fact that my back hair was now in fashion
able order was of greatest comfort to me. If only my
trousers had not continued their distressing habit of
climbing up my boot-tops I would have been almost at
ease but every time I rose from my seat it became neces
sary to make each instep smooth the leg of the other
pantaloon, and even then they kept their shameful
wrinkles, and a knowledge of my exposed ankles humbled
me.

Burton, although better dressed than I, was quite as
confused and wordless in the presence of girls, but John
Gammons was not only confident, he was irritatingly
facile. Furthermore, as son of the director of the Sun
day school he had almost too much distinction. I bitterly
resented his linen collars, his neat suit and his smiling
assurance, for while we professed to despise everything
connected with church, we were keenly aware of the
bright eyes of Bettie and noted that they rested often on
John's curly head. He could sing, too, and sometimes,
with sublime audacity, held the hymn book with her.

The sweetness of those girlish faces held us captivi
through many a long sermon, but there were times whet*

170

A Son of the Middle Border

not even their beauty availed. Three or four of us
occasionally slipped away into the glorious forest to pick
berries or nuts, or to loaf in the odorous shade of the elms
along the creek. The cool aisles of the oaks seemed
more sweetly sanctifying (after a week of sun-smit soil
on the open plain) than the crowded little church with
its droning preacher, and there was something mystical
in the melody of the little brook and in the flecking of
Jight and shade across the silent wood-land path.

To drink of the little ice-cold spring beneath the maple
tree in Frazer's pasture was almost as delight-giving
as the plate of ice-cream which we sometimes permitted
ourselves to buy in the village on Saturday, and often
we wandered on and on, till the sinking sun warned us
of duties at home and sent us hurrying to the
open.

It was always hard to go back to the farm after one of
these days of leisure — back to greasy overalls and milk-
bespattered boots, back to the society of fly-bedevilled
cows and steaming, salty horses, back to the curry
comb and swill bucket, — but it was particularly hard
during this our last summer on the prairie. But we did
it with a feeling that we were nearing the end of it.
"Next year we'll be living in town!" I said to the boys
exultantly. ' ' No more cow-milking for me 1 "

I never rebelled at hard, clean work, like haying or
harvest, but the slavery of being nurse to calves and
scrub-boy to horses cankered my spirits more and more,
and the thought of living in town filled me with an in
credulous anticipatory delight. A life of leisure, of intel
lectual activity seemed about to open up to me, and I
met my chums in a restrained exaltation which must
have been trying to their souls. "I'm sorry to leave
you," I jeered, "but so it goes. Some are chosen, others
are left. Some rise to glory, others remain plodders — "

180

We Move to Town

such was my airy attitude. I wonder that they did not
roll me in the dust.

Though my own joy and that of my brother was keen
and outspoken, I have no recollection that my mother
uttered a single word of pleasure. She must have been
as deeply excited, and as pleased as we, for it meant
more to her than to us, it meant escape from the drudgery
of the farm, from the pain of early rising, and yet I
cannot be sure of her feeling. So far as she knew this
move was final. Her life as a farmer's wife was about to
end after twenty years of early rising and never ending
labor, and I think she must have palpitated with joy of
her approaching freedom from it all.

As we were not to move till the following March,
and as winter came on we went to school as usual in the
"bleak little shack at the corner of our farm and took
part in all the neighborhood festivals. I have beautiful
memories of trotting away across the plain to spelling
schools and "Lyceums" through the sparkling winter
nights with Franklin by my side, while the low-hung
sky blazed with stars, and great white owls went flapping
silently away before us. — I am riding in a long sleigh
to the north beneath a wondrous moon to witness a per
formance of Lord Dundreary at the Barker school-house.
• — I am a neglected onlooker at a Christmas tree at Burr
Oak. I am spelled down at the Shehan school — and
through all these scenes runs a belief that I am leaving
the district never to return to it, a conviction which
lends to every experience a peculiar poignancy of appeal.

Though but a shaggy colt in those days, I acknowl
edged a keen longing to join in the parties and dances
of the grown-up boys and girls. I was not content to be
merely the unnoticed cub in the corner. A place in the
family bob-sled no longer satisfied me, and when at the
"sociable" I stood in the corner with tousled hair and

A Son of the Middle Border

clumsy ill-fitting garments I was in my desire, a con
fident, graceful squire of dames.

The dancing was a revelation to me of the beauty
and grace latent in the awkward girls and hulking men
of the farms. It amazed and delighted me to see
how gloriously Madeleine White swayed and tip- toed
through the figures of the " Cotillion," and the sweet
aloofness of Agnes FarwelPs face filled me with worship.
I envied Edwin Blackler his supple grace, his fine sense
of rhythm, and especially the calm audacity of his man
ner with his partners. Bill, Joe, all the great lunking
farm hands seemed somehow uplifted, carried out of
their everyday selves, ennobled by some deep-seated
emotion, and I was eager for a chance to show that I,
too, could balance and bow and pay court to women,
but — alas, I never did, I kept to my corner even though
Stelle Gilbert came to drag me out.

Occasionally a half-dozen of these audacious young
people would turn a church social or donation party into
a dance, much to the scandal of the deacons. I recall one
such performance which ended most dramatically. It
was a "shower" for the minister whose salary was too
small to be even an honorarium, and the place of meet
ing was at the DurrehV, two well-to-do farmers, brothers
who lived on opposite sides of the road just south of the
Grove school-house.

Mother put up a basket of food, father cast a quarter of
beef into the back-part of the sleigh, and we were off
early of a cold winter night in order to be on hand for
the supper. My brother and I were mere passen
gers on the straw behind, along with the slab of beef,
but we gave no outward sign of discontent. It was a
dear, keen, marvellous twilight, with the stars com
ing out over the woodlands to the east. On every
road the sound of bells and the voices of happy young

182

We Move to Town

people came to our ears. Occasionally some fellow
with a fast horse and a gay cutter came slashing up
behind us and called out "Clear the track!" Father
gave the road, and the youth and his best girl went
whirling by with a gay word of thanks. Watch-dogs
guarding the Davis farm-house, barked in savage warn
ing as we passed and mother said, " Everybody's gone.
I hope we won't be late."

We were, indeed, a little behind the others for when
we stumbled into the Ellis Durrell house we found a
crowd of merry folks clustered about the kitchen stove.
Mrs. Ellis flattered me by saying, "The young people
ere expecting you over at Joe's." Here she laughed,
"I'm afraid they are going to dance."

As soon as I was sufficiently thawed out I went across
the road to the other house which gave forth the sound
rf singing and the rhythmic tread of dancing feet. It
was filled to overflowing with the youth of the neighbor
hood, and Agnes Farwell, Joe's niece, the queenliest
of them all, was leading the dance, her dark face aglow,
her deep brown eyes alight.

The dance was "The Weevilly Wheat" and Ed Black-
ler was her partner. Against the wall stood Marsh Bel-
ford, a tall, crude, fierce young savage with eyes fixed
on Agnes. He was one of her suitors and mad with
jealousy of Blackler to whom she was said to be en
gaged. He was a singular youth, at once bashful and
baleful. He could not dance, and for that reason keenly
resented Ed's supple grace and easy manners with the
girls.

Crossing to where Burton stood, I heard Belford say
as he replied to some remark by his companions, "I'll
roll him one o' these days." He laughed in a constrained
way, and that his mood was dangerous was evident.
In deep excitement Burton and I awaited the outcome.

18*

A Son of the Middle Border

The dancing was of the harmless "donation" sort.
As musical instruments were forbidden, the rhythm was
furnished by a song in which we all joined with clapping
hands.

Come hither, my love, and trip together

In the morning early,

Give to you the parting hand

Although I love you dearly.

I won't have none of your weevilly wheat

I won't have none of your barley,

I'll have some flour

In half an hour

To bake a cake for Charley. —

Oh, Charley, he is a fine young man,

Charley he is a dandy,

Charley he is a fine young man

For he buys the girls some candy.

The figures were like those in the old time "Money
Musk" and as Agnes bowed and swung and gave hands
down the line I thought her the loveliest creature in the
world, and so did Marsh, only that which gladdened me,
maddened him. I acknowledged Edwin's superior claim,
— Marsh did not.

Burton, who understood the situation, drew me aside
and said, "Marsh has been drinking. There's going to
be war."

As soon as the song ceased and the dancers paused,
Marsh, white with resolution, went up to Agnes, and
said something to her. She smiled, but shook her head
and turned away. Marsh came back to where his brother
Joe was standing and his face was tense with fury. "I'll
make her wish she hadn't," he muttered.

Edwin, as floor manager, now called out a new "set "and
as the dancers began to "form on," Joe Belford hunched
his brother. "Go after him now," he said. With deadly
slowness of action, Marsh sauntered up to Bladder and
said something in a low voice.

184

We Move to Town

"You're a liar!" retorted Edwin sharply.

Belford struck out with a swing of his open hand, and
a moment later they were rolling on the floor in a deadly
grapple. The girls screamed and fled, but the boys
formed a joyous ring around the contestants and cheered
them on to keener strife while Joe Belford, tearing off
his coat, stood above his brother, warning others to keep
out of it. "This is to be a fair fight," he said. "The
best man wins!"

He was a redoubtable warrior and the ring widened.
No one thought of interfering, in fact we were all de
lighted by this sudden outbreak of the heroic spirit.

Ed threw off his antagonist and rose, bleeding but
undaunted. "You devil," he said, "I'll smash your face."

Marsh again struck him a staggering blow, and they
were facing each other in watchful fury as Agnes forced
her way through the crowd and, laying her hand on Bel-
ford's arm, calmly said, "Marsh Belford, what are you
doing?"

Her dignity, her beauty, her air of command, awed
the bully and silenced every voice in the room. She was
our hostess and as such assumed the right to enforce
decorum. Fixing her glance upon Joe whom she recog
nized as the chief disturber, she said, "You'd better go
home. This is no place for either you or Marsh."

Sobered, shamed, the Belfords fell back and slipped
out while Agnes turned to Edwin and wiped the blood
from his face with self-contained tenderness.

This date may be taken as fairly ending my boyhood,
for I was rapidly taking on the manners of men. True,
I did not smoke or chew tobacco and I was not greatly
given to profanity, but I was able to shoulder a two bushel
sack of wheat and could hold my own with most of the
harvesters. Although short and heavy, I was deft

185

A Son of the Middle Border

with my hands, as one or two of the neighborhood bullies
had reason to know and in many ways I was counted a
man.

I read during this year nearly one hundred dime novels,
little paper-bound volumes filled with stories of Indians
and wild horsemen and dukes and duchesses and men in
iron masks, and sewing girls who turned out to be daugh
ters of nobility, and marvellous detectives who bore
charmed lives and always trapped the villains at the end
of the story —

Of all these tales, those of the border naturally had
most allurement. There was the Quaker Sleuth, for in
stance, and Mad Matt the Trailer, and Buckskin Joe
who rode disdainfully alone (like Lochinvar), rescuing
maidens from treacherous Apaches, cutting long rows
of death notches on the stock of his carbine. One of these
narratives contained a phantom troop of skeleton horse
men, a grisly squadron, which came like an icy wind out
of the darkness, striking terror to the hearts of the rene
gades and savages, only to vanish with clatter of bones,
and click of hoofs.

In addition to these delight-giving volumes, I traded
stock with other boys of the neighborhood. From Jack
Sheet I derived a bundle of Saturday Nights in exchange
for my New York Weeklys and from one of our harvest
hands, a near-sighted old German, I borrowed some
twenty-five or thirty numbers of The Sea Side Library.
These also cost a dime when new, but you could return
them and get a nickel in credit for another, — provided
your own was in good condition.

It is a question whether the reading of all this exciting
fiction had an ill effect on my mind or not. Apparently
it had very little effect of any sort other than to make
the borderland a great deal more exciting than the farm,
and yet so far as I can discover, I had no keen desire to

186

We Move to Town

go West and fight Indians and I showed no disposition
to rob or murder in the manner of my heroes. I devoured
Jack Harkaway and The Quaker Sleuth precisely as
I played ball — to pass the time and because I enjoyed
the game.

Deacon Garland was highly indignant with my father
for permitting such reading, and argued against it furi
ously, but no one paid much attention to his protests —
especially after we caught the old gentleman sitting with
a very lurid example of " The Damnable Lies " open in his
hand. "I was only looking into it to see how bad it
was," he explained.

Father was so tickled at the old man's downfall that
he said, "Stick to it till you find how it turns out."

Grandsire, we all perceived, was human after all. I
think we liked him rather better after this sign of weak
ness.

It would not be fair to say that we read nothing else
but these easy-going tales. As a matter of fact, I read
everything within reach, even the copy of Paradise
Lost which my mother presented to me on my fifteenth
birthday. Milton I admit was hard work, but I got
considerable joy out of his cursing passages. The battle
scenes also interested me and I went about spouting the
extraordinary harangues of Satan with such vigor that
my team one day took fright of me, and ran away with
the plow, leaving an erratic furrow to be explained.
However, my father was glad to see me taking on the
voice of the orator.

The five years of life on this farm had brought swift
changes into my world. Nearly all the open land had
been fenced and plowed, and all the cattle and horses had
been brought into pasture, and around most of the build
ings, groves of maples were beginning to make the
homesteads a little less barren and ugly. And yet

A Son of the Middle Border

with all these growing signs of prosperity I realized that
something sweet and splendid was dying out of the prairie.
The whistling pigeons, the wailing plover, the migrating
ducks and geese, the soaring cranes, the shadowy wolves,
the wary foxes, all the untamed things were passing,
vanishing with the blue-joint grass, the dainty wild rose
and the tiger-lily's flaming torch. Settlement was
complete.

188

CHAPTER XVII
A Taste of Village Life

THE change from farm to village life, though delight
ful, was not so complete as we had anticipated, for
we not only carried with us several cows and a span of
horses, but the house which we had rented stood at the
edge of town and possessed a large plot; therefore we
not only continued to milk cows and curry horses, but
set to work at once planting potatoes and other vege
tables almost as if still upon the farm. The soil had been
poorly cultivated for several years, and the weeds sprang
up like dragons' teeth. Work, it seemed, was not to be
escaped even in the city.

Though a little resentful of this labor and somewhat
disappointed in our dwelling, we were vastly excited by
certain phases of our new surroundings. To be within
a few minutes' walk of the postoffice, and to be able to
go to the store at any moment, were conditions quite
as satisfactory as we had any right to expect. Also we
slept later, for my father was less disposed to get us out of
bed at dawn and this in itself was an enormous gain, es
pecially to my mother.

Osage, a small town, hardly more than a village,
was situated on the edge of a belt of hard-wood timber
through which the Cedar River ran, and was quite com
monplace to most people but to me it was both mysteri
ous and dangerous, for it was the home of an alien tribe,
hostile and pitiless— " The Town Boys."

Up to this time I had both hated and feared them,

189

A Son of the Middle Border

knowing that they hated and despised me, and now(
suddenly I was thrust among them and put on my own
defenses. For a few weeks I felt like a young rooster in a
strange barn-yard, — knowing that I would be called
upon to prove my quality. In fact it took but a week
or two to establish my place in the tribe for one of the
leaders of the gang was Mitchell Scott, a powerful lad
of about my own age, and to his friendship I owe a large
part of my freedom from persecution.

Uncle David came to see us several times during the
spring and his talk was all about "going west." He was
restless under the conditions of his life on a farm. I
don't know why this was so, but a growing bitterness
clouded his voice. Once I heard him say, "I don't
know what use I am in the world. I am a failure." This
was the first note of doubt, of discouragement that I
had heard from any member of my family and it
made a deep impression on me. Disillusionment had
begun.

During the early part of the summer my brother and I
worked in the garden with frequent days off for fishing,
swimming and berrying, and we were entirely content
with life. No doubts assailed us. We swam in the pond
at Rice's Mill and we cast our hooks in the sunny ripples
below it. We saw the circus come to town and go into
camp on a vacant lot, and we attended every movement
of it with a delicious sense of leisure. We could go at
night with no long ride to take after it was over. — The
fourth of July came to seek us this year and we had but
to step across the way to see a ball-game. We were at
last in the center of our world.

In June my father called me to help in the elevator
and this turned out to be a most informing experience.
"The Street," as it was called, was merely a wagon road
which ran along in front of a row of wheat ware-houses

190

A Taste of Village Life

of various shapes and sizes, from which the buyers
emerged to meet the farmers as they drove into town.
Two or three or more of the men would clamber upon the
load, open the sacks, sample the grain and bid for it.
If one man wanted the load badly, or if he chanced to be
in a bad temper, the farmer was the gainer. Hence very
few of them, even the members of the Grange, were
content to drive up to my father's elevator and take the
honest market price. They were all hoping to get a
little more than the market price.

This vexed and embittered my father who often spoke
of it to me. "It only shows," he said, "how hard it will
be to work out any reform among the farmers. They
will never stand together. These other buyers will
force me off the market and then there will be no one
here to represent the farmers' interest."

These merchants interested me greatly. Humorous,
self-contained, remorseless in trade, they were most de
lightful companions when off duty. They liked my
father in his private capacity, but as a factor of the
Grange he was an enemy. Their kind was new to me and
I loved to linger about and listen to their banter when
there was nothing else to do.

One of them by reason of his tailor-made suit and a
large ring on his little finger, was especially attractive
to me. He was a handsome man of a sinister type, and I
regarded his expressionless face as that of a gambler.
I didn't know that he was a poker player but it amused
me to think so. Another buyer was a choleric Cornish-
man whom the other men sometimes goaded into paying
five or six cents more than the market admitted, by
shrewdly playing on his hot temper. A third was a taK
gaunt old man of New England type, obstinate, honest,
but of sanguine temperament. He was always on the
bull side of the market and a loud debater.— The fourth^

191

A Son of the Middle Border

a quiet little man of smooth address, acted as peace
maker.

Among these men my father moved as an equal, not
withstanding the fact of his country training and preju
dices, and it was through the man Morley that we got our
first outlook upon the bleak world of Agnosticism, for
during the summer a series' of lectures by Robert Inger-
soll was reported in one of the Chicago papers and the
West rang with the controversy.

On Monday as soon as the paper came to town it was
the habit of the grain-buyers to gather at their little
central office, and while Morley, the man with the seal
ring, read the lecture aloud, the others listened and com
mented on the heresies. Not all were sympathizers
with the great iconoclast, and the arguments which fol
lowed were often heated and sometimes fiercely per
sonal.

After they had quite finished with the paper, I some
times secured it for myself, and hurrying back to my
office in the elevator pored over it with intense zeal.
Undoubtedly my father as well as I was profoundly in
fluenced by "The Mistakes of Moses." The faith in
which we had been reared had already grown dim,, and
under the light of IngersolPs remorseless humor most
of our superstitions vanished. I do not think my
father's essential Christianity was in any degree dimin
ished, he merely lost his respect for certain outworn
traditions and empty creeds.

My work consisted in receiving the grain and keeping
the elevator going and as I weighed the sacks, made out
checks for the payment and kept the books — in all ways
taking a man's place, — I lost all sense of being a boy.

The motive power of our hoisting machinery was a
blind horse, a handsome fellow weighing some fifteen
hundred pounds, and it was not long before he filled a

192

A Taste of Village Life

large space in my thoughts. There was something ap
pealing in his sightless eyes, and I never watched him (as
he patiently went his rounds in the dusty shed) without
pity. He had a habit of kicking the wall with his right
hind foot at a certain precise point as he circled, and a
deep hollow in the sill attested his accuracy. He seemed
to do this purposely — to keep count, as I imagined, of
his dreary circling through sunless days.

A part of my duty was to watch the fanning mill (in
the high cupola) in order that the sieves should not clog.
Three flights of stairs led to the mill and these had to be
mounted many times each day. I always ran up the
steps when the mill required my attention, but in coming
down I usually swung from beam to beam, dropping
from footway to footway like a monkey from a tall tree.
My mother in seeing me do this called out in terror,
but I assured her that there was not the slightest danger
— and this was true, for I was both sure-footed and sure-
handed in those days.

This was a golden summer for us all. My mother
found time to read. My father enjoyed companionship
with the leading citizens of the town, while Franklin, as
first assistant in a candy store, professed himself to be
entirely content. My own holidays were spent in fish
ing or in roving the woods with Mitchell and George,
but on Sundays the entire family dressed for church as
for a solemn social function, fully alive to the dignity
of Banker Brush, and the grandeur of Congressman
Deering who came to service regularly — but on foot, so
intense was the spirit of democracy among us.

Theoretically there were no social distinctions in
Osage, but after all a large house and a two seated car
riage counted, and my mother's visitors were never from
the few pretentious homes of the town but from the
farms. However, I do not think she worried over her

193

A Son of the Middle Border

social position and I know she welcomed callers from
Dry Run and Burr Oak with cordial hospitality. She
was never envious or bitter.

In spite of my busy life, I read more than ever before,
and everything I saw or heard made a deep and lasting
record on my mind. I recall with a sense of gratitude a
sermon by the preacher in the Methodist Church which
profoundly educated me. It was the first time I had
ever heard the power of art and the value of its mission
to man insisted upon. What was right and what was
wrong had been pointed out to me, but things of beauty
were seldom mentioned.

With most eloquent gestures, with a face glowing
with enthusiasm, the young orator enumerated the
beautiful phases of nature. He painted the starry sky,
the sunset clouds, and the purple hills in words of pris
matic hue and his rapturous eloquence held us rigid.
"We have been taught," he said in effect, " that beauty is
a snare of the evil one; that it is a lure to destroy, but I
assert that God desires loveliness and hates ugliness. He
loves the shimmering of dawn, the silver light on the
lake and the purple and snow of every summer cloud.
He honors bright colors, for has he not set the rainbow
in the heavens and made water to reflect the moon?
He prefers joy and pleasure to hate and despair. He
is not a God of pain, of darkness and ugliness, he is a
God of beauty, of delight, of consolation."

In some such strain he continued, and as his voice
rose in fervent chant and his words throbbed with
poetry, the sunlight falling through the window-pane
gave out a more intense radiance, and over the faces of
the girls, a more entrancing color fell. He opened my
eyes to a new world, the world of art.

I recognized in this man not only a moving orator but
a scholar and I went out from that little church vaguely

194

A Taste of Village Life

resolved to be a student also, a student of the beautiful.
My father was almost equally moved and we all went
again and again to hear our young evangel speak but
never again did he touch my heart. That one discourse
was his contribution to my education and I am grateful
to him for it. In after life I had the pleasure of telling
him how much he had suggested to me in that sermon.

There was much to allure a farmer boy in the decorum
of well-dressed men and the grace of daintily clad women
as well as in the music and the dim interior of the church
(which seemed to me of great dignity and charm) and I
usually went both morning and evening to watch the
regal daughters of the county aristocracy go up the aisle.
I even joined a Sunday school class because charming
Miss Culver was the teacher. Outwardly a stocky, un
graceful youth, I was inwardly a bold squire of romance,
needing only a steed and a shield to fight for my lady
love. No one could be more essentially romantic than
I was at this time — but fortunately no one knew it !

Mingling as I did with young people who had been
students at the Seminary, I naturally developed a new
ambition. I decided to enter for the autumn term, and
to that end gained from my father a leave of absence
during August and hired myself out to bind grain in the
harvest field. I demanded full wages and when one
blazing hot day I rode on a shining new Marsh harvester
into a field of wheat just south of the Fair Ground, I
felt myself a man, and entering upon a course which
put me nearer the clothing and the education I desired.

Binding on a harvester was desperately hard work
for a sixteen-year-old boy for it called for endurance of
heat and hunger as well as for unusual celerity and pre
cision of action. But as I considered myself full-grown
physically, I could not allow myself a word of complaint.
I kept my place beside my partner hour after hour, tak-

195

A Son of the Middle Border

ing care of my half of ten acres of grain each day. My
fingers, raw and bleeding with the briars and smarting
with the rust on the grain, were a torture but I persisted
to the end of harvest. In this way I earned enough
money to buy myself a Sunday suit, some new boots and
the necessary books for the seminary term which began in
September.

Up to this time I had never owned an overcoat nor a
suit that fitted me. My shirts had always been made
by my mother and had no real cuffs. I now purchased
two boxes of paper cuffs and a real necktie. My intense
satisfaction in these garments made mother smile with
pleasure and understanding humor.

In spite of my store suit and my high-heeled calf-skin
boots I felt very humble as I left our lowly roof that first
day and started for the chapel. To me the brick build
ing standing in the center of its ample yard was as im
posing as I imagine the Harper Memorial Library must
be to the youngster of today as he enters the University
of Chicago.

To enter the chapel meant running the gauntlet of a
hundred citified young men and women, fairly entitled
to laugh at a clod- jumper like myself, and I would have
balked completely had not David Pointer, a neighbor's
son, volunteered to lead the way. Gratefully I accepted
his offer, and so passed for the first time into the little
hall which came to mean so much to me in after years.

It was a large room swarming with merry young people
and the Corinthian columns painted on the walls, the
pipe organ, the stately professors on the platform, the
self-confident choir, were all of such majesty that I was re
duced to hare-like humility. What right had I to share
in this splendor? Sliding hurriedly into a seat I took
refuge in the obscurity which my youth and short stature
guaranteed to me.

IQ6

A Taste of Village Life

Soon Professor Bush, the principal of the school, gentle,
blue-eyed, white-haired, with a sweet and mellow voice,
rose to greet the old pupils and welcome the new ones, and
his manner so won my confidence that at the close of the
service I went to him and told him who I was. For
tunately he remembered my sister Harriet, and politely
said, "I am glad to see you, Hamlin," and from that
moment I considered him a friend, and an almost in
fallible guide.

The school was in truth a very primitive institution,
hardly more than a high school, but it served its purpose.
It gave farmers' boys like myself the opportunity of
meeting those who were older, finer, more learned than
they, and every day was to me like turning a fresh and
delightful page in a story book, not merely because it
brought new friends, new experiences, but because it
symbolized freedom from the hay fork and the hoe.
Learning was easy for me. In all but mathematics I
kept among the highest of my class without much effort,
but it was in the "Friday Exercises" that I earliest
distinguished myself.

It was the custom at the close of every week's work to
bring a section of the pupils upon the platform as essay
ists or orators, and these "exercises" formed the most
interesting and the most passionately dreaded feature
of the entire school. No pupil who took part in it ever
forgot his first appearance. It was at once a pillory and
a burning. It called for self-possession, memory, grace
of gesture and a voice!

My case is typical. For three or four days before my
first ordeal, I could not eat. A mysterious uneasiness
developed in my solar plexus, a pain which never left
me — except possibly in the morning before I had time to
think. Day by day I drilled and drilled and drilled, out
in the fields at the edge of the town or at home when

197

A Son of the Middle Border

mother was away, in the barn while milking — at every
opportunity I went through my selection with most
impassioned voice and lofty gestures, sustained by the
legends of Webster and Demosthenes, resolved upon
a blazing victory. I did everything but mumble a smooth
pebble — realizing that most of the boys in my section
were going through precisely the same struggle. Each
of us knew exactly how the others felt, and yet I cannot
say that we displayed acute sympathy one with another;
on the contrary, those in the free section considered the
antics of the suffering section a very amusing spectacle
and we were continually being "joshed " about our lack of
appetite.

The test was, in truth, rigorous. To ask a bashful
boy or shy girl fresh from the kitchen to walk out upon a
platform and face that crowd of mocking students was a
kind of torture. No desk was permitted. Each victim
stood bleakly exposed to the pitiless gaze of three hun
dred eyes, and as most of us were poorly dressed, in
coat? that never fitted and trousers that climbed our boot-
tops, we suffered the miseries of the damned. The girls
wore gowns which they themselves had made, and were,
of course, equally self-conscious. The knowledge that
their sleeves did not fit was of more concern to them
than the thought of breaking down — but the fear of for
getting their lines also contributed to their dread and
terror.

While the names which preceded mine were called off
that first afternoon, I grew colder and colder till at last
I shook with a nervous chill, and when, in his smooth,
pleasant tenor, Prof. Bush called out "Hamlin Garland"
I rose in my seat with a spring like Jack from his box.
My limbs were numb, so numb that I could scarcely
feel the floor beneath my feet and the windows were only
faint gray glares of light. My head oscillated like a toy

198

A Taste of Village Life

balloon, seemed indeed to be floating in the air, and my
heart was pounding like a drum.

However, I had pondered upon this scene so long and
had figured my course so exactly that I made all the turns
with moderate degree of grace and succeeded finally in
facing my audience without falling up the steps (as
several others had done) and so looked down upon my
fellows like Tennyson's eagle on the sea. In that in
stant a singular calm fell over me, I became strangely
master of myself. From somewhere above me a new and
amazing power fell upon me and in that instant I per
ceived on the faces of my classmates a certain expression
of surprise and serious respect. My subconscious oratori
cal self had taken charge.

I do not at present recall what my recitation was,
but it was probably Catiline's Defense or some other of
the turgid declamatory pieces of classic literature with
which all our readers were filled. It was bombastic
stuff, but my blind, boyish belief in it gave it dignity.
As I went on my voice cleared. The window sashes
regained their outlines. I saw every form before me, and
the look of surprise and pleasure on the smiling face
of my principal exalted me.

Closing amid hearty applause, I stepped down with a
feeling that I had won a place among the orators of the
school, a belief which did no harm to others and gave me
a good deal of satisfaction. As I had neither money nor
clothes, and was not of figure to win admiration, why
should I not express the pride I felt in my power to move
an audience? Besides I was only sixteen !

The principal spoke to me afterwards, both praising
and criticising my method. The praise I accepted, the
criticism I naturally resented. I realized some of my
faults of course, but I was not ready to have even Prof.
Bush tell me of them. I hated "elocution" drill in class,

199

A Son of the Middle Border

I relied on "inspiration." I believed that orators were
born, not made.

There was one other speaker in my section, a little
girl, considerably younger than myself, who had the mys
terious power of the born actress, and I recognized this
quality in her at once. I perceived that she spoke from
a deep-seated, emotional, Celtic impulse. Hardly more
than a child in years, she was easily the most dramatic
reader in the school. She too, loved tragic prose and pas
sionate, sorrowful verse and to hear her recite,

One of them dead in the East by the sea
And one of them dead in the West by the sea,

was to be shaken by inexplicable emotion. Her face
grew pale as silver as she went on and her eyes darkened
with the anguish of the poet mother.

Most of the students were the sons and daughters of
farmers round about the county, but a few were from the
village homes in western Iowa and southern Minnesota.
Two or three boys wore real tailor-made suits, and the
easy flow of their trouser legs and the set of their linen
collars rendered me at once envious and discontented.
" Some day," I said to myself, "I too, will have a suit that
will not gape at the neck and crawl at the ankle," but Idid
not rise to the height of expecting a ring and watch.

Shoes were just coming into fashion and one young
man wore pointed "box toes" which filled all the rest of
us with despair. John Cutler also wore collars of
linen — real linen — which had to be laundered, but few
of us dared fix our hopes as high as that. John also
owned three neckties, and wore broad cuffs with engraved
gold buttons, and on Fridays waved these splendors
before our eyes with a malicious satisfaction which
aroused our hatred. Of such complexion are the trage
dies and triumphs of youth!

200

A Taste of Village Life

How I envied Arthur Peters his calm and haughty
bearing! Most of us entered chapel like rabbits sneak
ing down a turnip patch, but Arthur and John and Walter
loitered in with the easy and assured manner of Senators
or Generals — so much depends upon leather and pru
nella. Gradually I lost my terror of this ordeal, but I
took care to keep behind some friendly bulk like young
Blakeslee, who stood six feet two in his gaiters.

With all these anxieties I loved the school and could
hardly be wrested from it even for a day. I bent to my
books with eagerness, I joined a debating society, and
I took a hand at all the games. The days went by on
golden, noiseless, ball-bearing axles — and almost before
I realized it, winter was upon the land. But oh! the
luxury of that winter, with no snow drifts to climb, no
corn-stalks to gather and no long walk to school. It was
sweet to wake each morning in the shelter of our little
house and know that another day of delightful schooling
was ours. Our hands softened and lightened. Our walk
became each day less of a "galumping plod." The com
panionship of bright and interesting young people, and
the study of well-dressed men and women in attendance
upon lectures and socials was a part of our instruction
and had their refining effect upon us, graceless colts though
we were.

Sometime during this winter Wendell Phillips came to
town and lectured on The Lost Arts. My father took us all
to see and hear this orator hero of his boyhood days in
Boston.

I confess to a disappointment in the event. A tall
old gentleman with handsome clean-cut features, rose
from behind the pulpit in the Congregational Church,
and read from a manuscript — read quietly, colloquially,
like a teacher addressing a group of students, with scarcely
a gesture and without raising his voice. Only once

201

A Son of the Middle Border

toward the end of the hour did he thrill us, and then only
for a moment.

Father was a little saddened. He shook his head
gravely. "He isn't the orator he was in the good old
anti-slavery days," he explained and passed again into
a glowing account of the famous "slave speech" in
Faneuil Hall when the pro-slavery men all but mobbed
the speaker.

Per contra, I liked, (and the boys all liked) a certain
peripatetic temperance lecturer named Beale, for he
was an orator, one of those who rise on an impassioned
chant, soaring above the snows of Chimborazo, mingling
the purple and gold of sunset with the saffron and silver
of the dawn. None of us could tell just what these gor
geous passages meant, but they were beautiful while they
lasted, and sadly corrupted our oratorical style. It took
some of us twenty years to recover from the fascination
of this man's absurd and high falutin' elocutionary sing^
song.

I forgot the farm, I forgot the valley of my birth, I
lived wholly and with joy in the present. Song, poetry,
history mingled with the sports which made our life so
unceasingly interesting. There was a certain girl, the
daughter of the shoe merchant, who (temporarily) dis
placed the image of Agnes in the niche of my shrine, and
to roll the platter for her at a "sociable" was a very
high honor indeed, and there was another, a glorious
contralto singer, much older than I — but there— I must,
not claim to have even attracted her eyes, and my meet
ings with Millie were so few and so public that I cannot
claim to have ever conversed with her. They were all
boyish adorations.

Much as I enjoyed this winter, greatly as it instructed
me, I cannot now recover from its luminious dark more
than here and there an incident, a poem, a song. It was

2G3

A Taste of Village Life

all delightful, that I know, so filled with joyous hours
that I retain but a mingled impression of satisfaction and
regret — satisfaction with life as I found it, regret at its
inevitable ending — for my father, irritated by the failure
of his renter, announced that he had decided to put us all
back upon the f arr . j

CHAPTER XVin
Back to the Farm

JUDGING from the entries in a small diary of this
date, I was neither an introspective youth nor one
given to precocious literary subtleties.

On March 27th, 1877, I made this entry; "To-day we
move back upon the farm."

This is all of it! No more, no less. Not a word to
indicate whether I regretted the decision or welcomed it,
and from subsequent equally bald notes, I derive the
information that my father retained his position as
grain buyer, and that he drove back and forth daily over
the five miles which lay between the farm and the eleva
tor. There is no mention of my mother, no hint as to
how she felt, although the return to the loneliness and
drudgery of the farm must have been as grievous to her
as to her sons.

Our muscles were soft and our heads filled with new
ambitions but there was no alternative. It was "back
to the field," or "out into the cold, cold world," so forth
we went upon the soil in the old familiar way, there to
plod to and fro endlessly behind the seeder and the har
row. It was harder than ever to follow a team for ten
hours over the soft ground, and early rising was more
difficult than it had ever been before, but I discovered
some compensations which helped me bear these dis
comforts. I saw more of the beauty of the landscape
and I now had an aspiration to occupy my mind.

204

Back to the Farm

My memories of the Seminary, the echoes of the songs
we had heard, gave the morning chorus of the prairie
chickens a richer meaning than before. The west wind,
laden with the delicious smell of uncovered earth, the
tender blue of the sky, the cheerful chirping of the
ground sparrows, the jocund whistling of the gophers,
the winding flight of the prairie pigeons — all these sights
and sounds of spring swept back upon me, bringing some
thing sweeter and more significant than before. I
had gained in perception and also in the power to assim
ilate what I perceived.

This year in town had other far-reaching effects. It
tended to warp us from our father's designs. It placed
the rigorous, filthy drudgery of the farm-yard in sharp
contrast with the care-free companionable existence
led by my friends in the village, and we longed to be of
their condition. We had gained our first set of compara
tive ideas, and with them an unrest which was to carry
us very far away.

True, neither Burton nor I had actually shared the
splendors of Congressman Deering's house but we^
had obtained revelatory glimpses of its well-kept lawnf
and through the open windows we had watched the
waving of its lace curtains. We had observed also how
well Avery Brush's frock coat fitted and we compre
hended something of the elegant leisure which the sons
and daughters of Wm. Petty's general store enjoyed.

Over against these comforts, these luxurious condi
tions, we now set our ugly little farmhouse, with its rag
carpets, its battered furniture, its barren attic, and its
hard, rude beds. — All that we possessed seemed very
cheap and deplorably commonplace.

My brother, who had passed a vivid and wonderful
year riding race horses, clerking in an ice cream parlor,
with frequent holidays of swimming and baseball, also

205

A Son of the Middle Border

went groaning and grumbling to the fields. He too
resented the curry-comb and the dung fork. We both
loathed the smell of manure and hated the greasy cloth
ing which our tasks made necessary. Secretly we vowed
that when we were twenty-one we would leave the farm,
never to return to it. However, as the ground dried off,
and the grass grew green in the door-yard some part of
this bitterness, this resentment, faded away, and we
made no further complaint.

My responsibilities were now those of a man. I was
nearly full grown, quick and powerful of hand, and vain
of my strength, which was, in fact, unusual and of de
cided advantage to me. Nothing ever really tired me
out. I could perform any of my duties with ease, and
none of the men under me ever presumed to question my
authority. As harvest came on I took my place on our
new Marsh harvester, and bound my half of over one
hundred acres of heavy grain.

The crop that year was enormous. At times, as I
looked out over the billowing acres of wheat which must
not only be reaped and bound and shocked and stacked
but also threshed, before there was the slightest chance
of my returning to the Seminary, my face grew long and
my heart heavy.

Burton shared this feeling, for he, too, had become
profoundly interested in the Seminary and was eager to
return, eager to renew the friendships he had gained. We
both wished to walk once more beneath the maple trees
in clean well-fitting garments, and above all we hungered
to escape the curry-comb and the cow.

Both of us retained our membership in the Adelphian
Debating Society, and occasionally drove to town after
the day's work to take part in the Monday meetings.
Having decided, definitely, to be an orator, I now went
about with a copy of Shakespeare in my pocket and

206

Back to the Farm

ranted the immortal soliloquies of Hamlet and Richard as
I held the plow, feeling certain that I was following in
the footprints of Lincoln and Demosthenes.

Sundays brought a special sweet relief that summer,
a note of finer poetry into all our lives, for often after a
bath behind the barn we put on clean shirts and drove
away to Osage to meet George and Mitchell, or went to
church to see some of the girls we had admired at the
Seminary. On other Sabbaths we returned to our places
at the Burr Oak school-house, enjoying as we used to do,
a few hours' forgetfulness of the farm.

My father, I am glad to say, never insisted upon any
religious observance on the part of his sons, and never
interfered with any reasonable pleasure even on Sunday.
If he made objection to our trips it was usually on behalf
of the cattle. "Go where you please/' he often said,
"only get back in time to do the milking." Sometimes
he would ask, " Don't you think the horses ought to have
a rest as well as yourselves? " He was a stern man but a
just man, and I am especially grateful to him for his non
interference with my religious affairs.

All that summer and all the fall I worked like a hired
man, assuming in addition the responsibilities of being
boss. I bound grain until my arms were raw with briars
and in stacking-time I wallowed round and round upon
my knees, building great ricks of grain, taking obvious
pride in the skill which this task required until my
trousers, re-inforced at the knees, bagged ungracefully
and my hands, swollen with the act of grappling the
heavy bundles as they were thrown to me, grew horny
and brown and clumsy, so that I quite despaired of ever
being able to write another letter. I was very glad not
to have my Seminary friends see me in this unlovely
condition.

However, I took a well-defined pride in stacking, for

207

A Son of the Middle Border

it was a test of skill. It was clean work. Even now, as
I ride a country lane, and see men at work handling oats
or hay, I recall the pleasurable sides of work on the farm
and long to return to it.

The radiant sky of August and September on the
prairie was a never failing source of delight to me. Na
ture seemed resting, opulent, self-satisfied and honorable.
Every phase of the landscape indicated a task fulfilled.
There were still and pulseless days when slaty-blue
clouds piled up in the west and came drifting eastward
with thunderous accompaniment, to break the oppres
sive heat and leave the earth cool and fresh from having
passed. There were misty, windy days when the sound
ing, southern breeze swept the yellow stubble like a
scythe; when the sky, without a cloud, was whitened by
an overspreading haze; when the crickets sang sleepily
as if in dream of eternal summer; and the grasshoppers
clicked and buzzed from stalk to stalk in pure delight of
sunshine and the harvest.

Another humbler source of pleasure in stacking was
the watermelon which, having been picked in the early
morning and hidden under the edge of the stack, re
mained deiiciously cool till mid-forenoon, when at a
signal, the men all gathered in the shadow of the rick,
and leisurely ate their fill of juicy " mountain sweets."
Then there was the five o'clock supper, with its milk
and doughnuts and pie which sent us back to our
task — replete, content, ready for another hour of
toil.

Of course, there were unpleasant days later in the
month, noons when the skies were filled with ragged,
swiftly moving clouds, and the winds blew the sheaves
inside out and slashed against my face the flying grain
as well as the leaping crickets. Such days gave prophecy
of the passing of summer and the coming of fall. But

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there was a mitigating charm even in these conditions,
for they were all welcome promises of an early return to
school.

Crickets during stacking time were innumerable and
voracious as rust or fire. They ate our coats or hats if
we left them beside the stack. They gnawed the fork
handles and devoured any straps that were left lying
about, but their multitudinous song was a beautiful
inwrought part of the symphony.

That year the threshing was done in the fields with a
traction engine. My uncle David came no more to help
us harvest. He had almost passed out of our life, and
I have no recollection of him till several years later.
Much of the charm, the poetry of the old-time threshing
vanished with the passing of horse power and the coming
of the nomadic hired hand. There was less and less of
the "changing works" which used to bring the young
men of the farms together. The grain was no longer
stacked round the stable. Most of it we threshed in the
field and the straw after being spread out upon the
stubble was burned. Some farmers threshed directly
from the shock, and the new "Vibrator" took the place
of the old Buffalo Pitts Separator with its ringing bell-
metal pinions. Wheeled plows were common and self-
binding harvesters were coming in.

Although my laconic little diary does not show it,
I was fiercely resolved upon returning to the Seminary.
My father was not very sympathetic. In his eyes I al
ready had a very good equipment for the battle of life,
but mother, with a woman's ready understanding, di
vined that I had not merely set my heart on graduating
at the Seminary, but that I was secretly dreaming of
another and far more romantic career than that of being
a farmer. Although a woman of slender schooling
herself, she responded helpfully to every effort which

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A Son of the Middle Border

her sons made to raise themselves above the common*
place level of neighborhood life.

All through the early fall whenever Burton and I met
the other boys of a Sunday our talk was sure to fall upon
the Seminary, and Burton stoutly declared that he,
too, was going to begin in September. As a matter of
fact the autumn term opened while we were still hard at
work around a threshing machine with no definite hope
of release till the plowing and corn-husking were over.
Our fathers did not seem to realize that the men of the
future (even the farmers of the future) must have a
considerable amount of learning and experience, and
so October went by and November was well started
before parole was granted and we were free to return
to our books.

With what sense of liberty, of exultation, we took our
way down the road on that gorgeous autumn morning !
No more dust, no more grime, no more mud, no more
cow milking, no more horse currying! For five months
we were to live the lives of scholars, of boarders. — Yes,
through some mysterious channel our parents had been
brought to the point of engaging lodgings for us in the
home of a townsman named Leete. For two dollars a
week it was arranged that we could eat and sleep from
Monday night to Friday noon, but we were not expected
to remain for supper on Friday; and Sunday supper, was
of course, extra. I thought this a great deal of money
then, but I cannot understand at this distance how our
landlady was able to provide, for that sum, the raw
material of her kitchen, to say nothing of bed linen and
soap.

The house, which stood on the edge of the town, was
small and without upstairs heat, but it seemed luxurious
to me, and the family straightway absorbed my interest.
Leete, the nominal head of the establishment, was a

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short, gray, lame and rather inefficient man of change
able temper who teamed about the streets with a span
of roans almost as dour and crippled as himself. His
wife, who did nearly all the housework for five boarders
as well as for the members of her own family, was a soul
of heroic pride and most indomitable energy. She was
a tall, dark, thin woman who had once been handsome.
Poor creature — how incessantly she toiled, and how
much she endured!

She had three graceful and alluring daughters, — Ella,
nineteen, Cora, sixteen, and Martha, a quiet little mouse
of about ten years of age. Ella was a girl of unusual
attainment, a teacher, self-contained and womanly, with
whom we all, promptly, fell in love. Cora, a moody,
dark-eyed, passionate girl who sometimes glowed with
friendly smiles and sometimes glowered in anger, was
less adored. Neither of them considered Burton or
myself worthy of serious notice. On the contrary, we
were necessary nuisances.

To me Ella was a queen, a kindly queen, ever ready
to help me out with my algebra. Everything she did
seemed to me instinct with womanly grace. No doubt
she read the worship in my eyes, but her attitude was
that of an older sister. Cora, being nearer my own age,
awed me not at all. On the contrary, we were more
inclined to battle than to coo. Her coolness toward
me, I soon discovered, was sustained by her growing
interest in a young man from Cerro Gordo County.

We were a happy, noisy gang, and undoubtedly gave
poor Mrs. Leete a great deal of trouble. There was
Boggs (who had lost part of one ear in some fracas with
Jack Frost) who paced up and down his room declining
Latin verbs with painful pertinacity, and Burton who
loved a jest but never made one, and Joe Pritchard, who
was interested mainly in politics and oratory, and

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A Son of the Middle Border

finally that criminally well-dressed young book agent
(with whom we had very little in common) and myself.
In cold weather we all herded in the dining room to
keep from freezing, and our weekly scrub took place
after we got home to our own warm kitchens and the
family wash-tubs.

Life was a pure joy to Burton as to me. Each day
was a poem, each night a dreamless sleep! Each morn
ing at half past eight we went to the Seminary and at
four o'clock left it with regret. I should like to say that
we studied hard every night, burning a great deal of kero
sene oil, but I cannot do so. — We had a good time. The
learning, (so far as I can recall) was incidental.

It happened that my closest friends, aside from Bur
ton, were pupils of the public school and for that reasotf
I kept my membership in the Adelphian Society which
met every Monday evening. My activities there, I find,
made up a large part of my life during this second winter.
I not only debated furiously, disputing weighty political
questions, thus advancing the forensic side of my edu-
cation, but later in the winter I helped to organize a
dramatic company which gave a play for the benefit of
the Club Library.

Just why I should have been chosen "stage director"
of our "troupe," I cannot say, but something in my
ability to declaim Regulus probably led to this high re
sponsibility. At any rate, I not only played the leading
juvenile, I settled points of action and costume without
the slightest hesitation. Cora was my ingenue opposite,
it fell out, and so we played at love-making, while
meeting coldly at the family dining table.

Our engagement in the town hall extended through
two March evenings and was largely patronized. It
would seem that I was a dominant figure on both oc
casions, for I declaimed a "piece " on the opening night,

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one of those resounding orations (addressed to the Cartha
ginians), which we all loved, and which permitted of
thunderous, rolling periods and passionate gestures.
If my recollection is not distorted, I was masterful that
night — at least, Joe Pritchard agreed that I was "the
best part of the show." Joe was my friend, and I hold
him in especial affection for his hearty praise of my
effort.

On this same night I also appeared in a little sketch
representing the death of a veteran of the Revolutionary
War, in which the dying man beholds in a vision his
beloved Leader. Walter Blakeslee was the "Washing
ton" and I, with heavily powdered hair, was the veteran.
On the second night I played the juvenile lover in a
drama called His Brother's Keeper. Cora as "Shel-
lie," my sweetheart, was very lovely in pink mosquito
netting, and for the first time I regretted her interest in
the book agent from Cerro Gordo. Strange to say I
had no fear at all as I looked out over the audience which
packed the town hall to the ceiling. Father and mother
were there with Frank and Jessie, all quite dazed (as I
imagined) by my transcendent position behind the foot
lights.

It may have been this very night that Willard Eaton,
the county attorney, spoke to my father saying, "Rich
ard, whenever that boy of yours finishes school and
wants to begin to study law, you send him right to me,"
which was, of course, a very great compliment, for the
county attorney belonged to the best known and most
influential firm of lawyers in the town. At the moment
his offer would have seemed very dull and common
place to me. I would have refused it.

Our success that night was so great that it appeared a
pity not to permit other towns to witness our perform
ance, hence we boldly organized a "tour." We booked a

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A Son of the Middle Border

circuit which included St. Ansgar and Mitchell, two
villages, one four, the other ten miles to the north. Au
dacious as this may seem, it was deliberately decided
upon, and one pleasant day Mitchell and George and I
loaded all our scenery into a wagon and drove away
across the prairie to our first " stand" very much as
Moliere did in his youth, leaving the ladies to follow
(in the grandeur of hired buggies) later in the day.

That night we played with " artistic success" — that
is to say, we lost some eighteen dollars, which so de
pressed the management that it abandoned the tour,
and the entire organization returned to Osage in dimin
ished glory. This cut short my career as an acton I
never again took part in a theatrical performance.

Not long after this disaster, "Shellie," as I now called
Cora, entered upon some mysterious and romantic
drama of her own. The travelling man vanished, and
soon after she too disappeared. Where she went, what
she did, no one seemed to know, and none of us quite
dared to ask. I never saw her again but last year, after
nearly forty years of wandering, I was told that she is
married and living in luxurious ease near London.
Through what deep valleys she has travelled to reach
this height, with what loss or gain, I cannot say, but I
shall always remember her as she was that night
in St. Ansgar, in her pink-mosquito-bar dress, her eyes
shining with excitement, her voice vibrant with girh'sh
gladness.

Our second winter at the Seminary passed all too
quickly, and when the prairie chickens began to boom
from the ridges our hearts sank within us. For the first
time the grouse's cheery dance was unwelcome for it
meant the closing of our books, the loss of our pleasant
companions, the surrender of our leisure, and a return to
the mud of the fields.

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It was especially hard to say good-bye to Ella and
Maud, for though they were in no sense sweethearts
they were very pleasant companions. There were other?
whom it was a pleasure to meet in the halls and to emu
late in the class-rooms, and when early in April, we went
home to enter upon the familiar round of seeding, corn-
planting, corn plowing, harvesting, stacking and thresh
ing, we had only the promise of an occasional trip to
town to cheer us.

It would seem that our interest in the girls of Burr
Oak had diminished, for we were less regular in our at
tendance upon services in the little school-house, and
whenever we could gain consent to use a horse, we hitched
up and drove away to town. These trips have golden,
unforgettable charm, and indicate the glamor which ap
proaching manhood was flinging over my world.

My father's world was less jocund, was indeed filled
with increasing anxiety, for just before harvest time a new
and formidable enemy of the wheat appeared in the shape
of a minute, ill-smelling insect called the chinch bug.
It already bore an evil reputation with us for it waa
reported to have eaten out the crops of southern Wiscon
sin and northern Illinois, and, indeed, before barley
cutting was well under way the county was overrun
with laborers from the south who were anxious to get
work in order to recoup them for the loss of their own
harvest. These fugitives brought incredible tales of
the ravages of the enemy and prophesied our destruction
but, as a matter of fact, only certain dry ridges proclaimed
the presence of the insect during this year.

The crop was rather poor for other reasons, and Mr.
Babcock, like my father, objected to paying board bills.
His attitude was so unpromising that Burton and I cast
about to see how we could lessen the expense of upkeep
during our winter term of school.

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A Son of the Middle Border

Together we decided to hire a room and board our
selves (as many of the other fellows did) and so cut
our expenses to a mere trifle. It was difficult, even
in those days, to live cheaper than two dollars per
week, but we convinced our people that we could do it,
and so at last wrung from our mothers a reluctant con
sent to our trying it. We got away in October, only
two weeks behind our fellows.

I well remember the lovely afternoon on which we
unloaded our scanty furniture into the two little rooms
which we had hired for the term. It was still glorious
autumn weather, and we were young and released from
slavery. We had a table, three chairs, a little strip of
carpet, and a melodeon, which belonged to Burton's
sister, and when we had spread our carpet and put up our
curtains we took seats, and cocking our feet upon the
window sill surveyed our surroundings with such satis
faction as only autocrats of the earth may compass.
We were absolute masters of our time — that was our
chiefest joy. We could rise when we pleased and go to
bed when we pleased. There were no stables to clean,
no pigs to feed, nothing marred our days. We could
study or sing or dance at will. We could even wrestle
at times with none to molest or make us afraid.

My photograph shows the new suit which I had bought
on my own responsibility this time, but no camera could
possibly catch the glow of inward satisfaction which
warmed my heart. It was a brown cassimere, coat,
trousers and vest all alike, — and the trousers fitted
me! Furthermore as I bought it without my father's
help, my selection was made for esthetic reasons without
regard to durability or warmth. It was mine — in the
fullest sense — and when I next entered chapel I felt not
merely draped, but defended. I walked to my seat
foith confident security, a well-dressed person. I had a

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'"boughten" shirt also, two boxes of paper cuffs, and
i two new ties, a black one for every day and a white
i one for Sunday.

I don't know that any of the girls perceived my new
suit, but I hoped one or two of them did. The boys
were quite outspoken in their approval of it.

I had given up boots, also, for most of the townsmen
wore shoes, thus marking the decline of the military
spirit. I never again owned a pair of those man-killing
top-boots — which were not only hard to get on and off
but pinched my toes, and interrupted the flow of my
trouser-legs. Thus one great era fades into another.
The Jack-boot period was over, the shoe, commonplace
and comfortable, had won.

Our housekeeping was very simple. Each of us brought
from home on Monday morning a huge bag of dough
nuts together with several loaves of bread, and (with
a milkman near at hand) our cooking remained rudi
mentary. We did occasionally fry a steak and boil
some potatoes, and I have a dim memory of several
disastrous attempts to make flapjacks out of flour and
sweet milk. However we never suffered from hunger
as some of the other fellows actually did.

Pretty Ethel Beebe comes into the record of this
winter, like a quaint illustration to an old-fashioned
story, for she lived near us and went to school along
the same sidewalk. Burton was always saying, "Some
day I am going to brace up and ask Ethel to let me
carry her books, and I'm going to walk beside her right
down Main Street." But he never did. Ultimately
I attained to that incredible boldness, but Burton only
followed along behind.

Ethel was a slender, smiling, brown-eyed girl with a
keen appreciation of the ridiculous, and I have no doubt
she catalogued all our peculiarities, for she always seemed

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A Son of the Middle Border

to be laughing at us, and I think it must have been her
smiles that prevented any romantic attachment. We
walked and talked without any deeper interest than
good comradeship.

Mrs. Babcock was famous for her pies and cakes, and
Burton always brought some delicious samples of her
skill. As regularly as the clock, on every Tuesday even
ing he said, in precisely the same tone, "Well, now, we'll
have to eat these pies right away or they'll spoil," and
as I made no objection, we had pie for luncheon, pie and
cake for supper, and cake and pie for breakfast until all
these "goodies" which were intended to serve as dessert
through the week were consumed. By Thursday morn
ing we were usually down to dry bread and butter.

We simplified our housework in other ways in order
that we might have time to study and Burton wasted a
good deal of time at the fiddle, sawing away till I was
obliged to fall upon him and roll him on the floor to
silence him.

I still have our ledger which gives an itemized account
of the cost of this experiment in self board, and its foot
ings are incredibly small. Less than fifty cents a day
for both of us! Of course our mothers, sisters and aunts
were continually joking us about our housekeeping, and
once or twice Mrs. Babcock called upon us unexpectedly
and found the room "a sight." But we did not mind her
very much. We only feared the bright eyes of Ethel
and Maude and Carrie. Fortunately they could not
properly call upon us, even if they had wished to do so,
and we were safe. It is probable, moreover, that they
fully understood our methods, for they often slyly hinted
at hasty dish-washing and primitive cookery. All of
this only amused us, so long as they did not actually
discover the dirt and disorder of which our mothers
complained.

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Our school library at that time was pitifully small and
ludicrously prescriptive, but its shelves held a few of the
fine old classics, Scott, Dickens and Thackeray — the kind
of books which can always be had in sets at very low
prices — and in nosing about among these I fell, one day,
upon two small red volumes called Mosses from an Old
Manse. Of course I had read of the author, for these
books were listed in my History of American Literature^
but I had never, up to this moment, dared to open one
of them. I was a discoverer.

I turned a page or two, and instantly my mental hori
zon widened. When I had finished the Artist of the
Beautiful, the great Puritan romancer had laid his spell
upon me everlastingly. Even as I walked homeward
to my lunch, I read. I ate with the book beside my plate.
I neglected my classes that afternoon, and as soon as I
had absorbed this volume I secured the other and devoted
myself to it with almost equal intensity. The stately
diction, the rich and glowing imagery, the mystical
radiance, and the aloofness of the author's personality
all united to create in me a worshipful admiration which
made all other interests pale and faint. It was my first
profound literary passion and I was dazzled by the glory
of it.

It would be a pleasant task to say that this book
determined my career — it would form a delightful litera ry
assumption, but I cannot claim it. As a realist I must
remain faithful to fact. I did not then and there vow
to be a romantic novelist like Hawthorne. On the con
trary, I realized that this great poet (to me he was a
poet) like Edgar Allan Poe, was a soul that dwelt apart
from ordinary mortals.

To me he was a magician, a weaver of magic spells, a
dreamer whose visions comprehended the half-lights,
the borderlands, of the human soul. I loved the roll of

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A Son of the Middle Border

his words in The March of Time and the quaint phrasing
of the Rill from the Town Pump; Rappacini's Daughter
whose breath poisoned the insects in the air, uplifted me.
Drowne and His Wooden Image, the "Great Stone Face —
each story had its special appeal. For days I walked
amid enchanted mist, my partner — (even the maidens
I most admired), became less appealing, less necessary
to me. Eager to know more of this necromancer I
searched the town for others of his books, but found
only American Notes and the Scarlet Letter.

Gradually I returned to something like my normal
interests in baseball and my classmates, but never again
did I fall to the low level of Jack Harkaway. I now
possessed a literary touchstone with which I tested the
quality of other books and other minds, and my intel
lectual arrogance, I fear, sometimes made me an unpleas
ant companion. The fact that Ethel did not "like"
Hawthorne, sank her to a lower level in my estimation.

220

CHAPTER XIX
End of School Days

THOUGH my years at the Seminary were the hap
piest of my life they are among the most difficult for
me to recover and present to my readers. During half
the year I worked on the farm fiercely, unsparing of
myself, in order that I might have an uninterrupted
season of study in the village. Each term was very like
another so far as its broad program went but innumer
able, minute but very important progressions carried me
toward manhood, events which can hardly be stated to
an outsider.

Burton remained my room-mate and in all our vicissi
tudes we had no vital disagreements but his unconquer
able shyness kept him from making a good impression on
his teachers and this annoyed me — it made him seem
stupid when he was not. Once, as chairman of a commit
tee it became his duty to introduce a certain lecturer who
was to speak on "Elihu Burritt," and by some curious
twist in my chum's mind this name became "Lu-hi
Burritt" and he so stated it in his introductory re
marks. This amused the lecturer and raised a titter in
the audience. Burton bled in silence over this mishap
for he was at heart deeply ambitious to be a public
speaker. He never alluded to that speech even to me
without writhing in retrospective shame.

Another incident will illustrate his painfully shy
character. One of our summer vacations was made,
notable by the visit of an exceedingly pretty girl to tho

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A Son of the Middle Border

home of one of Burton's aunts who lived on the road to
the Grove, and my chum's excitement over the presence
of this alien bird of paradise was very amusing to me aa
well as to his brother Charles who was inclined, as an older
brother, to "take it out" of Burt.

I listened to my chum's account of his cousin's beauty
with something more than fraternal interest. She came,
it appeared, from Dubuque and had the true cosmopol
itan's air of tolerance. Our small community amused
her. Her hats and gowns (for it soon developed that she
had at least two), were the envy of all the girls, and the
admiration of the boys. No disengaged or slightly
obligated beau of the district neglected to hitch his-
horse at Mrs. Knapp's gate.

Burton's opportunity seemed better than that of any
other youth, for he could visit his aunt as often as he
wished without arousing comment, whereas for me, a
call would have been equivalent to an offer of marriage.
My only chance of seeing the radiant stranger was at
church. Needless to say we all made it a point to attend
every service during her stay.

One Sunday afternoon as I was riding over to the
Grove, I met Burton plodding homeward along the
grassy lane, walking with hanging head and sagging
shoulders. He looked like a man in deep and discouraged
thought, and when he glanced up at me, with a familiar
defensive smile twisting his long lips, I knew some
thing had gone wrong.

"Hello/' I said. "Where have you been?"

"Over to Aunt Sallie's," he said.

His long, linen duster was sagging at the sides, and
peering down at his pockets I perceived a couple of
•quarts of lovely Siberian crab-apples. "Where did you
get all that fruit?" I demanded.

"At home."

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End of School Days

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Take it back again."

"What do you mean by such a performance?"

With the swift flush and silent laugh which always
marked his confessions of weakness, or failure, he replied,
"I went over to see Nettie. I intended to give her these
apples," he indicated the fruit by a touch on each pocket,
"but when I got there I found old Bill Watson, dressed
to kill and large as life, sitting in the parlor. I was so
afraid of his finding out what I had in my pockets that
I didn't go in. I came away leaving him in possession."

Of course I laughed — but there was an element of
pathos in it after all. Poor Burt! He always failed to
get his share of the good things in this world.

We continued to board ourselves, — now heve, now
there, and always to the effect of being starved out by
Friday night, but we kept well and active even on
doughnuts and pie, and were grateful of any camping
place in town.

Once Burton left a soup-bone to simmer on the stove
while we went away to morning recitations, and when
we reached home, smoke was leaking from every key
hole. The room was solid with the remains of our
bone. It took six months to get the horrid smell of
charred beef out of our wardrobe. The girls all sniffed
and wondered as we came near.

On Fridays we went home and during the winter
months very generally attended the Lyceum which met
in the Burr Oak school-house. We often debated, and
on one occasion I attained to the honor of being called
upon to preside over the session. Another memorable
evening is that in which I read with what seemed to
me distinguished success Joaquin Miller's magnificent
new poem, Kit Carson's Ride and in the splendid roar

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A Son of the Middle Border

and trample of its lines discovered a new and powerful
American poet. His spirit appealed to me. He was at
once American and western. I read every line of his
verse which the newspapers or magazines brought to me,
and was profoundly influenced by its epic quality.

And so, term by term, in growing joy and strength, in
expanding knowledge of life, we hurried toward the end
of our four years' course at this modest little school, find
ing in it all the essential elements of an education, for we
caught at every chance quotation from the scientists,
every fleeting literary allusion in the magazines, attain
ing, at last, a dim knowledge of what was going on in the
great outside world of letters and discovery. Of course
there were elections and tariff reforms and other com
paratively unimportant matters taking place in the
state but they made only the most transient impression
on our minds.

During the last winter of our stay at the Seminary, my
associate in housekeeping was one Adelbert Jones, the
son of a well-to-do farmer who lived directly east of
town. "Del," as we called him, always alluded to himself
as "Ferguson." He was tall, with a very large blond
face inclined to freckle and his first care of a morning
was to scrutinize himself most anxiously to see whether
the troublesome brown flecks were increasing or dimin
ishing in number. Often upon reaching the open air
he would sniff the east wind and say lugubriously, "This
is the kind of day that brings out the freckles on your
Uncle Ferg."

He was one of the best dressed men in the school, and
especially finicky about his collars and ties, — was, indeed,
one of the earliest to purchase linen. He also parted
his yellow hair in the middle (which was a very noticeable
thing in those days) and was always talking of taking a
girl to a social or to prayer meeting. But, like Burton, he

22J.

End of School Days

never did. So far as I knew he never "went double,"
and most of the girls looked upon him as more or less of a
rustic, notwithstanding his fine figure and careful dress.

As for me I did once hire a horse and carriage of a
friend and took Alice for a drive! More than thirty-
five years have passed since that adventure and yet I
can see every turn in that road! I can hear the crackle
of my starched shirt and the creak of my suspender
buckles as I write.

Alice, being quite as bashful as myself, kept our
conversation to the high plane of Hawthorne and Poe
and Schiller with an occasional tired droop to the weather,
hence I infer that she was as much relieved as I when we
reached her boarding house some two hours later. It
was my first and only attempt at this, the most common
of all ways of entertaining one's best girl.

The youth who furnished the carriage betrayed me,
and the outcry of my friends so intimidated me that I
dared not look Alice in the face. My only comfort was
that no one but ourselves could possibly know what an
erratic conversationalist I had been. However, she did
not seem to lay it up against me. I think she was as
much astonished as I and I am persuaded that she valued
the compliment of my extravagant gallantry.

It is only fair to say that I had risen by this time to
the dignity of "boughten shirts," linen collars and
"Congress gaiters," and my suit purchased for graduat
ing purposes was of black diagonal with a long tail, a
garment which fitted me reasonably well. It was hot,
of course, and nearly parboiled me of a summer evening,
but I bore my suffering like the hero that I was, in order
that I might make a presentable figure in the eyes of
my classmates. I longed for a white vest but did not
attain to that splendor.

Life remained very simple and very democratic in

225

A Son of the Middle Border

our little town. Although the county seat, it was slow
in taking on city ways. I don't believe a real bath-tub
distinguished the place (I never heard of one) but its
side-walks kept our feet out of the mud (even in March
or April), and this was a marvellous fact to us. One or
two fine lawns and flower gardens had come in, and
year by year the maples had grown until they now
made a pleasant shade in June, and in October glorified
the plank walks. To us it was beautiful.

As county town, Osage published two papers and was,
in addition, the home of two Judges, a state Senator
and a Congressman. A new opera house was built in
'79 and an occasional "actor troupe" presented military
plays like Our Boys or farces like Solon Shingle. The
brass band and the baseball team were the best in the
district, and were loyally upheld by us all.

With all these attractions do you wonder that when
ever Ed and Bill and Joe had a day of leisure they got
out their buggies, washed them till they glistened like
new, and called for their best girls on the way to town?

Circuses, Fourth of Julys, County Fairs, all took
place in Osage, and to own a "covered rig" and to take
your sweetheart to the show were the highest forms of
affluence and joy — unless you were actually able to live
in town, as Burton and I now did for five days in each
week, in which case you saw everything that was free
and denied yourself everything but the circus. No
body went so far in economy as that.

As a conscientious historian I have gone carefully
into the records of this last year, in the hope of finding
something that would indicate a feeling on the part of
the citizens that Dick Garland's boy was in some ways
a remarkable youth, but (I regret to say) I cannot lay
kands on a single item. It appears that I was just one
of a hundred healthy, hearty, noisy students — but no;

226

End of School Days

wait! There is one incident which has slight significance.
One day during my final term of school, as I stood in the
postoffice waiting for the mail to be distributed, I picked
up from the counter a book called The Undiscovered
Country.

"What is this about?" I asked.

The clerk looked up at me with an expression of dis
gust. "I bought it for a book of travel," said he, "but
it is only a novel. Want it? I'll sell it cheap."

Having no money to waste in that way, I declined,
but as I had the volume in my hands, with a few minutes
to spare, I began to read. It did not take me long to
discover in this author a grace and precision of style
which aroused both my admiration and my resentment.
My resentment was vague, I could not have given a
reason for it, but as a matter of fact, the English of this
new author made some of my literary heroes seem
either crude or stilted. I was just young enough and
conservative enough to be irritated and repelled by the
modernity of William Dean Howells.

I put the book down and turned away, apparently
uninfluenced by it. Indeed, I remained, if anything,
more loyal to the grand manner of Hawthorne, but my
love of realism was growing. I recall a rebuke trom my
teacher in rhetoric, condemning, in my essay on Mark
Twain, an over praise of Roughing It. It is evident,
therefore that I was even then a lover of the modern
when taken off my guard.

Meanwhile I had definitely decided not to be a lawyer,
and it happened in this way. One Sunday morning as
I was walking toward school, I met a young man named
Lohr, a law student several years older than myself,
who turned and walked with me for a few blocks.

"Well, Garland," said he, "what are you going to
do after you graduate this June?"

227

A Son of the Middle Border

"I don't know," I frankly replied. "I have a chance
to go into a law office."

"Don't do it," protested he with sudden and inex
plicable bitterness. "Whatever you do, don't become
a lawyer's hack."

His tone and the words, "lawyer's hack" had a power
ful effect upon my mind. The warning entered my ears
and stayed there. I decided against the law, as I had
already decided against the farm.

Yes, these were the sweetest days of my life for I was
carefree and glowing with the happiness which streams
from perfect health and unquestioning faith. If any
shadow drifted across this sunny year it fell from a
haunting sense of the impermanency of my leisure.
Neither Burton nor I had an ache or a pain. We had
no fear and cherished no sorrow, and we were both com
paratively free from the lover's almost intolerable long
ing. Our loves were hardly more than admirations.

As I project myself back into those days I re-experience
the keen joy I took in the downpour of vivid sunlight,
in the colorful clouds of evening, and in the song of the
west wind harping amid the maple leaves. The earth
was new, the moonlight magical, the dawns miraculous.
I shiver with the boy's solemn awe in the presence of
beauty. The little recitation rooms, dusty with floating
chalk, are wide halls of romance and the voices of my
girl classmates (even though their words are algebraic
formulas), ring sweet as bells across the years.

During the years '79 and '80, while Burton and I
had been living our carefree jocund life at the Sem
inary, a series of crop failures had profoundly affected the
county, producing a feeling of unrest and bitterness in
the farmers which was to have a far-reaching effect on

228

End of School Days

my fortunes as well as upon those of my fellows. Fo*
two years the crop had been almost wholly destroyed
by chinch bugs.

The harvest of '80 had been a season of disgust and
disappointment to us for not only had the pestiferous
mites devoured the grain, they had filled our stables,
granaries, and even our kitchens with their ill-smelling
crawling bodies — and now they were coming again in
added billions. By the middle of June they swarmed
at the roots of the wheat — innumerable as the sands of
the sea. They sapped the growing stalks till the leaves
turned yellow. It was as if the field had been scorched,
even the edges of the corn showed signs of blight. It was
evident that the crop was lost unless some great change
took place in the weather, and many men began to offer
their land for sale.

Naturally the business of grain-buying had suffered
with the decline of grain-growing, and my father, pro
foundly discouraged by the outlook, sold his share in the
elevator and turned his face toward the free lands of the
farther west. He became again the pioneer.

DAKOTA was the magic word. The "Jim River
Valley" was now the "land of delight," where "herds of
deer and buffalo" still "furnished the cheer." Once
more the spirit of the explorer flamed up in the soldier's
heart. Once more the sunset allured. Once more my
mother sang the marching song of the McClintocks,

O'er the hills in legions, boys,

Fair freedom's star
Points to the sunset regions, boys,

Ha, ha, ha-ha!

and sometime, in May I think it was, father again set out
• — this time by train, to explore the Land of The Dakotas
which had but recently been wrested from the control
of Sitting Bull.

229

A Son of the Middle Border

He was gone only two weeks, but on his return an
nounced with triumphant smile that he had taken up a
homestead in Ordway, Brown County, Dakota. His
face was again alight with the hope of the borderman,
and he had much to say of the region he had explored.

As graduation day came on, Burton and I became very
serious. The question of our future pressed upon us.
What were we to do when our schooling ended? Neither
of us had any hope of going to college, and neither of us
had any intention of going to Dakota, although I had
taken "Going West" as the theme of my oration. We
were also greatly worried about these essays. Burton
fell off in appetite and grew silent and abstracted.
Each of us gave much time to declaiming our speeches,
and the question of dress troubled us. Should we
wear white ties and white vests, or white ties and black
vests?

The evening fell on a dark and rainy night, but the
Garlands came down in their best attire and so did
the Babcocks, the Gilchrists and many other of
our neighbors. Burton was hoping that his people
would not come, he especially dreaded the humorous
gaze of his brother Charles who took a much less serious
view of Burton's powers as an orator than Burton con
sidered just. Other interested parents and friends rilled
the New Opera House to the doors, producing in us a
sense of awe for this was the first time the " Exercises "
had taken place outside the chapel.

Never again shall I feel the same exultation, the same
pleasure mingled with bitter sadness, the same percep
tion of the irrevocable passing of beautiful things, and
the equally inexorable coming on of care and trouble, as
filled my heart that night. Whether any of the other
members of my class vibrated with similar emotion or
not I cannot say, but I do recall that some of the girls an-

230

End of School Days

noyed me by their excessive attentions to unimportant
ribbons, flounces, and laces. "How do I look?" seemed
their principal concern. Only Alice expressed anything
of the prophetic sadness which mingled with her exulta
tion.

The name of my theme, (which was made public for
the first time in the little programme) is worthy of a
moment's emphasis. Going West had been suggested,
of course by the emigration fever, then at its height,
and upon it I had lavished a great deal of anxious care.
As an oration it was all very excited and very florid, but
it had some stirring ideas in it and coming in the midst
of the profound political discourses of my fellows and
the formal essays of the girls, it seemed much more
singular and revolutionary, both in form and in sub
stance, than it really was.

As I waited my turn, I experienced that sense of nau
sea, that numbness which always preceded my platform
trials, but as my name was called I contrived to reach
the proper place behind the foot-lights, and to bow t<?
the audience. My opening paragraph perplexed my
fellows, and naturally, for it was exceedingly florid,
filled with phrases like "the lure of the sunset," "the
westward urge of men," and was neither prose nor verse.
Nevertheless I detected a slight current of sympathy
coming up to me, and in the midst of the vast expanse
of faces, I began to detect here and there a friendly
smile. Mother and father were near but their faces were
very serious.

After a few moments the blood began to circulate
through my limbs and I was able to move about a little
on the stage. My courage came back, but alas ! — just in
proportion as I attained confidence my emotional chant
mounted too high! Since the writing was extremely
ornate, my manner should have been studiedly cold and

231

A Son of the Middle Border

simple. This I knew perfectly well,, but I could not
check the perfervid rush of my song. I ranted deplor
ably, and though I closed amid fairly generous applause,
no flowers were handed up to me. The only praise I
received came from Charles Lohr, the man who had
warned me against becoming a lawyer's hack. He,
meeting me in the wings of the stage as I came off, re
marked with ironic significance, "Well, that was an
original piece of business! "

This delighted me exceedingly, for I had written with
special deliberate intent to go outside the conventional
grind of graduating orations. Feeling dimly, but sin
cerely, the epic march of the American pioneer I had
tried to express it in an address which was in fact a
sloppy poem. I should not like to have that manu
script printed precisely as it came from my pen, and a
phonographic record of my voice would serve admirably
as an instrument of blackmail. However, I thought at
the time that I had done moderately well, and my
mother's shy smile confirmed me in the belief.

Burton was white with stage-fright as he stepped
from the wings but he got through very well, better
than I, for he attempted no oratorical flights.

Now came the usual hurried and painful farewells
of classmates. With fervid hand-clasp we separated,
some of us never again to meet. Our beloved principal
(who was even then shadowed by the illness which
brought about his death) clung to us as if he hated to
see us go, and some of us could not utter a word as we
took his hand in parting. What I said to Alice and Maud
and Ethel I do not know, but I do recall that I had an
uncomfortable lump in my throat while saying it.

As a truthful historian, I must add that Burton and I,
immediately after this highly emotional close of our
school career, were both called upon to climb into the

232

.Now came the tender farewells. P. 232

End of School Days

family carriage and drive away into the black night,
back to the farm, — an experience which seemed to us
at the time a sad anticlimax. When we entered our ugly
attic rooms and tumbled wearily into our hard beds, we
retained very little of our momentary sense of victory.
Our carefree school life was ended. Our stern education
in life had begun.

233

CHAPTER XX
The Land of the Dakotas

THE movement of settlers toward Dakota had now
become an exodus, a stampede. Hardly anything
else was talked about as neighbors met one another on the
road or at the Burr Oak school-house on Sundays. Every
man who could sell out had gone west or was going.
In vain did the county papers and Farmer's Institute
lecturers advise cattle raising and plead for diversified
tillage, predicting wealth for those who held on; farmer
after farmer joined the march to Kansas, Nebraska, and
Dakota. "We are wheat raisers," they said, "and we
intend to keep in the wheat belt."

Our own Tamily group was breaking up. My uncle
David of pioneer spirit had already gone to the far
Missouri Valley. Rachel had moved to Georgia, and
Grandad McClintock was with his daughters, Samantha
and Deborah, in western Minnesota. My mother, thus
widely separated from her kin, resigned herself once
more to the thought of founding a new home. Once
more she sang, "O'er the hills in legions, boys/' with
such spirit as she could command, her clear voice
a little touched with the huskiness of regret.

I confess I sympathized in some degree with my
father's new design. There was something large and
fine in the business of wheat-growing, and to have a
plague of insects arise just as our harvesting machinery
was reaching such perfection that we could handle our
entire crop without hired help, was a tragic, abominable

The Land of the Dakotas

injustice. I could not blame him for his resentment and
dismay.

My personal plans were now confused and wavering.
I had no intention of joining this westward march; on
the contrary, I was looking toward employment as a
teacher, therefore my last weeks at the Seminary were
shadowed by a cloud of uncertainty and vague alarm.
It seemed a time of change, and immense, far-reaching,
portentous readjustment. Our homestead was sold,
my world was broken up. "What am I to do? " was my
question.

Father had settled upon Ordway, Brown County, South
Dakota, as his future home, and immediately after my
graduation, he and my brother set forth into the new
country to prepare the way for the family's removal,
leaving me to go ahead with the harvest alone. It fell
out, therefore, that immediately after my flowery oration
on Going West I found myself more of a slave to the
cattle than ever before in my life.

Help was scarce; I could not secure even so much as a
boy to aid in milking the cows; I was obliged to work
double time in order to set up the sheaves of barley
which were in danger of mouldering on the wet ground.
I worked with a kind of bitter, desperate pleasure, say
ing, "This is the last time I shall ever lift a bundle of
this accursed stuff. "

And then, to make the situation worse, in raising some
heavy machinery connected with the self-binder, I
strained my side so seriously that I was unable to walk.
This brought the harvesting to a stand, and made my
father's return necessary. For several weeks I hobbled
about, bent like a gnome, and so helped to reap what the
chinch bugs had left, while my mother prepared to "fol
low the sunset" with her "Boss."

September first was the day set for saying good-bye

235

A Son of the Middle Border

to Dry Run, and it so happened that her wedding an
niversary fell close upon the same date and our neigh
bors, having quietly passed the word around, came to
gether one Sunday afternoon to combine a farewell
dinner with a Silver Wedding " surprise party."

Mother saw nothing strange in the coming of the first
two carriages, the Buttons often came driving in that
way, — but when the Babcocks, the Coles, and the Gil-
christs clattered in with smiling faces, we all stood
in the yard transfixed with amazement. "What's the
meaning of all this?" asked my father.

No one explained. The women calmly clambered
down from their vehicles, bearing baskets and bottles
and knobby parcels, and began instant and concerted
bustle of preparation. The men tied their horses to the
fence and hunted up saw-horses and planks, and soon
a long table was spread beneath the trees on the lawn.
One by one other teams came whirling into the yard.
The assembly resembled a " vandoo" as Asa Walker said.
" It's worse than that," laughed Mrs. Turner. "It's a
silver wedding and a 'send off' combined."

They would not let either the "bride" or the "groom"
do a thing, and with smiling resignation my mother
folded her hands and sank into a chair. "All right,"
she said. "I am perfectly willing to sit by and see you
do the work. I won't have another chance right away."
And there was something sad in her voice. She could not
forget that this was the beginning of a new pioneering
adventure.

The shadows were long on the grass when at the close
of the supper old John Gammons rose to make a speech
and present the silver tea set. His voice was tremulous
with emotion as he spoke of the loss which the neighbor
hood was about to suffer, and tears were in many eyes
when father made reply. The old soldier's voice failed

236

The shadows were long on the grass when father rose to reply. P. 236

The Land of the Dakotas

him several times during his utterance of the few short
sentences he was able to frame, and at last he was obliged
to take his seat, and blow his nose very hard on his big
bandanna handkerchief to conceal his emotion.

It was a very touching and beautiful moment to me,
for as I looked around upon that little group of men and
women, rough-handed, bent and worn with toil, silent
and shadowed with the sorrow of parting, I realized as
never before the high place my parents had won in the
estimation of their neighbors. It affected me still more
deeply to see my father stammer and flush with uncon
trollable emotion. I had thought the event deeply
important before, but I now perceived that our going
was all of a piece with the West's elemental restlessness.
I could not express what I felt then, and I can recover
but little of it now, but the pain which filled my throat
comes back to me mixed with a singular longing to relive
it.

There, on a low mound in the midst of the prairie, in
the shadow of the house we had built, beneath the slender
trees we had planted, we were bidding farewell to one
cycle of emigration and entering upon another. The
border line had moved on, and my indomitable Dad was
moving with it. I shivered with dread of the irrevocable
decision thus forced upon me. I heard a clanging as of
great gates behind me and the field of the future was
wide and wan.

From this spot we had seen the wild prairies disappear.
On every hand wheat and corn and clover had taken the
place of the wild oat, the hazelbush and the rose. Our
house, a commonplace frame cabin, took on grace.
Here Hattie had died. Our yard was ugly, but there
Jessie's small feet had worn a slender path. Each of
our lives was knit into these hedges and rooted in these
fields and yet, notwithstanding all this, in response to

257

A Son of the Middle Border

some powerful yearning call, my father was about to set
out for the fifth time into the still more remote and un
trodden west. Small wonder that my mother sat with
bowed head and tear-blinded eyes, while these good
and faithful friends crowded around her to say good
bye.

She had no enemies and no hatreds. Her rich singing
voice, her smiling face, her ready sympathy with those
who suffered, had endeared her to every home into which
she had gone, even as a momentary visitor. No woman
in childbirth, no afflicted family within a radius of five
miles had ever called for her in vain. Death knew her
well, for she had closed the eyes of youth and age, and yet
she remained the same laughing, bounteous, whole-
souled mother of men that she had been in the valley of
the Neshonoc. Nothing could permanently cloud her
face or embitter the sunny sweetness of her creed.

One by one the women put their worn, ungraceful
arms about her, kissed her with trembling lips, and went
away in silent grief. The scene became too painful for
me at last, and I fled away from it — out into the fields,
bitterly asking, "Why should this suffering be? Why
should mother be wrenched from all her dearest friends
and forced to move away to a strange land?"

I did not see the actual packing up and moving of the
household goods, for I had determined to set forth in
advance and independently, eager to be my own master,
and at the moment I did not feel in the least like pioneer
ing.

Some two years before, when the failure of our crop
had made the matter of my continuing at school an
issue between my father and myself, I had said, "If
you will send me to school until I graduate, I will ask
nothing further of you," and these words I now took

•38

The Land of the Dakotas

a stern pleasure in upholding. Without a dollar of my
own, I announced my intention to fare forth into the
world on the strength of my two hands, but my father,
who was in reality a most affectionate parent, offered
me thirty dollars to pay my carfare.

This I accepted, feeling that I had abundantly earned
this money, and after a sad parting with my mother and
my little sister, set out one September morning for Osage.
At the moment I was oppressed with the thought that
this was the fork in the trail, that my family and I had
started on differing roads. I had become a man. With
all the ways of the world before me I suffered from a
feeling of doubt. The open gate allured me, but the
homely scenes I was leaving suddenly put forth a latent
magic.

I knew every foot of this farm. I had traversed it
scores of times in every direction, following the plow,
the harrow, or the seeder. With a great lumber wagon
at my side I had husked corn from every acre of it, and
now I was leaving it with no intention of returning.
My action, like that of my father, was final. As I looked
back up the lane at the tall Lombardy poplar trees bent
like sabres in the warm western wind, the landscape I
was leaving seemed suddenly very beautiful, and the
old home very peaceful and very desirable. Never
theless I went on.

Try as I may, I cannot bring back out of the darkness
of that night any memory of how I spent the time. I
must have called upon some of my classmates, but I
cannot lay hold upon a single word or look or phrase
from any of them. Deeply as I felt my distinction in
thus riding forth into the world, all the tender incidents
of farewell are lost to me. Perhaps my boyish self-
absorption prevented me from recording outside impres
sions, for the idea of travelling, of crossing the State

239

A Son of the Middle Border

line, profoundly engaged me. Up to this time, not
withstanding all my dreams of conquest in far countries,
I had never ridden in a railway coach ! Can you wonder
therefore that I trembled with joyous excitement as I
paced the platform next morning waiting for the chariot
of my romance? The fact that it was a decayed little
coach at the end of a "mixed accommodation train" on
a stub road did not matter. I was ecstatic.

However, I was well dressed, and my inexperience
appeared only in a certain tense watchfulness. I closely
observed what went on around me and was careful to
do nothing which could be misconstrued as ignorance.
Thrilling with excitement, feeling the mighty significance
of my departure, I entered quietly and took my seat,
while the train roared on through Mitchell and St. Ans-
gar, the little towns in which I had played my part as
an actor, — on into distant climes and marvellous cities.
My emotion was all very boyish, but very natural as
I look back upon it.

The town in which I spent my first night abroad should
have been called Thebes or Athens or Palmyra; but it
was not. On the contrary, it was named Ramsey, after
an old pioneer, and no one but a youth of fervid imagina
tion at the close of his first day of adventure in the world
would have found it worth a second glance. To me it
was both beautiful and inspiring, for the reason that it
was new territory and because it was the home of Alice,
my most brilliant school mate, and while I had in mind
some notion of a conference with the county superin
tendent of schools, my real reason for stopping off was a
desire to see this girl whom I greatly admired.

I smile as I recall the feeling of pride with which I
stepped into the 'bus and started for the Grand Central
Hotel. And yet, after all, values are relative. That boy
had something which I have lost. I would give much

240

The Land of the Dakotas

of my present knowledge of the world for the keen savor
of life which filled my nostrils at that time.

The sound of a violin is mingled with my memories
of Ramsey, and the talk of a group of rough men around
the bar-room stove is full of savage charm. A tall, pale
man, with long hair and big black eyes, one who im
pressed me as being a man of refinement and culture,
reduced by drink to poverty and to rebellious bitterness
of soul, stands out in powerful relief — a tragic and mov
ing figure.

Here, too, I heard my first splendid singer. A
patent medicine cart was in ,the street and one of its
troupe, a basso, sang Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep
with such art that I listened with delight. His lion-like
pose, his mighty voice, his studied phrasing, revealed
to me higher qualities of musical art than I had hitherto
known.

From this singer, I went directly to Alice's home. I
must have appeared singularly exalted as I faced her.
The entire family was in the sitting room as I entered —
but after a few kindly inquiries concerning my people
and some general remarks they each and all slipped
away, leaving me alone with the girl — in the good old-
fashioned American way.

It would seem that in this farewell call I was permit
ting myself an exaggeration of what had been to Alice
only a pleasant association, for she greeted me com
posedly and waited for me to justify my presence.

After a few moments of explanation, I suggested that
we go out and hear the singing of the " troupe." To
this she consented, and rose quietly — she never did
anything hurriedly or with girlish alertness — and put
on her hat. Although so young, she had the dignity of
a woman, and her face, pale as a silver moon, was calm
and sweet, only her big gray eyes expressed the maiden

241

A Son of the Middle Border

mystery. She read my adoration and was a little afraid
of it.

As we walked, I spoke of the good days at "the Sem,"
of our classmates, and their future, and this led me to
the announcement of my own plans. "I shall teach,"
I said. "I hope to be able to work into a professorship
in literature some day. — What do you intend to do?"

"I shall go on with my studies for a while," she re
plied. "I may go to some eastern college for a few
years."

" You must not become too learned," I urged. " You'll
forget me."

She did not protest this as a coquette might have
done. On the contrary, she remained silent, and I was
aware that while she liked and respected me, she was
not profoundly moved by this farewell call. Neverthe
less I hoped, and in that hope I repeated, "You will
write to me, won't you? "

"Of course!" she replied, and again I experienced a
chilling perception that her words arose from friendliness
rather than from tenderness, but I was glad of even this
restrained promise, and I added, "I shall write often,
for I shall be lonely — for a while."

As I walked on, the girl's soft warm arm in mine, a
feeling of uncertainty, of disquiet, took possession of me.
"Success," seemed a long way off and the road to it
long and hard. However, I said nothing further con
cerning my doubts.

The street that night had all the enchantment of
Granada to me. The girl's voice rippled with a music
like that of the fountain Lindarazza, and when I caught
glimpses of her sweet, serious face beneath her hat-rim,
I dreaded our parting. The nearer to her gate we drew
the more tremulous my voice became, and the more
uncertain my step.

242

The Land of the Dakotas

At last on the door-step she turned and said, "Won't
you come in again? "

In her tone was friendly dismissal, but I would not
have it so. "You will write to me, won't you?" I
pleaded with choking utterance.

She was moved (by pity perhaps).

"Why, yes, with pleasure/' she answered. "Good
bye, I hope you'll succeed. I'm sure you will."

She extended her hand and I, recalling the instructions
of my most romantic fiction, raised it to my lips. " Good
bye!" I huskily said, and turned away.

My next night was spent in Faribault. Here I touched
storied ground, for near this town Edward Eggleston
had laid the scene of his novel, The Mystery of Metrop-
olismlle and my imagination responded to the magic
which lay in the influence of the man of letters. I
wrote to Alice a long and impassioned account of my
sensations as I stood beside the Cannonball River.

My search for a school proving futile, I pushed on to
the town of Farmington, where the Dakota branch of
the Milwaukee railroad crossed my line of march. Here
I felt to its full the compelling power of the swift stream
of immigration surging to the west. The little village
had doubled in size almost in a day. It was a junction
point, a place of transfer, and its thin-walled unpainted
pine hotels were packed with men, women and children
laden with bags and bundles (all bound for the west)
and the joyous excitement of these adventurers com
pelled me to change my plan. I decided to try some of
the newer counties in western Minnesota. Romance
was still in the West for me.

I slept that night on the floor in company with four
or five young Iowa farmers, and the smell of clean white
shavings, the wailing of tired children, the excited mut
tering of fathers, the plaintive voices of mothers, came

243

A Son of the Middle Border

through the partitions at intervals, producing in my
mind an effect which will never pass away. It seemed
to me at the moment as if all America were in process of
change, all hurrying to overtake the vanishing line of
the middle border, and the women at least were secretly
or openly doubtful of the outcome. Woman is not by
nature an explorer. She is the home-lover.

Early the next morning I bought a ticket for Aber
deen, and entered the train crammed with movers who
had found the "prairie schooner" all too slow. The
epoch of the canvas-covered wagon had passed. The
era of the locomotive, the day of the chartered car, had
arrived. Free land was receding at railroad speed, the
borderline could be overtaken only by steam, and every
man was in haste to arrive.

All that day we rumbled and rattled into a strange
country, feeding our little engine with logs of wood,
which we stopped occasionally to secure from long ricks
which lined the banks of the river. At Chaska, at
Granite Falls, I stepped off, but did not succeed in find
ing employment. It is probable that being filled with
the desire of exploration I only half-heartedly sought
for work; at any rate, on the third day, I found myself
far out upon the unbroken plain where only the hair-
like buffalo grass grew — beyond trees, beyond the plow,
but not beyond settlement, for here at the end of my third
day's ride at Millbank, I found a hamlet six months
old, and the flock of shining yellow pine shanties strewn
upon the sod, gave me an illogical delight, but then I
was twenty-one — and it was sunset in the Land of the
Dakotas!

All around me that night the talk was all of land,
land! Nearly every man I met was bound for the " Jim
River valley," and each voice was aquiver with hope,
each eye alight with anticipation of certain success.

244

The Land of the Dakotas

Even the women had begun to catch something of this
enthusiasm, for the night was very beautiful and the
next day promised fair.

Again I slept on a cot in a room of rough pine, slept
dreamlessly, and was out early enough to witness the
coming of dawn, — a wonderful moment that sunrise
was to me. Again, as eleven years before, I felt myself
a part of the new world, a world fresh from the hand
of God. To the east nothing could be seen but a vague
expanse of yellow plain, misty purple in its hollows, but
to the west rose a long low wall of hills, the Eastern
Coteaux, up which a red line of prairie fire was slowly
creeping.

It was middle September. The air, magnificently crisp
and clear, filled me with desire of exploration, with vague
resolution to do and dare. The sound of horses and
mules calling for their feed, the clatter of hammers and
the rasping of saws gave evidence of eager builders, of
alert adventurers, and I was hotly impatient to get
forward.

At eight o'clock the engine drew out, pulling after it
a dozen box-cars laden with stock and household goods,
and on the roof of a freight caboose, together with several
other young Jasons, I rode, bound for the valley of the
James.

It was a marvellous adventure. All the morning we
rattled and rumbled along, our engine snorting with
effort, struggling with a load almost too great for its
strength. By noon we were up amid the rounded grassy
hills of the Sisseton Reservation where only the coyote
ranged and the Sioux made residence.

Here we caught our first glimpse of the James River
valley, which seemed to us at the moment as illimitable
as the ocean and as level as a floor, and then pitching
and tossing over the rough track, with our cars leaping

245

A Son of the Middle Border

and twisting like a herd of frightened buffaloes, we
charged down the western slope, down into a level land
of ripened grass, where blackbirds chattered in the wil
lows, and prairie chickens called from the tall rushes
which grew beside the sluggish streams.

Aberdeen was the end of the line, and when we came
into it that night it seemed a near neighbor to Sitting
Bull and the bison. And so, indeed, it was, for a buffalo
bull had been hunted across its site less than a year
before.

It was twelve miles from here to where my father had
set his stakes for his new home, hence I must have
stayed all night in some small hotel, but that experience
has also faded from my mind. I remember only my walk
across the dead-level plain next day. For the first
time I set foot upon a landscape without a tree to break
its sere expanse — and I was at once intensely interested
in a long flock of gulls, apparently rolling along the sod,
busily gathering their morning meal of frosted locusts.
The ones left behind kept flying over the ones in front
so that a ceaseless change of leadership took place.

There was beauty in this plain, delicate beauty and
a weird charm, despite its lack of undulation. Its lonely
unplowed sweep gave me the satisfying sensation of
being at last among the men who held the outposts, —
sentinels for the marching millions who were approach
ing from the east. For two hours I walked, seeing Aber
deen fade to a series of wavering, grotesque notches on
the southern horizon line, while to the north an equally
irregular and insubstantial line of shadows gradually
took on weight and color until it became the village in
which my father was at this very moment busy in
founding his new home.

My experienced eyes saw the deep, rich soil, and my
youthful imagination looking into the future, supplied

24,6

The Land of the Dakotas

the trees and vines and flowers which were to make this
land a garden.

I was converted. I had no doubts. It seemed at the
moment that my father had acted wisely in leaving his
Iowa farm in order to claim his share of Uncle Sam's
rapidly-lessening unclaimed land.

247

CHAPTER XXI
The Grasshopper and the Ant

WITHOUT a doubt this trip, so illogical and so reck*
lessly extravagant, was due entirely to a boy's
thirst for adventure. Color it as I may, the fact of my
truancy remains. I longed to explore. The valley of
the James allured me, and though my ticket and my
meals along the route had used up my last dollar, I felt
amply repaid as I trod this new earth and confronted
this new sky — for both earth and sky were to my percep
tion subtly different from those of Iowa and Minnesota.

The endless stretches of short, dry grass, the gorgeous
colors of the dawn, the marvellous, shifting, phantom
lakes and headlands, the violet sunset afterglow, — all
were widely different from our old home, and the far,
bare hills were delightfully suggestive of the horseman,
the Indian and the buffalo. The village itself was hardly
more than a summer camp, and yet its hearty, boastful
citizens talked almost deliriously of "corner lots" and
" boulevards," and their chantings were timed to the
sound of hammers. The spirit of the builder seized me
and so with my return ticket in my pocket, I joined the
carpenters at work on my father's claim some two miles
from the village with intent to earn money for further
exploration.

Grandfather Garland had also taken a claim (although
he heartily disliked the country) and in order to provide
for both families a double house was being built across
the line between the two farms. I helped shingle ttui

243

The Grasshopper and the Ant

roof, and being twenty-one now, and my own master,
I accepted wages from my father without a qualm. I
earned every cent of my two dollars per day, I assure
you, but I carefully omitted all reference to shingling,
in my letters to my classmates.

At the end of a fortnight with my pay in my pocket
I started eastward on a trip which I fully intended to
make very long and profoundly educational. That I
was green, very green, I knew but all that could be
changed by travel.

At the end of rny second day's journey, I reached
Hastings, a small town on the Mississippi river, and from
there decided to go by water to Redwing some thirty
miles below. All my life I had longed to ride on a Mis
sissippi steamboat, and now, as I waited on the wharf
at the very instant of the fulfillment of my desire, I
expanded with anticipatory satisfaction.

The arrival of the War Eagle from St. Paul carried
a fine foreign significance, and I ascended its gang-plank
with the air of a traveller embarking at Cairo for As
souan. Once aboard the vessel I mingled, aloofly, with
the passengers, absorbed in study of the river winding
down among its wooded hills.

This ecstasy lasted during the entire trip — indeed it
almost took on poetic form as the vessel approached the
landing at Redwing, for at this point the legendary
appeal made itself felt. This lovely valley had once
been the home of a chieftain, and his body, together
with that of his favorite warhorse, was buried on the
summit of a hill which overlooks the river, "in order"
(so runs the legend) "that the chief might see the first
faint glow of the resurrection morn and ride to meet it."

In truth Redwing was a quiet, excessively practical
little town, quite commonplace to every other pas
senger, except myself. My excited imagination trans-

249

A Son of the Middle Border

lated it into something very distinctive and far-off and
shining.

I took lodgings that night at a very exclusive boarding
house at six dollars per week, reckless of the effect on my
very slender purse. For a few days I permitted myself
to wander and to dream. I have disturbing recollections
of writing my friends from this little town, letters wherein
I rhapsodized on the beauty of the scenery in terms which
I would not now use in describing the Grand Canon, or
in picturing the peaks of Wyoming. After all I was
right. A landscape is precisely as great as the impres
sion it makes upon the perceiving mind. I was a traveller
at last! — that seemed to be my chiefest joy and I ex
tracted from each day all the ecstasy it contained.

My avowed object was to obtain a school and I did
not entirely neglect my plans but application to the
county superintendent came to nothing. I fear I was
half-hearted in my campaign.

At last, at the beginning of the week and at the end of
my money, I bought passage to Wabasha and from there
took train to a small town where some of my mother's
cousins lived. I had been in correspondence with one of
them, a Mrs. Harris, and I landed at her door (after a
glorious ride up through the hills, amid the most gorgeous
autumn colors) with just three cents in my pocket —
a poverty which you may be sure I did not publish to
my relations who treated me with high respect and mani
fested keen interest in all my plans.

As nothing offered in the township round about the
Harris home, I started one Saturday morning to walk to a
little cross-roads village some twenty miles away, in which
I was told a teacher was required. My cousins, not know
ing that I was penniless, supposed, of course, that I
would go by train, and I was too proud to tell them the
truth. It was very muddy, and when I reached the

250

• The Grasshopper and the Ant

home of the committeeman his midday meal was over,
and his wife did not ask if I had dined — although she
was quick to tell me that the teacher had just been hired.

Without a cent in my pocket, I could not ask for food —
therefore, I turned back weary, hungry and disheartened.
To make matters worse a cold rain was falling and the
eighteen or twenty miles between me and the Harris
farm looked long.

I think it must have been at this moment that I began,
for the first time, to take a really serious view of my
plan "to see the world." It became evident with start
ling abruptness, that a man might be both hungry and
cold in the midst of abundance. I recalled the fable
of the grasshopper who, having wasted the summer
hours in singing, was mendicant to the ant. My weeks
of careless gayety were over. The money I had spent in
travel looked like a noble fortune to me at this hour.

The road was deep in mud, and as night drew on the
rain thickened. At last I said, "I will go into some
farm-house and ask the privilege of a bed." This was
apparently a simple thing to do and yet I found it ex
ceedingly hard to carry out. To say bluntly, "Sir, I
have no money, I am tired and hungry," seemed a baldly
disgraceful way of beginning. On the other hand to
plead relationship with Will Harris involved a relative,
and besides they might not know my cousin, or they
might think my statement false.

Arguing in this way I passed house after house while
the water dripped from my hat and the mud clogged
my feet. Though chilled and hungry to the point of
weakness, my suffering was mainly mental. A sudden
realization of the natural antagonism of the well-to-do
toward the tramp appalled me. Once, as I turned in
toward the bright light of a kitchen window, the roar of a
watch dog stopped me before I had fairly passed the gate.

251

A Son of the Middle Border

I turned back with a savage word, hot with resentment
at a house-owner who would keep a beast like that. At
another cottage I was repulsed by an old woman who
sharply said, " We don't feed tramps."

I now had the precise feeling of the penniless outcast.
With morbidly active imagination I conceived of my
self as a being forever set apart from home and friends,
condemned to wander the night alone. I worked on this
idea till I achieved a bitter, furtive and ferocious manner.

However, I knocked at another door and upon meeting
the eyes of the woman at the threshold, began with formal
politeness to explain, "I am a teacher, I have been to
look for a school, and I am on my way back to Byron,
where I have relatives. Can you keep me all night? "

The woman listened in silence and at length replied
with ungracious curtness, "I guess so. Come in."

She gave me a seat by the fire, and when her husband
returned from the barn, I explained the situation to him.
He was only moderately cordial. "Make yourself at
home. I'll be in as soon as I have finished my milking,"
he said and left me beside the kitchen fire.

The woman of the house, silent, suspicious (it seemed
to me) began to spread the table for supper while I,
sitting beside the stove, began to suffer with the knowl
edge that I had, in a certain sense, deceived them. I
was fairly well dressed and my voice and manner, as well
as the fact that I was seeking a school, had given them,
no doubt, the impression that I was able to pay for my
entertainment, and the more I thought of this the more
uneasy I became. To eat of their food without making
an explanation was impossible but the longer I waited
the more difficult the explanation grew.

Suffering keenly, absurdly, I sat with hanging head
going over and over the problem, trying to formulate
an easy way of letting them know my predicament

252

The Grasshopper and the Ant

There was but one way of escape — and I took it. As
the woman stepped out of the room for a moment, I
rose, seized my hat and rushed out into the rain and
darkness like a fugitive.

I have often wondered what those people thought
when they found me gone. Perhaps I am the great
mystery of their lives, an unexplained visitant from "the
night's Plutonian shore."

I plodded on for another mile or two in the darkness,
which was now so intense I could scarcely keep the road.
Only by the feel of the mud under my feet could I follow
the pike. Like Jean Valjean, I possessed a tempest in
my brain. I experienced my first touch of despair.

Although I had never had more than thirty dollars
at any one time, I had never been without money. Dis
tinctions had not counted largely in the pioneer world
to which I belonged. I was proud of my family. I came
of good stock, and knew it and felt it, but now here I was,
wet as a sponge and without shelter simply because I
had not in my pocket a small piece of silver with which
to buy a bed.

I walked on until this dark surge of rebellious rage had
spent its force and reason weakly resumed her throne.
I said, "What nonsense ! Here I am only a few miles from
relatives. All the farmers on this road must know the
Harris family. If I tell them who I am, they will certainly
feel that I have the claim of a neighbor upon them." —
But these deductions, admirable as they were, did not
lighten my sky or make begging easier.

After walking two miles further I found it almost
impossible to proceed. It was black night and I did not
know where I stood. The wind had risen and the rain
was falling in slant cataracts. As I looked about me and
caught the gleam from the windows of a small farm
house, my stubborn pride gave way. Stumbling up the

253

A Son of the Middle Border

path I rapped on the door. It was opened by a middle*
aged farmer in his stocking feet, smoking a pipe. Having
finished his supper he was taking his ease beside the fire,
and fortunately for me, was in genial mood.

"Come in,'" he said heartily. "'Tis a wet night."

I began, "I am a cousin of William Harris of Byron — "

"You don't say! Well, what are you doing on the road
a night like this? Come in!"

I stepped inside and finished my explanation there.

This good man and his wife will forever remain the
most hospitable figures in my memory. They set me
close beside the stove insisting that I put my feet in the
oven to dry, talking meanwhile of my cousins and the
crops, and complaining of the incessant rainstorms which
were succeeding one another almost without intermis
sion, making this one of the wettest and most dismal au
tumns the country had ever seen. Never in all my life
has a roof seemed more heavenly, or hosts more sweet and
gracious.-

After breakfast next morning I shook hands with the
farmer saying: "I shall send you the money for my
entertainment the first time my cousin comes to town,"
and under the clamor of his hospitable protestations
against payment, set off up the road.

The sun came out warm and beautiful and all about me
on every farm the teamsters were getting into the fields.
The mud began to dry up and with the growing cheer
of the morning my heart expanded and the experience of
the night before became as unreal as a dream and yet
it had happened, and it had taught me a needed lesson.
Hereafter I take no narrow chances, I vowed to my
self.

Upon arrival at my cousin's home I called him aside,
and said, "Will, you have work to do and I have need of
wages, — I am going to strip off this ' boiled shirt* and

254

t The Grasshopper and the Ant

white collar, and I am going to work for you just thl
same as any other hand, and I shall expect the full paj?
of the best man on your place."

He protested, "I don't like to see you do this. Don't
give up your plans. I'll hitch up and we'll start out and
keep going till we find you a school."

"No," I said, "not till I earn a few dollars to put in
my pocket. I've played the grasshopper for a few
weeks — from this time on I'm the busy ant."

So it was settled, and the grasshopper went forth into
the fields and toiled as hard as any slave. I plowed,
threshed, and husked corn, and when at last December
came, I had acquired money enough to carry me on my
way. I decided to visit Onalaska and the old coulee where
my father's sister and two of the McClintocks were still
living. With swift return of confidence, I said good-bye
to my friends in Zumbrota and took the train. It seemed
very wonderful that after a space of thirteen years I
should be returning to the scenes of my childhood, a
full-grown man and paying my own way. I expanded
with joy of the prospect.

Onalaska, the reader may remember, was the town
in which I had gone to school when a child, and in my
return to it I felt somewhat like the man in the song,
Twenty Years Ago — indeed I sang, "I've wandered
through the village, Tom, I've sat beneath the tree" for
my uncle that first night. There was the river, filled as of
old with logs, and the clamor of the saws still rose from
the sawdust islands. Bleakly white the little church, in
which we used to sit in our Sunday best, remained un
changed but the old school-house was not merely altered,
it was gone! In its place stood a commonplace building
of brick. The boys with whom I used to play " Mumble ty
Peg" were men, and some of them had developed into
worthless loafers, lounging about the doors of the saloons,

2SS

A Son of the Middle Border

and although we looked at one another with eyes of
sly recognition, we did not speak.

Eagerly I visited the old coulee, but the magic was
gone from the hills, the glamour from the meadows.
The Widow Green no longer lived at the turn of the
road, and only the Randals remained. The marsh was
drained, the big trees cleared away. The valley was
smaller, less mysterious, less poetic than my remem
brances of it, but it had charm nevertheless, and I re
sponded to the beauty of its guarding bluffs and the
deep-blue shadows which streamed across its sunset
fields.

Uncle William drove down and took me home with
him, over the long hill, back to the little farm where he
was living much the same as I remembered him. One
of his sons was dead, the other had shared in the rush
for land, and was at this time owner of a homestead in
western Minnesota. Grandfather McClintock, still able
to walk about, was spending the autumn with William
and we had a great deal of talk concerning the changes
which had come to the country and especially to our
family group. "Ye scatter like the leaves of autumn/'
he said sadly — then added, "Perhaps in the Final Day
the trumpet of the Lord will bring us all together
again."

We sang some of his old Adventist hymns together
and then he asked me what I was planning to do. "I
haven't any definite plans," I answered, "except to
travel. I want to travel. I want to see the world."

"To see the world!" he exclaimed. "As for me I
wait for it to pass away. I watch daily for the coming
of the Chariot."

This gray old crag of a man interested me as deeply
as ever and yet, in a sense, he was an alien. He was not
of my time — scarcely of my country. He was a survival

256

The Giasshopper and the Ant

of the days when the only book was the Bible, when tht
newspaper was a luxury. Migration had been his life*
long adventure and now he was waiting for the last great
remove. His thought now was of "the region of the
Amaranth/' his new land "the other side of Jordan."

He engaged my respect but I was never quite at
ease with him. His valuations were too intensely reli
gious; he could not understand my ambitions. His mind
filled with singular prejudices, — notions which came
down from the Colonial age, was impervious to new ideas.
His character had lost something of its mellow charm — •
but it had gained in dramatic significance. Like my
uncles he had ceased to be a part of my childish world.

I went away with a sense of sadness, of loss as though
a fine picture on the walls of memory had been dimmed
or displaced. I perceived that I had idealized him as
I had idealized all the figures and scenes of my boyhood —
"but no matter, they were beautiful to me then and beau
tiful they shall remain," was the vague resolution with
which I dismissed criticism.

The whole region had become by contrast with Da
kota, a "settled" community. The line of the mid
dle border had moved on some three hundred miles
to the west. The Dunlaps, Mclldowneys, Dudleys and
Elwells were the stay-at-homes. Having had their
thrust at the job of pioneering before the war they
were now content on their fat soil. To me they all
seemed remote. Their very names had poetic value, for
they brought up in my mind shadowy pictures of the
Coulee country as it existed to my boyish memories.

I spent nearly two months in Onalaska, living with
my Aunt Susan, a woman of the loveliest character.
Richard Bailey, her husband, one of the kindliest of
men, soon found employment for me, and so, for a time,
I was happy and secure.

A Son of the Middle Border

However, this was but a pause by the roadside. I
was not satisfied. It was a show of weakness to settle
down on one's relations. I wanted to make my wayamong
strangers. I scorned to lean upon my aunt and uncle,
though they were abundantly able to keep me. It was
mid-winter, nothing offered and so I turned (as so many
young men similarly placed have done), toward a very
common yet difficult job. I attempted to take subscrip
tions for a book.

After z few days' experience in a neighboring town I
decided that whatever else I might be fitted for in this
world, I was not intended for a book agent. Surrender
ing my prospectus to the firm, I took my way down to
Madison, the capital of the state, a city which seemed at
this time very remote, and very important in my world.
Only when travelling did I have the feeling of living up
to the expectations of Alice and Burton who put into
their letters to me, an envy which was very sweet. To
them I was a bold adventurer!

Alas for me! In the shining capital of my state I felt
again the world's rough hand. First of all I tried The
State House. This was before the general use of type
writers and I had been told that copyists were in de
mand. I soon discovered that four men and two girls
were clamoring for every job. Nobody needed me. I
met with blunt refusals and at last turned to other fields.

Every morning I went among the merchants seeking
an opportunity to clerk or keep books, and at last ob
tained a place at six dollars per week in the office of an
agricultural implement firm. I was put to work in the
accounting department, as general slavey, under the
immediate supervision of a youth who had just gradu
ated from my position and who considered me his legiti
mate victim. He was only seventeen and not handsome,
and I despised him with instant bitterness. Under his

258

The Grasshopper and the Ant

direction I swept out the office, made copies of letters,
got the mail, stamped envelopes and performed other
duties of a manual routine kind, to which I would have
made no objection, had it not been for the gloating joy
with which that chinless cockerel ordered me about.
I had never been under that kind of discipline, and to
have a pin-headed gamin order me to clean spittoons
was more than I could stomach.

At the end of the week I went to the proprietor, and
said, "If you have nothing better for me Id do than
sweep the floor and run errands, I think I'll quit."

With some surprise my boss studied me. At last said:
"Very well, sir, you can go, and from all accounts I
don't think we'll miss you much," which was perfectly
true. I was an absolute failure so far as any routine
work of that kind was concerned.

So here again I was thrown upon a cruel world with
only six dollars between myself and the wolf. Again I
fell back upon my physical powers. I made the round of
all the factories seeking manual labor. I went out on the
Catfish, where, through great sheds erected for the manu
facture of farm machinery, I passed from superintendent
to foreman, from foreman to boss, — eager to wheel sand,
paint woodwork, shovel coal — anything at all to keep
from sending home for money — for, mind you, my
father or my uncle would have helped me out had I
written to them, but I could not do that. So long as I
was able to keep a roof over my head, I remained silent.
I was in the world and I intended to keep going without
asking a cent from anyone. Besides, the grandiloquent
plans for travel and success which I had so confidently
outlined to Burton must be carried out.

I should have been perfectly secure had it been sum
mertime, for I knew the fanner's life and all that per
tained to it, but it was winter. How to get a living in a

259

A Son of the Middle Border

strange town was my problem. It was a bright, clear,
intensely cold February, and I was not very warmly
dressed — hence I kept moving.

Meanwhile I had become acquainted with a young
clergyman in one of the churches, and had showed to him
certain letters and papers to prove that I was not a
tramp, and no doubt his word kept my boarding mistress
from turning me into the street.

Mr. Eaton was a man of books. His library contained
many volumes of standard value and we met as equals
over the pages of Scott and Dickens. I actually forced
him to listen to a lecture which I had been writing during
the winter and so wrought upon him that he agreed to
arrange a date for me in a neighboring country church. —
Thereafter while I glowed with absurd dreams of winning
money and renown by delivering that lecture in the
churches and school-houses of the state, I continued to
seek for work, any work that would bring me food and
shelter.

One bitter day in my desperate need I went down upon
the lake to watch the men cutting ice. The wind was
keen, the sky gray and filled with glittering minute
flecks of frost, and my clothing (mainly cotton) seemed
hardly thicker than gossamer, and yet I looked upon
those working men with a distinct feeling of envy. Had
I secured "a job" I should have been pulling a saw up
and down through the ice, at the same time that I
dreamed of touring the west as a lecturer — of such ab
surd contradictions are the visions of youth.

I don't know exactly what I would have done had not
my brother happened along on his way to a school
near Chicago. To him I confessed my perplexity. He
paid my board bill (which was not very large) and in
return I talked him into a scheme which promised great
things for us both — I contracted to lecture under his

260

The Grasshopper and the Ant

management! He was delighted at the opportunity
of advancing me, and we were both happy.

Our first engagement was at Cyene, a church which
really belonged to Eaton's circuit, and according to my
remembrance the lecture was a moderate success. After
paying all expenses we had a little money for carfare,
and Franklin was profoundly impressed. It really seemed
to us both that I had at last entered upon my career.
It was the kind of service I had been preparing for during
all my years at school — but alas! our next date was a
disaster. We attempted to do that which an older and
fully established lecturer would not have ventured.
We tried to secure an audience with only two days'
advance work, and of course we failed.

I called a halt. I could not experiment on the small
fund which my father had given Frank for his business
education.

However, I borrowed a few dollars of him and bought
a ticket to Rock River, a town near Chicago. I longed
to enter the great western metropolis, but dared not do
so — yet. I felt safe only when in sight of a plowed field.

At a junction seventy miles out of the city, we sepa
rated, he to attend a school, and I to continue my educa
tion in the grim realities of life.

From office to office in Rock River I sullenly plodded,
willing to work for fifty cents a day, until at last I secured
a clerkship in a small stationery jobbing house which a
couple of school teachers had strangely started, but on
Saturday of the second week the proprietor called me to
him and said kindly, but firmly, "Garland, I'm afraid
you are too literary and too musical for this job. You
have a fine baritone voice and your ability to vary the
text set before you to copy, is remarkable, and yet I
think we must part."

The reasons for this ironical statement were (to my

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A Son of the Middle Border

mind) ignoble; first of all he resented my musical ability,
secondly, my literary skill shamed him, for as he had put
before me a badly composed circular letter, telb'ng me to
copy it one hundred times, I quite naturally improved
the English. — However, I admitted the charge of insub
ordination, and we parted quite amicably.

It was still winter, and I was utterly without promise
of employment. In this extremity, I went to the Y. M.
C. A. (which had for one of its aims the assistance of
young men out of work) and confided my homelessness
to the secretary, a capital young fellow who knew enough
about men to recognize that I was not a "bum." He
offered me the position of night-watch and gave me a
room and cot at the back of his office. These were dark
hours!

During the day I continued to pace the streets. Oc
casionally some little job like raking up a yard would
present itself, and so I was able to buy a few rolls, and
sometimes I indulged in milk and meat. I lived
along from noon to noon in presentable condition, but
I was always hungry. For four days I subsisted on
five cents worth of buns.

Having left my home for the purpose of securing ex
perience in the world, I had this satisfaction — I was
getting it! Very sweet and far away seemed all that
beautiful life with Alice and Burton and Hattie at the
Seminary, something to dream over, to regret, to versify,
something which the future (at this moment) seemed
utterly incapable of reproducing. I still corresponded
with several of my classmates, but was careful to con
ceal the struggle that I was undergoing. I told them only
of my travels and my reading.

As the ironical jobber remarked, I had a good voice,
and upon being invited to accompany the Band of Hope
which went to sing and pray in the County Jail, I con-

The Grasshopper and the Ant

sented, at least I took part in the singing. In this way I
partly paid the debt I owed the Association, and se
cured some vivid impressions of prison life which came
into use at a later time. My three associates in this work
were a tinner, a clothing salesman and a cabinet maker.
More and more I longed for the spring, for with it I
knew would come seeding, building and a chance for me.

At last in the midst of a grateful job of raking up yards
and planting shrubs, I heard the rat-tat-tat of a hammer,
and resolved upon a bold plan. I decided to become a
carpenter, justifying myself by reference to my appren
ticeship to my grandfather. One fine April morning I
started out towards the suburbs, and at eveiy house in
process of construction approached the boss and asked
for a job. Almost at once I found encouragement. "Yes,
but where are your tools?"

In order to buy the tools I must work, work at any
thing. Therefore, at the next place I asked if there was
any rough labor required around the house. The fore
man replied: "Yes, there is some grading to be done."
Accordingly I set to work with a wheelbarrow, grading
the bank around the almost completed building. This
was hard work, the crudest form of manual labor, but I
grappled with it desperately, knowing that the pay (a
dollar and a half a day) would soon buy a kit of tools.

Oh, that terrible first day! The heavy shovel blistered
my hands and lamed my wrists. The lifting of the
heavily laden wheelbarrow strained my back and shoul
ders. Half-starved and weak, quite unfitted for sustained
effort of this kind, I struggled on, and at the end of an
interminable afternoon staggered home to my cot. The
next morning came soon, — too soon. I was not merely
lame, I was lacerated. My muscles seemed to have been
torn asunder, but I toiled (or made a show of toiling)
all the second day. On the warrant of my wages I

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A Son of the Middle Border

borrowed twenty-five cents of a friend and with this
bought a meat dinner which helped me through another
afternoon.

The third day was less painful and by the end of the
week, I was able to do anything required of me. Upon
receiving my pay I went immediately to the hardware
store and bought a set of tools and a carpenter's apron,
and early on Monday morning sallied forth in the op-
posite direction as a carpenter seeking a job. I soon came
to a big frame house in course of construction. "Do you
need another hand?" I asked. "Yes," replied the boss.
"Take hold, right here, with this man."

"This man" turned out to be a Swede, a good-natured
fellow, who made no comment on my deficiencies. We
sawed and hammered together in very friendly fashion
for a week, and I made rapid gains in strength and skill
and took keen pleasure in my work. The days seemed
short and life promising and as I was now getting two
dollars per day, I moved out of my charity bed and took
a room in a decayed mansion in the midst of a big lawn.
My bearing became confident and easy. Money had
straightened my back.

The spring advanced rapidly while I was engaged on
this work and as my crew occasionally took contracts in
the country I have vivid pictures of the green and pleas
ant farm lands, of social farmers at barn-raisings, and of
tables filled with fatness. I am walking again in my
stocking feet, high on the "purline plate," beetle in hand,
driving home the oaken "pins." I am shingling on the
broad roof of a suburban house from which I can see the
sunny slopes of a meadow and sheep feeding therein. I
am mending a screen door for a farmer's wife while she
confides to me the tragedy of her life — and always I have
the foolish boyish notion that I am out in the world and
seeing life.

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The Grasshopper and the Ant

Into the midst of this busy peaceful season of manual
labor came my first deeply romantic admiration. Edwin
Booth was announced as "the opening attraction of the
New Opera House" and I fairly trembled with antici
patory delight, for to me the word Booth meant all
that was splendid and tragic and glorious in the drama.
I was afraid that something might prevent me from
hearing him.

At last the night came and so great was the throng,
so strong the pressure on the doors that the lock gave
way and I, with my dollar clutched tightly in my hand,
was borne into the hall and half-way up the stairs with
out touching foot to the floor, and when at last, safe in
my balcony seat I waited for the curtain to rise, I had a
distinct realization that a shining milestone was about to
be established in my youthful trail.

My father had told me of the elder Booth, and of Ed
win's beautiful Prince of Denmark 1 had heard many
stories, therefore I waited with awe as well as eagerness,
and when the curtain, rising upon the court scene, discov
ered the pale, handsome face and graceful form of the
noble Dane, and the sound of his voice, — that magic
velvet voice — floated to my ear with the words, "Seems,
madame, I know not seems," neither time nor space nor
matter existed for me — I was in an ecstasy of attention.

I had read much of Shakespeare. I could recite many
pages of the tragedies and historical plays, and I had
been assured by my teachers that Hamlet was the greatest
of all dramas, but Edwin Booth in one hour taught me
more of its wonders, more of the beauty of the English
language than all my instructors and all my books.
He did more, he aroused in me a secret ambition to
read as he read, to make the dead lines of print glow
with color and throb with music. There was something
magical in his interpretation of the drama's printed

265

A Son of the Middle Border

page. With voice and face and hand he restored for
duller minds the visions of the poet, making Hamlet's
sorrows as vital as our own.

From this performance, which filled me with vague
ambitions and a glorious melancholy, I returned to my
association with a tinker, a tailor, and a tinner, whose
careless and stupid comments on the play both pained
and angered me. I went to my work next day in such
absorbed silence as only love is supposed to give.

I re-read my Hamlet now with the light of Booth's
face in my eyes and the music of his glorious voice in
my ear. As I nailed and sawed at pine lumber, I mur
mured inaudibly the lofty lines of the play, in the hope
of fixing forever in my mind the cadences of the great
tragedian's matchless voice.

Great days! Growing days! Lonely days! Days of
dream and development, needing only the girl to be
perfect — but I had no one but Alice to whom I could
voice my new enthusiasm and she was not only out of
the reach of my voice, but serenely indifferent to my
rhapsodic letters concerning Hamlet and the genius of
Edwin Booth.

366

CHAPTER XXII
We Discover New England

EDWIN Booth's performance of Hamlet had an
other effect. It brought to my mind the many
stories of Boston which my father had so often related
to his children. I recalled his enthusiastic accounts of
the elder Booth and Edwin Forrest, and especially his
descriptions of the wonderful scenic effects in Old Put
and The Gold Seekers, wherein actors rode down mimic
stone steps or debarked from theatrical ships which sailed
into pictured wharves, and one day in the midst of my
lathing and sawing, I evolved a daring plan — I decided to
visit Boston and explore New England.

With all his feeling for the East my father had never
revisited it. This was a matter of pride with him. "I
never take the back trail," he said, and yet at times, as
he dwelt on the old home in the state of Maine a wistful
note had crept into his voice, and so now in writing to
him, I told him that I intended to seek out his boyhood
haunts in order that I might tell him all about the
friends and relations who still lived there.

Without in any formal way intending it the old border-
man had endowed both his sons with a large sense of the
power and historic significance of Massachusetts. He had
contrived to make us feel some part of his idolatry of Wen
dell Phillips, for his memory of the great days of The Lib
erator were keen and worshipful. From him I derived
a belief that there were giants in those days and the
thought of walking the streets where Garrison was

267

A Son of the Middle Border

mobbed and standing in the hall which Webster had
hallowed with his voice gave me a profound anticipatory
stir of delight.

As first assistant to a quaint and dirty old carpenter,
I was now earning two dollars per day, and saving it.
There was no occasion in those days for anyone to give
me instructions concerning the care of money. I knew
how every dollar came and I was equally careful to know
where every nickel went. Travel cost three cents per
mile, and the number of cities to be visited depended
upon the number of dimes I should save.

With my plan of campaign mapped out to include a
stop at Niagara Falls and fourth of July on Boston Com
mon I wrote to my brother at Valparaiso, Indiana, in
viting him to join me in my adventure. "If we run out
of money and of course we shall, for I have only about
thirty dollars, we'll flee to the country. One of my friends
here says we can easily find work in the meadows near
Concord."

The audacity of my design appealed to my brother's
imagination. "I'm your huckleberry!" he replied.
"School ends the last week in June. I'll meet you at the
Atlantic House in Chicago on the first. Have about
twenty dollars myself."

At last the day came for my start. With all my pay
in my pocket and my trunk checked I took the train for
Chicago. I shall never forget the feeling of dismay
with which, an hour later, I perceived from the car
window a huge smoke-cloud which embraced the whole
eastern horizon, for this, I was told was the soaring ban
ner of the great and gloomy inland metropolis, whose
dens of vice and houses of greed had been so often re
ported to me by wandering hired men. It was in truth
only a huge flimsy country town in those days, but to me
it was august as well as terrible.

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We Discover New England

Up to this moment Rockford was the largest town i
had ever seen, and the mere thought of a million people
stunned my imagination. "How can so many people
find a living in one place?" Naturally I believed most
of them to be robbers. "If the city is miles across, how
am I to get from the railway station to my hotel without
being assaulted? " Had it not been for the fear of ridi
cule, I think I should have turned back at the next
stop. The shining lands beyond seemed hardly worth
a struggle against the dragon's brood with which the
dreadful city was a-swarm. Nevertheless I kept my seat
and was carried swiftly on.

Soon the straggling farm-houses thickened into groups,
the villages merged into suburban towns, and the train
began to clatter through sooty freight yards filled with
box cars and switching engines; at last, after crawling
through tangled, thickening webs of steel, it plunged
into a huge, dark and noisy shed and came to a
halt and a few moments later I faced the hackmen of
Chicago, as verdant a youth as these experienced pirates
had ever made common cause against.

I knew of them (by report), and was prepared for
trouble, but their clanging cries, their cynical eyes, their
clutching insolent hands were more terrifying than
anything I had imagined. Their faces expressed some
thing remorseless, inhuman and mocking. Their grins
were like those of wolves.

In my hand I carried an imitation leather valise, and
as I passed, each of the drivers made a snatch at it,
almost tearing it from my hands, but being strong as
well as desperate, I cleared myself of them, and so, fol
lowing the crowd, not daring to look to right or left,
reached the street and crossed the bridge with a sigh
of relief. So much was accomplished.

Without knowing where I should go, I wandered on,

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A Son of the Middle Border

shifting my bag from hand to hand, till my mind re
covered its balance. My bewilderment, my depth of
distrust, was augmented by the roar and tumult of
the crowd. I was like some wild animal with exceedingly
sensitive ears. The waves of sound smothered me.

At last, timidly approaching a policeman, I asked the
way to the Atlantic Hotel.

"Keep straight down the street five blocks and turn
to the left," he said, and his kind voice filled me with
«, glow of gratitude.

With ears benumbed and brain distraught, I threaded
the rush, the clamor of Clark street and entered the door
of the hotel, with such relief as a sailor must feel upon
suddenly reaching safe harbor after having been buffetted
on a wild and gloomy sea by a heavy northeast gale.

It was an inconspicuous hotel of the " Farmer's Home"
type, but I approached the desk with meek reluctance
and explained, "I am expecting to meet my brother here.
I'd like permission to set my bag down and wait."

With bland impersonal courtesy the clerk replied,
"Make yourself at home."

Gratefully sinking into a chair by the window, I
tell into study of the people streaming by, and a chilling
sense of helplessness fell upon me. I realized my igno
rance, my feebleness. As a minute bubble in this torrent
of human life, with no friend in whom I could put trust,
and with only a handful of silver between myself and the
gray wolf, I lost confidence. The Boston trip seemed
a foolish tempting of Providence and yet, scared as I
was, I had no real intention of giving it up.

My brother's first words as he entered the door, were
gayly derisive. "Oh, see the whiskers!" he cried and
his calm acceptance of my plan restored my own courage.

Together we planned our itinerary. We were to see
Niagara Falls, of course, but to spend the fourth of

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We Discover New England

July on Boston Common, was our true objective. " When
our money is used up/' I said, "we'll strike out into the
country."

To all this my brother agreed. Neither of us had the
slightest fear of hunger in the country. It was the city
that gave us pause.

All the afternoon and evening we wandered about the
streets (being very careful not to go too far from our
hotel), counting the stories of the tall buildings, and ab
sorbing the drama of the pavement. Returning now and
again to our sanctuary in the hotel lobby we ruminated
and rested our weary feet.

Everything interested us. The business section so
sordid to others was grandly terrifying to us. The self-
absorption of the men, the calm glances of the women
humbled our simple souls. Nothing was commonplace,
nothing was ugly to us.

We slept that night in a room at the extreme top of the
hotel. It couldn't have been a first class accommodation,
for the frame of the bed fell in the moment we got into it,
but we made no complaint — we would not have had
the clerk know of our mishap for twice our bill. We
merely spread the mattress on the floor and slept till
morning.

Having secured our transportation we were eager to be
off, but as our tickets were second class, and good only
on certain trains, we waited. We did not even think of a
sleeping car. We had never known anyone rich enough
to occupy one. Grant and Edwin Booth probably did,
and senators were ceremonially obliged to do so, but or
dinary folks never looked forward to such luxury.
Neither of us would have known what to do with a
berth if it had been presented to us, and the thought of
spending two dollars for a night's sleep made the cold
chills run over us. We knew of no easier way to earn

271

A Son of the Middle Border

two dollars than to save them, therefore we rode in the
smoker.

Late that night as we were sitting stoically in our
places, a brakeman came along and having sized us up
for the innocents we were, good-naturedly said, "Boys,
if you'll get up I'll fix your seats so's you can lie down
and catch a little sleep."

Silently, gratefully we watched him while he took up
the cushions and turned them lengthwise, thus making
a couch. To be sure, it was a very short and very hard
bed but with the health and strength of nineteen and
twenty-two, we curled up and slept the remainder of the
night like soldiers resting on their guns. Pain, we under
stood, was an unavoidable accompaniment of travel.

When morning dawned the train was running through
Canada, and excitedly calling upon Franklin to rouse,
I peered from the window, expecting to see a land en
tirely different from Wisconsin and Illinois. We were
both somewhat disappointed to find nothing distinctive
in either the land or its inhabitants. However, it was a
foreign soil and we had seen it. So much of our explora
tion was accomplished.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when we came in
sight of the suspension bridge and Niagara Falls. I
suppose it would be impossible for anyone now to feel
the same profound interest in any natural phenomenon
whatsoever. We believed that we were approaching
the most stupendous natural wonder in all the world,
and we could scarcely credit the marvel of our good for
tune.

All our lives we had heard of this colossal cataract.
Our school readers contained stately poems and philo
sophical dissertations concerning it. Gough, the great
orator, had pointed out the likeness of its resistless tor
rent to the habit of using spirituous liquors. The news-

272

We Discover New England

papers still printed descriptions of its splendor and
no foreigner (so we understood) ever came to these
shores without visiting and bowing humbly before the
voice of its waters. — And to think that we, poor prairie
boys, were soon to stand upon the illustrious brink of
that dread chasm and listen to its mighty song was won
derful, incredible, benumbing!

Alighting at the squalid little station on the American
side, we went to the cheapest hotel our keen eyes could
discover, and leaving our valises, we struck out immedi
ately toward the towering white column of mist which
could be seen rising like a ghostly banner behind the trees.
We were like those who first discover a continent.

As we crept nearer, the shuddering roar deepened, and
our awe, our admiration, our patriotism deepened with it,
and when at last we leaned against the rail and looked
across the tossing spread of river swiftly sweeping to its
fall, we held our breaths in wonder. It met our expec
tations.

Of course we went below and spent two of our hard-
earned dollars in order to be taken behind the falls.
We were smothered with spray and forced to cling
frenziedly to the hands of our guide, but it was a part of
our duty, and we did it. No one could rob us of the glory
of having adventured so far.

That night we resumed our seats in the smoking car, and
pushed on toward Boston in patiently-endured discom
fort. Early the following morning we crossed the Hudson,
and as the Berkshire hills began to loom against the dawn,
I asked the brakeman, with much emotion, "Have we
reached the Massachusetts line? " We have," he said,
and by pressing my nose against the glass and shading
my face with my hands I was able to note the passing
landscape.

Little could be seen other than a tumbled, stormy

273

A Son of the Middle Border

sky with wooded heights dimly outlined against it, but
I had all the emotions of a pilgrim entering upon some
storied oriental vale. Massachusetts to me meant
Whittier and Hawthorne and Wendell Phillips and
Daniel Webster. It was the cradle of our liberty, the
home of literature, the province of art — and it contained
Boston!

As the sun rose, both of us sat with eyes fixed upon
the scenery, observant of every feature. It was all so
strange, yet familiar! Barns with long, sloping roofs
stood with their backs against the hillsides, precisely
as in the illustrations to Hawthorne's stories, and Whit-
tier's poems. The farm-houses, old and weather-beaten
and guarded by giant elms, looked as if they might have
sheltered Emerson and Lowell. The little villages with
narrow streets lined with queer brick-walled houses
(their sides to the gutter) reminded us of the pictures
in Ben Franklin's Autobiography.

Everything was old, delightfully old. Nothing was
new. — Most of the people we saw were old. The men
working in the fields were bent and gray, scarcely a
child appeared, though elderly women abounded. (This
was thirty-five years ago, before the Canadians and
Italians had begun to swarm). Everywhere we de
tected signs of the historical, the traditional, the Yankee.
The names of the stations rang in our ears like bells,
Lexington, Concord, Cambridge, Charlestoim, and — at last
Boston!

What a strange, new world this ancient city was to us,
as we issued from the old Hoosac Tunnel station! The
intersection of every street was a bit of history. The
houses standing sidewise to the gutter, the narrow,
ledge-like pavements, the awkward two-wheeled drays
and carts, the men selling lobsters on the corner, the
newsboys with their "papahs," the faces of the women

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We Discover New England

$o thin and pale, the men, neat, dapper, small, many of
them walking with finicky precision as though treading on
eggs, — everything had a Yankee tang, a special quality,
and then, the noise! We had thought Chicago noisy,
and so it was, but here the clamor was high-keyed, deaf
ening for the reason that the rain-washed streets were
paved with cobble stones over which enormous carts
bumped and clattered with resounding riot.

Bewildered, — with eyes and ears alert, we toiled up
Haymarket Square shoulder to shoulder, seeking the
Common. Of course we carried our hand-bags — (the
railway had no parcel rooms in those days, or if it had
we didn't know it) clinging to them like ants to their
eggs and so slowly explored Tremont Street. Cornhill
entranced us with its amazing curve. We passed the
Granary Burying Ground and King's Chapel with awe,
and so came to rest at last on the upper end of the
Common! We had reached the goal of our long pilgrim
age.

To tell the truth, we were a little disappointed in our
first view of it. It was much smaller than we had imag
ined it to be and the pond was ONLY a pond, but the trees
were all that father had declared them to be. We had
known broad prairies and splendid primitive woodlands
— but these elms dated back to the days of Washington,
and were to be reverenced along with the State House
and Bunker Hill.

We spent considerable time there on that friendly
bench, resting in the shadows of the elms, and while
sitting there, we ate our lunch, and watched the traffic
of Tremont Street, in perfect content till I remembered
that the night was coming on, and that we had no place
to sleep.

Approaching a policeman I inquired the way to a
boarding house.

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A Son of the Middle Border

The officer who chanced to be a good-natured Irish
man, with a courtesy almost oppressive, minutely
pointed the way to a house on Essex Street. Think of it —
Essex Street! It sounded like Shakespeare and Merrie
England!

Following his direction, we found ourselves in the door
of a small house on a narrow alley at the left of the Com-
tnon. The landlady, a kindly soul, took our measure
at once and gave us a room just off her little parlor, and
as we had not slept, normally, for three nights, we
decided to go at once to bed. It was about five o'clock,
one of the noisiest hours of a noisy street, but we fell
almost instantly into the kind of slumber in which time
and tumult do not count.

When I awoke, startled and bewildered, the sounds of
screaming children, roaring, jarring drays, and the clatter
of falling iron filled the room. At first I imagined this
to be the business of the morning, but as I looked out of
the window I perceived that it was sunset! "Wake up!"
I called to Franklin. "//'$ the next day!" "We've slept
twenty-four hours! — What will the landlady think of us? "

Frank did not reply. He was still very sleepy, but he
dressed, and with valise in hand dazedly followed me into
the sitting room. The woman of the house was serving
supper to her little family. To her I said, "You've been
very kind to let us sleep all this time. We were very
tired."

"All this time?" she exclaimed.

"Isn't it the next day?" I asked.

Then she laughed, and her husband laughed, doubling
himself into a knot of merriment. "Oh, but that's
rich!" said he. "You've been asleep exactly an hour
and a quarter," he added. "How long did you think
you'd slept — two days?"

Sheepishly confessing that I thought we had, I turned

276

We Discover New England

back to bed, and claimed ten hours more of delicious
rest.

All "the next day" we spent in seeing Bunker Hill,
Faneuil Hall, the old North Church, King's Chapel,
Longfellow's home, the Washington Elm, and the Navy
Yard. — It was all glorious but a panic seized us as we
found our money slipping away from us, and late in the
afternoon we purchased tickets for Concord, and fled
the roaring and turbulent capital.

We had seen the best of it anyway. We had tasted
the ocean and found it really salt, and listened to "the
sailors with bearded lips" on the wharves where the
ships rocked idly on the tide, — The tide! Yes, that most
inexplicable wonder of all we had proved. We had
watched it come in at the Charles River Bridge, mysteri
ous as the winds. We knew it was so.

Why Concord, do you ask? Well, because Hawthorne
had lived there, and because the region was redolent of
Emerson and Thoreau, and I am glad to record that
upon reaching it of a perfect summer evening, we found
the lovely old village all that it had been pictured by the
poets. The wide and beautiful meadows, the stone
walls, the slow stream, the bridge and the statue of the
"Minute Man" guarding the famous battlefield, the
gray old Manse where Hawthorne lived, the cemetery
of Sleepy Hollow, the grave of Emerson — all these his
toric and charming places enriched and inspired us. This
land, so mellowed, so harmonious, so significant, seemed
hardly real. It was a vision.

We rounded out our day by getting lodgings in the
quaint old Wright's tavern which stood (and still stands)
at the forks of the road, a building wrhose date painted
on its chimney showed that it was nearly two hundred
years old! I have since walked Carnarvan's famous
walls, and sat in the circus at Nismes — but I have never

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A Son of the Middle Border

had a deeper thrill of historic emotion than when I
studied the beamed ceiling of that little dining room.
Our pure joy in its age amused our landlord greatly.

Being down to our last dollar, we struck out into the
country next morning, for the purpose of finding work
upon a farm but met with very little encouragement.
Most of the fields were harvested and those that were not
were well supplied with " hands." Once we entered a
beautiful country place where the proprietor himself
(a man of leisure, a type we had never before seen) in
terrogated us with quizzical humor, and at last sent us
to his foreman with honest desire to make use of us.
But the foreman had nothing to give, and so we went on.

All day we loitered along beautiful wood roads, passing
wonderful old homesteads gray and mossy, sheltered by
trees that were almost human in the clasp of their pro
tecting arms. We paused beside bright streams, and
drank at mossy wells operated by rude and ancient
sweeps, contrivances which we had seen only in pictures.
It was all beautiful, but we got no work. The next day,
having spent our last cent in railway tickets, we rode to
Ayer Junction, where we left our trunks in care of the
baggage man and resumed our tramping.

CHAPTER XXm
Coasting Down Mt. Washington

N spite of all our anxiety, we enjoyed this search
for work. The farmers were all so comically in
quisitive. A few of them took us for what we were, stu
dents out on a vacation. Others though kind enough,
seemed lacking in hospitality, from the western point
of view, and some were openly suspicious — but the
roads, the roads! In the west thoroughfares ran on
section lines and were defined by wire fences. Here
they curved like Indian trails following bright streams,
and the stone walls which bordered them were fes
tooned with vines as in a garden.

That night we lodged in the home of an old farmer, an
octogenarian who had never in all his life been twenty
miles from his farm. He had never seen Boston, or
Portland, but he had been twice to Nashua, returning,
however, in time for supper. He, as well as his wife
(dear simple soul), looked upon us as next door to edu
cated Indians and entertained us in a flutter of excited
hospitality.

We told them of Dakota, of the prairies, describing
the wonderful farm machinery, and boasting of the
marvellous crops our father had raised in Iowa, and the
old people listened in delighted amaze.

They put us to bed at last in a queer high-posted,
corded bedstead and I had a feeling that we were taking
part in a Colonial play. It was like living a story book.
We stared at each other in a stupor of satisfaction. We

279

A Son of the Middle Border

had never hoped for such luck. To be thrust back
abruptly into the very life of our forebears was magical,
and the excitement and delight of it kept us whispering
together long after we should have been asleep.

This was thirty years ago, and those kindly old souls
have long since returned to dust, but their big four-
posted bed is doing service, no doubt, in the home of
some rich collector. I have forgotten their names but
they shall live here in my book as long as its print shall
endure.

They seemed sorry to have us go next morning, but
as they had nothing for us to do, they could only say,
"Good-bye, give our love to Jane, if you see her, she
lives in Illinois." Illinois and Dakota were all the same
to them!

Again we started forth along the graceful, irregular,
elm-shaded roads, which intersected the land in every
direction, perfectly happy except when we remembered
our empty pockets. We could not get accustomed to
the trees and the beauty of the vineclad stone walls.
The lanes made pictures all the time. So did the apple
trees and the elms and the bending streams.

About noon of this day we came to a farm of very
considerable size and fairly level, on which the hay re
mained uncut. " Here's our chance," I said to my
brother, and going in, boldly accosted the fanner, a
youngish man with a bright and pleasant face. "Do
you want some skilled help? " I called out.

The farmer admitted that he did, but eyed us as if
jokers. Evidently we did not look precisely like work
men to him, but I jolted him by saying, "We are Iowa
schoolboys out for a vacation. We were raised on a
farm, and know all about haying. If you'll give us a
chance we'll make you think you don't know much
about harvesting hay."

280

Coasting Down Mt. Washington

This amused him. "Come in." he said, "and after
dinner we'll see about it."

At dinner we laid ourselves out to impress our host.
We told him of the mile-wide fields of the west, and
enlarged upon the stoneless prairies of Dakota. We
described the broad-cast seeders they used in Minnesota
and bragged of the amount of hay we could put up, and
both of us professed a contempt for two-wheeled carts.
In the end we reduced our prospective employer to
humbleness. He consulted his wife a moment and then
said, "All right, boys, you may take hold."

We stayed with him two weeks and enjoyed every
moment of our stay.

"Our expedition is successful," I wrote to my parents.

On Sundays we picked berries or went fishing or
tumbled about the lawn. It was all very beautiful and
delightfully secure, so that when the time came to part
with our pleasant young boss and his bright and cheery
wife, we were as sorry as they.

"We must move on," I insisted. "There are other
things to see."

After a short stay in Portland we took the train for
Bethel, eager to visit the town which our father had
described so many times. We had resolved to climb the
hills on which he had gathered berries and sit on the
"Overset" from which he had gazed upon the land
scape. We felt indeed, a certain keen regret that he
could not be with us.

At Locks Mills, we met his old playmates, Dennis and
Abner Herrick, men bent of form and dim of eye, gnarled
and knotted by their battle with the rocks and barren
hillsides, and to them we, confident lads, with our tales
of smooth and level plow-lands, must have seemed like
denizens from some farmers' paradise, — or perhaps thej"
thought us fictionists. I certainly put a powerful env

A Son of the Middle Border

phasis on the pleasant side of western life at that
time.

Dennis especially looked upon us with amazement?
almost with awe. To think that we, unaided and alone,
had wandered so far and dared so much, while he, in
all his life, had not been able to visit Boston, was be-
, wildering. This static condition of the population was
a constant source of wonder to us. How could people
stay all their lives in one place? Must be something
the matter with them. — Their ox- teams and tipcarts
amused us, their stony fields appalled us, their restricted,
parsimonious lives saddened us, and so, not wishing to
be a burden, we decided to cut our stay short.

On the afternoon of our last day, Abner took us on a
tramp over the country, pointing out the paths "where
Dick and I played," tracing the lines of the old farm,
which had long since been given over to pasture, and so
to the trout brook and home. In return for our "keep"
we sang that night, and told stories of the west, and our
hosts seemed pleased with the exchange. Shouldering
our faithful "griDs" next morning, we started for the
railway and took the train for Gorham.

Each mile brought us nearer the climax of our trip.
We of the plains had longed and dreamed of the peaks.
To us the White Mountains were at once the crowning
wonder and chief peril of our expedition. They were to
be in a very real sense the test of our courage. The iron
crest of Mount Washington allured us as a light-house
lures sea-birds.

Leaving Gorham on loot, ana carrying our inseparable
valises, we started westward along the road leading to
the peaks, expecting to get lodging at some farm-house,
but as we stood aside to let gay coaches pass laden with
glittering women and haughty men, we began to feel
abused.

282

Coasting Down Mt. Washington

We were indeed, quaint objects. Each of us wore a
long yellow linen "duster" and each bore a valise on a
stick, as an Irishman carries a bundle. We feared
neither wind nor rain, but wealth and coaches oppressed
us.

Nevertheless we trudged cheerily along, drinking at
the beautiful springs beside the road, plucking black
berries for refreshment, lifting our eyes often to the
snow-flecked peaks to the west. At noon we stopped
at a small cottage to get some milk, and there again
met a pathetic lonely old couple. The woman was at
least eighty, and very crusty with her visitors, till I
began to pet the enormous maltese cat which came
purring to our feet. "What a magnificent animal!"
I said to Frank.

This softened the old woman's heart. She not only
gave us bread and milk but sat down to gossip with us
while we ate. She, too, had relatives "out there, some
where in Iowa" and would hardly let us go, so eager
was she to know all about her people. "Surely you
must have met them."

As we neared the foot of the great peak we came upon
hotels of all sizes but I had not the slightest notion of
staying even at the smallest. Having walked twelve
miles to the foot of the mountain we now decided to
set out for the top, still carrying those precious bags
upon our shoulders.

What we expected to do after we got to the summit,
I cannot say, for we knew nothing of conditions there
and were too tired to imagine — we just kept climbing,
sturdily, doggedly, breathing heavily, more with excite
ment than with labor, for it seemed that we were ap
proaching the moon, — so bleak and high the roadway
ran. I had miscalculated sadly. It had looked only a
couple of hours' brisk walk from the hotel, but the way

283

A Son of the Middle Border

lengthened out toward the last in. a most disheartening
fashion.

"Where will we stay?" queried Frank,

"Oh, we'll find a place somewhere," I answered, but
I was far from being as confident as I sounded.

We had been told that it cost five dollars for a night's
lodging at the hotel, but I entertained some vague notion
that other and cheaper places offered. Perhaps I thought
that a little village on the summit presented boarding
houses.

"No matter, we're in for it now/' I stoutly said.
" We'll find a place — we've got to find a place."

It grew cold as we rose, surprisingly, dishearteningly
cold and we both realized that to sleep in the open would
be to freeze. As the night fell, our clothing, wet with
perspiration, became almost as clammy as sheet iron>
and we shivered with weakness as well as with frost.
The world became each moment more barren, more wind
swept and Frank was almost at his last gasp.

It was long after dark, and we were both trembling
with fatigue and hollow with hunger as we came opposite
a big barn just at the top of the trail. The door of this
shelter stood invitingly open, and creeping into an empty
stall we went to sleep on the straw like a couple of home
less dogs, We did not for a moment think of going to the
hotel which loomed like a palace a few rods further on.

A couple of hours later I was awakened by the crunch
of a boot upon my ankle, followed by an oath of sur
prise. The stage-driver, coming in from his last trip,
was looking down upon me. I could not see his face,
but I did note the bright eyes and pricking ears of a
noble gray horse standing just behind his master and
champing his bit with impatience.

Sleepy, scared and bewildered, I presented my plea
with such eloquence that the man put his team in an-

284

Coasting Down Mt. Washington

other stall and left us to our straw. "But you get out
o' here before the boss sees you/' said he, "or there'?
be trouble."

"We'll get out before daybreak," I replied heartily.

When I next awoke it was dawn, and my body was
50 stiff I could hardly move. We had slept cold and our
muscles resented it. However, we hurried from the barn.
Once safely out of reach of the "boss" we began to leap
and dance and shout to the sun as it rose out of the mist,
for this was precisely what we had come two thousand
miles to see — sunrise on Mount Washington ! It chanced,
gloriously, that the valleys were filled with a misty sea,
breaking soundlessly at our feet and we forgot; cold,
hunger, poverty, in the wonder of being "above the*
clouds!"

In course of time our stomachs moderated our trans
ports over the view and I persuaded my brother (who
was younger and more delicate in appearance) to ap
proach the kitchen and purchase a handout. Frank being
harshly persuaded by his own need, ventured forth and
soon came back with several slices of bread and butter
and part of a cold chicken, which made the day perfectly
satisfactory, and in high spirits we started to descend the
western slope of the mountain.

Here we performed the incredible. Our muscles were
so sore and weak that as we attempted to walk down the
railway track, our knees refused to bear our weight, and
while creeping over the ties, groaning and sighing with
pain, a bright idea suddenly irradiated my mind. As I
studied the iron groove which contained the cogs in
the middle of the track, I perceived that its edges were
raised a little above the level of the rails and covered
with oil. It occurred to me that it might be possible to
slide down this track on a plank — if only I had a plank !

I looked to the right. A miracle! There in the ditch

285

A Son of the Middle Border

lay a plank of exactly the right dimensions. I seized it,
I placed it cross-wise of the rails. "All aboard," I called.
Frank obeyed. I took my place at the other end, and so
with our valises between us, we began to slip slowly,
smoothly, and with joyous ease down the shining track!
Hoopla! We had taken wing!

We had solved our problem. The experiment was
successful. Laughing and shouting with exultation, we
swept on. We had but to touch every other tie with our
heels in order to control our speed, so we coasted,
smoothly, genially.

On we went, mile after mile, slipping down the valley
into the vivid sunlight, our eyes on the glorious scenery
about us, down, down like a swooping bird. Once we
passed above some workmen, who looked up in open-
mouthed amazement, and cursed us in voices which
seemed far and faint and futile. A little later the
superintendent of the water tank warningly shouted,
"Stop that! Get O$!" but we only laughed at him and
swept on, out over a high trestle, where none could fol
low.

At times our heads grew dizzy with the flicker and glit
ter of the rocks beneath us and as we rounded dangerous
curves of the track, or descended swift slides with al
most uncontrollable rapidity, I had some doubts, but we
kept our wits, remained upon the rails, and at last spun
round the final bend and came to a halt upon a level
stretch of track, just above the little station.

There, kicking aside our faithful plank, we took up out
valises and with trembling knees and a sense of triumph
set off down the valley of the wild Amonoosuc.

286

CHAPTER XXIV

Tramping, New York, Washington,
and Chi cago

two days we followed the Amonoosuc (which is
a lovely stream), tramping along exquisite winding
roads, loitering by sunny ripples or dreaming in the
shadow of magnificent elms. It was all very, very
beautiful to us of the level lands of Iowa and Dakota.
These brooks rushing over their rocky beds, these stately
trees and these bleak mountain- tops looming behind us,
all glowed with the high splendor of which we had
dreamed.

At noon we called at a farm-house to get something to
eat and at night we paid for lodging in a rude tavern
beside the way, and so at last reached the railway and
the Connecticut River. Here we gained our trunks
(which had been sent round by express) and as the coun
try seemed poor and the farms barren, we spent nearly
all our money in riding down the railway fifty or sixty
miles. At some small town (I forget the name), we again
look to the winding roads, looking for a job.

Jobs, it turned out, were exceedingly hard to get.
The haying was over, the oats mainly in shock, and
the people on the highway suspicious and inhospitable.
As we plodded along, our dimes melting away, hun
ger came, at last, to be a grim reality. We looked less
and less like college boys and more and more like tramps,
and the house-holders began to treat us with hostile
contempt.

287

A Son of the Middle Border

No doubt these fanners, much beset with tramps, had
reasonable excuse for their inhospitable ways, but to
us it was all bitter and uncalled for. I knew that cities
were filled with robbers, brigands, burglars and pirates,
but I had held (up to this time), the belief that the coun
try, though rude and barren of luxury was nevertheless
a place of plenty where no man need suffer hunger.

Frank, being younger and less hardy than I, became
clean disheartened, and upon me fell the responsibility
and burden of the campaign. I certainly was to blame
for our predicament.

We came finally to the point of calling at every house
where any crops lay ungathered, desperately in hope of
securing something to do. At last there came a time
when we no longer had money for a bed, and were forced
to sleep wherever we could find covert. One night we
couched on the floor of an old school-house, the next we
crawled into an oat-shock and covered ourselves with
straw. Let those who have never slept out on the ground
through an August night say that it is impossible that
one should be cold! During all the early warm part of
the night a family of skunks rustled about us, and toward
morning we both woke because of the chill.

On the third night we secured the blessed opportunity
of nesting in a farmer's granary. All humor had gone
out of our expedition. Each day the world grew blacker,
and the men of the Connecticut Valley more cruel and
relentless. We both came to understand (not to the
full, but in a large measure) the bitter rebellion of the
tramp. To plod on and on into the dusk, rejected of
comfortable folk, to couch at last with pole-cats in
a shock of grain is a liberal education in sociology.

On the fourth day we came upon an old farmer who
had a few acres of badly tangled oats which he wished
gathered and bound. He was a large, loose-jointed, good-

288

Tramping

natured sloven who looked at me with stinging, penetrat
ing stare, while I explained that we were students on a
vacation tramping and in need of money. He seemed
not particularly interested till Frank said with tragic
bitterness, "If we ever get back to Dakota we'll never
even look this way again." This interested the man.
He said, "Turn in and cut them oats," and we gladly
buckled to our job.

Our spirits rose with the instant resiliency of
youth, but what a task that reaping proved to be!
The grain, tangled and flattened close to the ground,
had to be caught up in one hand and cut with the old-
fashioned reaping-hook, the kind they used in Egypt
five thousand years ago — a thin crescent of steel with a
straight handle, and as we bowed ourselves to the ground
to clutch and clip the gram, we nearly broke in two
pieces. It was hot at mid-day and the sun fell upon
our bended shoulders with amazing power, but we toiled
on, glad of the opportunity to earn a dollar. "Every
cent means escape from this sad country," I repeated.

We stayed some days with this reticent gardener,
sleeping in the attic above his kitchen like two scullions,
uttering no complaint till we had earned seven dollars
apiece; then we said, "Good luck," and bought tickets
for Greenfield, Massachusetts. We chose this spot for
the reason that a great railway alluringly crossed the
river at that place. We seemed in better situation to
get west from such a point.

Greenfield was so like Rockford (the western town in
which I had worked as a carpenter), that I at once pur
chased a few tools and within a few hours secured work
shingling a house on the edge of the town, while my
brother took a hand at harvesting worms from a field of
tobacco near by.

The builder, a tall man, bent and grizzled, compM-

289

A Son of the Middle Border

mented me warmly at the close of my second day, and
said, "You may consider yourself hired for as long as
you please to stay. You're a rattler." No compliment
since has given me more pleasure than this. A few days
later he invited both of us to live at his home. We ac
cepted and were at once established in most comfortable
quarters.

Tranquil days followed. The country was very at
tractive, and on Sundays we walked the neighboring
lanes, or climbed the high hills, or visited the quaint
and lonely farm-houses round about, feeling more akin
each week to the life of the valley, but we had no inten
tion of remaining beyond a certain time. Great rivers
called and cities allured. New York was still to be ex
plored and to return to the west before winter set in was
our plan.

At last the time came when we thought it safe to start
toward Albany and with grateful words of thanks to the
carpenter and his wife, we set forth upon our travels.
Our courage was again at topmost gauge. My success
with the saw had given me confidence. I was no longer
afraid of towns, and in a glow of high resolution and
with thirty dollars in my pocket, I planned to invade
New York which was to me the wickedest and the most
sorrowful as well as the most splendid city in the world.

Doubtless the true story of how I entered Manhattan
will endanger my social position, but as an unflinching
realist, I must begin by acknowledging that I left the
Hudson River boat carrying my own luggage. I shudder
to think what we two boys must have looked like as we
set off, side by side, prospecting for Union Square and
the Bowery. Broadway, we knew, was the main street
and Union Square the center of the island, therefore we
turned north and paced along the pavement, still clamped
to our everlasting bags.

290

Tramping

Broadway was not then the deep canon that it is
today. It was walled by low shops of red brick — in
fact, the whole city seemed low as compared with the
high buildings of Chicago, nevertheless I was keenly
worried over the question of housing.

Food was easy. We could purchase a doughnut and
a cup of coffee almost anywhere, 01 we could eat a
sandwich in the park, but the matter of a bed, the
business of sleeping in a maelstrom like New York
was something more than serious — it was dangerous.
Frank, naturally of a more prodigal nature, was all for
going to the Broadway Hotel. "It's only for one night,"
said he. He always was rather careless of the future !

I reminded him that we still had Philadelphia, Balti
more and Washington to "do" and every cent must
be husbanded — so we moved along toward Union Square
with the question of a hotel still undecided, our arms
aching with fatigue. "If only we could get rid of these
awful bags," moaned Frank.

To us Broadway was a storm, a cyclone, an abnormal
unholy congestion of human souls. The friction of feet
on the pavement was like the hissing of waves on the
beach. The passing of trucks jarred upon our ears like
the sevenfold thunders of Patmos, but we kept on,
shoulder to shoulder, watchful, alert, till we reached
Union Square, where with sighs of deep relief we sank
upon the benches along with the other "rubes" and
"jay-hawkers" lolling in sweet repose with weary soles
laxly turned to the kindly indiscriminating breeze.

The evening was mild, the scene enthralling, and we
would have been perfectly happy but for the deeply dis
turbing question of a bed. Franklin, resting upon my
resourceful management, made no motion even when the
!fcun sank just about where that Venetian fronted build-
fag now stands, but whilst the insolent, teeming populace

291

A Son of the Middle Border

in clattering carts and drays charged round our peaceful
sylvan haven (each driver plying the lash with the fierce
aspect of a Roman charioteer) I rose to a desperate
mission.

With a courage born of need I led the way straight
toward the basement portal of a small brown hotel
on Fourth Avenue, and was startled almost into flight
to find myself in a barroom. Not knowing precisely
how to retreat, I faltered out, "Have you a bed for us?"

It is probable that the landlord, a huge foreign-looking
man understood our timidity — at any rate, he smiled
beneath his black mustache and directed a clerk to show
us a room.

In charge of this man, a slim youth, with a very bad
complexion, we climbed a narrow stairway (which grew
geometrically shabbier as we rose) until, at last, we came
into a room so near the roof that it could afford only
half-windows — but as we were getting the chamber at
half-price we could not complain.

No sooner had the porter left us than we both stretched
out on the bed, in such relief and ecstasy of returning
confidence as only weary yoMth and honest poverty
can know. — It was heavenly sweet, this sense of safety
in the heart of a tempest of human passion but as we
rested, our hunger to explore returned. " Time is passing.
We shall probably never see New York again," I argued,
"and besides our bags are now safely cached. Let's go
out and see how the city looks by night."

To this Franklin agreed, and forth we went into the
Square, rejoicing in our freedom from those accursed
bags.

Here for the first time, I observed the electric light
shadows, so clear-cut, so marvellous. The park was
lighted by several sputtering, sizzling arc-lamps, and
their rays striking down through the trees, flus£ uoon the

2Q2

Tra mping

pavement a wavering, exquisite tracery of sharply defined,
purple-black leaves and branches. This was, indeed, an
entirely new effect in our old world and to my mind its
wonder surpassed nature. It was as if I had suddenly
been translated to some realm of magic art.

Where we dined I cannot say, probably we ate a
doughnut at some lunch counter but I am glad to
remember that we got as far as Madison Square — which
was like discovering another and still more enchanting
island of romance. To us the Fifth Avenue Hotel was a
great and historic building, for in it Grant and Sherman
and Lincoln and Greeley had often registered.

Ah, what a night that was! I did not expend a dollar,
not even a quarter, but I would give half of all I now own
for the sensitive heart, the absorbent brain I then pos
sessed. Each form, each shadow was a miracle. Ro
mance and terror and delight peopled every dusky side
street.

Submerged in the wondrous, drenched with the spray
of this measureless ocean of human life, we wandered on
and on till overborne nature called a halt. It was ten
o'clock and prudence as well as weariness advised re
treat. Decisively, yet with a feeling that we would
never again glow beneath the lights of this radiant city,
I led the way back to our half-rate bed in the Union
Square Hungarian hotel.

It is worth recording that on reaching our room, we
opened our small window and leaning out, gazed away
over the park, what time the tumult and the thunder and
the shouting died into a low, continuous roar. The
poetry and the majesty of the city lost nothing of its
power under the moon.

Although I did not shake my fist over the town and vow
to return and conquer it (as penniless writers in fiction
generally do) I bowed down before its power. "It's

293

A Son of the Middle Border

too much for us," I told my brother. "Two millions <A
people — think of it — of course London is larger, but then
London is so far off."

Sleep for us both was but a moment's forgetfulness.
At one moment it was night and at another it was morn
ing. We were awakened by the voice of the pavement,
that sound which Whitman calls " the loud, proud, restive
bass of the streets," and again I leaned forth to listen
to the wide-spread crescendo roar of the deepening traffic.
The air being cool and clear, the pedestrians stepped out
with brisker, braver movement, and we, too, rose eager
to meet the day at the gate of the town.

All day we tramped, absorbing everything that went
on in the open. Having explored the park, viewed the
obelisk and visited the zoo, we wandered up and down
Broadway, mooning upon the life of the streets. Curb
stone fights, police maneuvres, shop-window comedies,
building operations — everything we saw instructed us.
We soaked ourselves in the turbulent rivers of the town
with a feeling that we should never see them again.

We had intended to stay two days but a tragic en
counter with a restaurant bandit so embittered and
alarmed us that we fled New York (as we supposed),
forever. At one o'clock, being hungry, very hungry,
we began to look for a cheap eating house, and somewhere
in University Place we came upon a restaurant which
looked humble enough to afford a twenty-five cent dinner
(which was our limit of extravagance), and so, timidly,
we ventured in.

A foreign-looking waiter greeted us, and led us to one
of a number of very small tables covered with linen
which impressed even Frank's uncritical eyes with its
mussiness. With a feeling of having inadvertently en
tered a den of thieves, I wished myself out of it but lacked
the courage to rise and when the man returned and placed

2Q4

Tramping

upon the table two glasses and a strange looking bottle
with a metal stopper which had a kind of lever at the
side, Frank said, "Hi! Good thing!— I'm thirsty."
Quite against my judgment he fooled around with the
lever till he succeeded in helping himself to some of the
liquid with which the bottle was filled. It was soda
water and he drank heartily, although I was sure it would
be extra on the bill.

The food came on slowly, by fits and starts, and the
dishes were all so cold and queer of taste that even Frank
complained. But we ate with a terrifying premonition
of trouble. "This meal will cost us at least thirty-five
cents each!" I said.

"No matter, it's an experience," my spendthrift
brother retorted.

At last when the limp lettuce, the amazing cheese and
the bitter coffee were all consumed, I asked the soiled,
outlandish waiter the price.

In reply he pencilled on a slip as though we were deaf,
and finally laid the completed bill face down beside my
plate. I turned it over and grew pale.

It totalled one dollar and twenty cents!

I felt weak and cold as if I had been suddenly poisoned.
I trembled, then grew hot with indignation. "Sixty
cents apiece!" I gasped. "Didn't I warn you?"

Frank was still in reckless mood. "Well, this is the
only time we have to do it. They won't catch us here
again."

I paid the bill and hurried out, bitterly exclaiming," No
more New York for me. I will not stay in such a robbers'
den another night."

And I didn't. At sunset we crossed the ferry and took
the train for New Brunswick, New Jersey. Why we
selected this town I cannot say, but I think it must have
been because it was half-way to Philadelphia — and that

A Son of the Middle Border

we were just about as scared of Philadelphia as we were
resentful of New York.

After a night battle with New Jersey mosquitoes and
certain plantigrade bed-fellows native to cheap hotels,
we passed on to Philadelphia and to Baltimore, and at
sunset of the same day reached Washington, the storied
capital of the nation.

Everything we saw here was deeply significant, na
tional, rousing our patriotism. We were at once and
profoundly interested by the negro life which flowered
here in the free air of the District as under an African
sun; the newsboys, the bootblacks, the muledrivers,
all amused us. We spent that first night in Wash
ington in a little lodging house just at the corner of
the Capitol grounds where beds were offered for twenty-
five cents. It was a dreadful place, but we slept with
out waking. It took a large odor, a sharp lance to
keep either of us awake in those days.

Tramping busily all the next day, we climbed every
thing that could be climbed. We visited the Capitol,
the war building, the Treasury and the White House
grounds. We toiled through all the museums, working
harder than we had ever worked upon the farm, till
Frank cried out for mercy. I was inexorable. "Our
money is getting low. We must be very saving of car
fare," I insisted. "We must see all we can. We'll
never be here again."

Once more we slept (among the negroes in a bare
little lodging house), and on the third day, brimming with
impressions, boarded the Chicago express and began
our glorious, our exultant return over the Alleghanies,
toward the west.

It was with a feeling of joy, of distinct relief that we
set our faces toward the sunset. Every mile brought us
nearer home. I knew the West. I knew the people, and

296

Tramping

I had no fear of making a living beyond the Alleghanies.
Every mile added courage and hope to our hearts, and
.Increased the value of the splendid, if sometimes severe
experiences through which we had passed. Frank was
especially gay for he was definitely on his way home,
back to Dakota.

And when next day on the heights of the Alleghany
mountains, the train dipped to the west, and swinging
arc and a curve, disclosed to us the tumbled spread of
mountain-land descending to the valley of the Ohio,
we sang "O'er the hills in legions, boys" as our fore
fathers did of old. We were about to re-enter the land
of the teeming furrow.

Late that night as we were riding through the darkness
in the smoking car, I rose and, placing in my brother's
hands all the money I had, said good-bye, and at Mans
field, Ohio, swung off the train, leaving him to proceed
on his homeward way alone.

It was about one o'clock of an autumn night, sharp
and clear, and I spent the remainder of the morning on a
bench in the railway station, waiting for the dawn.
I could not sleep, and so spent the time in pondering on
my former experiences in seeking work. "Have I been
wrong?" I asked myself. "Is the workman in America,
as in the old world, coming to be a man despised? "

Having been raised in the splendid patriotism, perhaps
one might say flamboyant patriotism, of the West dur
ing and following our Civil War, I had been brought up
to believe that labor was honorable, that idlers were to
be despised, but now as I sat with bowed head, cold,
hungry and penniless, knowing that I must go forth
at daylight — seeking work, the world seemed a very
hostile place to me. Of course I did not consider myself a
workman in the ordinary hopeless sense. My need of a
job was merely temporary, for it was my intention to

297

A Son of the Middle Border

return to the Middle West in time to secure a position
as teacher in some country school. Nevertheless a
lively imagination gave me all the sensations of the home
less man.

The sun rose warm and golden, and with a return of my
courage I started forth, confident of my ability to make a
place for myself. With a wisdom which I had not hitherto
shown I first sought a home, and luckily, I say luckily
because I never could account for it, I knocked at the
door of a modest little boarding house, whose mistress,
a small blonde lady, invited me in and gave me a room
without a moment's hesitation. Her dinner — a delicious
mid-day meal, so heartened me that before the end of the
day, I had secured a place as one of a crew of carpenters.
My spirits rose. I was secure.

My evenings were spent in reading Abbott's Life of
Napoleon which I found buried in an immense pile of
old magazines. I had never before read a full history of
the great Corsican, and this chronicle moved me almost
as profoundly as Hugo's Les Miserables had done the
year before.

On Sundays I walked about the country under the
splendid oaks and beeches which covered the ridges,
dreaming of the West, and of the future which was very
vague and not very cheerful in coloring. My plan so far
-as I had a plan, was not ambitious. I had decided to
return to some small town in Illinois and secure em
ployment as a teacher, but as I lingered on at my car
penter trade till October nothing was left for me but a
country school, and when Orrin Carter, county superin
tendent of Grundy County, (he is Judge Carter now)
informed me that a district school some miles out would
pay fifty dollars a month for a teacher, I gladly ac
cepted the offer.

On the following afternoon I started forth a passen-

2Q8

Tramping

ger with Hank Ring on his way homeward in an
empty corn wagon. The box had no seat, therefore
he and I both rode standing during a drive of six
miles. The wind was raw, and the ground, frozen
hard as iron, made the ride a kind of torture, but
our supper of buckwheat pancakes and pork sausages
at Deacon Ring's was partial compensation. On the
following Monday I started my school.

The winter which followed appalled the oldest in
habitant. Snow fell almost daily, and the winds were
razor-bladed. In order to save every dollar of my wages,
I built my own fires in the school-house. This means that
on every week-day morning, I was obliged to push out
into the stinging dawn, walk a mile to the icy building,
split kindling, start a flame in the rude stove, and have
the room comfortable at half-past eight. The ther
mometer often went to a point twenty degrees below
zero, and my ears were never quite free from peeling
skin and fevered tissues.

My pupils were boys and girls of all sizes and quali
ties, and while it would be too much to say that I made
the best teacher of mathematics in the county, I think
I helped them in their reading, writing, and spelling,
which after all are more important than algebra. On
Saturday I usually went to town, for I had in some way
become acquainted with the principal of a little normal
school which was being carried on in Morris by a young
Quaker from Philadelphia. Prof. Forsythe soon recog
nized in me something more than the ordinary "elocu
tionist" and readily aided me in securing a class in ora
tory among his students.

This work and Forsythe's comradeship helped me to
bear the tedium of my work in the country. No Saturday
was too stormy, and the roads were never too deep
with snow to keep me from my weekly visit to Morris

299

A Son of the Middle Border

where I came in contact with people nearer to my ways
of thinking and living.

But after all this was but the final section of my eastern
excursion — for as the spring winds set in, the call of "the
sunset regions' ' again overcame my love of cities. The
rush to Dakota in March was greater than ever before
and a power stronger than my will drew me back to the
line of the middle border which had moved on into the
Missouri Valley, carrying my people with it. As the
spring odors filled my nostrils, my wish to emigrate was
like that of the birds. "Out there is my share of the gov
ernment land — and, if I am to carry out my plan of
fitting myself for a professorship," I argued — "these
claims are worth securing. My rights to the public
domain are as good as any other man's."

My recollections of the James River Valley were all
pleasant. My brother and father both wrote urging me
to come and secure a claim, and so at last I replied,
"I'll come as soon as my school is out," thus committing
all my future to the hazard of the homestead.

And so it came about that in the second spring after
setting my face to the east I planned a return to the
Border. I had had my glimpse of Boston, New York and
Washington. I was twenty-three years of age, and eager
to revisit the plain whereon my father with the faith of a
pioneer, was again upturning the sod and building a
fourth home. And yet, Son of the Middle Border — I
had discovered that I was also a Grandson of New Eng
land.

CHAPTER XXV
The Land of the Straddle-Bug

ANIGHT in Chicago (where I saw Salvini play
Othello), a day in Neshonoc to visit my Uncle
Richard, and I was again in the midst of a jocund rush
of land-seekers.

The movement which had begun three years before
was now at its height. Thousands of cars, for lack of
engines to move them, were lying idle on the switches
all over the west. Trains swarming with immigrants
from every country of the world were haltingly creeping
out upon the level lands. Norwegians, Swedes, Danes,
Scotchmen, Englishmen, and Russians all mingled in this
flood of land-seekers rolling toward the sundown plain,
where a fat-soiled valley had been set aside by good Uncle
Sam for the enrichment of every man. Such elation,
such hopefulness could not fail to involve an excitable
youth like myself.

My companion, Forsythe, dropped off at Milbank,
but I kept on, on into the James Valley, arriving at
Ordway on the evening of the second day — a clear cloud
less evening in early April, with the sun going down red
in the west, the prairie chickens calling from the knolls
and hammers still sounding in the village, their tattoo de
noting the urgent need of roofs to shelter the incoming
throng.

The street swarmed with boomers. All talk was of
lots, of land. Hour by hour as the sun sank, prospectors
returned to the hotel from their trips into the unclaimed
tu^tory, hungry and tired but jubilant, and as they asr

301

A Son of the Middle Border

sembled in my father's store after supper, their boastful
talk of "claims secured" made me forget all my other
ambitions. I was as eager to clutch my share of Uncle
Sam's bounty as any of them. The world seemed begin
ning anew for me as well as for these aliens from the
crowded eastern world. "I am ready to stake a claim/'
I said to my father.

Early the very next day, with a party of four (among
them Charles Babcock, a brother of Burton), I started
for the unsurveyed country where, some thirty miles
to the west, my father had already located a pre-emption
claim and built a rough shed, the only shelter for miles
around.

"We'll camp there," said Charles.

It was an inspiring ride! The plain freshly uncovered
from the snow was swept by a keen wind which held in
spite of that an acrid prophecy of sudden spring. Ducks
and geese rose from every icy pond and resumed their
flight into the mystic north, and as we advanced the
world broadened before us. The treelessness of the wide
swells, the crispness of the air and the feeling that to the
westward lay the land of the Sioux, all combined to make
our trip a kind of epic in miniature. Charles also seemed
to feel the essential poetry of the expedition, although
he said little except to remark, "I wish Burton were
here."

It was one o'clock before we reached the cabin and
two before we finished luncheon. The afternoon was
spent in wandering over the near-by obtainable claims
and at sundown we all returned to the shed to camp.

As dusk fell, and while the geese flew low gabbling con
fidentially, and the ducks whistled by overhead in
swift unerring flight, Charles and I lay down on the hay
beside the horses, feeling ourselves to be, in some way-
partners with God in this new world. - 1 went to sleep

302

The Land of the Straddle-Bug

hearing the horses munching their grain in the neighbor
ing stalls, entirely contented with my day and confident
of the morrow. All questions were answered, all doubts
stilled.

We arose with the sun and having eaten our rude
breakfast set forth, some six miles to the west, to mark the
location of our claims with the "straddle-bugs."

The straddle-bug, I should explain, was composed of
three boards set together in tripod form and was used as
a monument, a sign of occupancy. Its presence defended
a claim against the next comer. Lumber being very
scarce at the moment, the building of a shanty was im
possible, and so for several weeks these signs took the
place of "improvements" and were fully respected. No
one could honorably jump these claims within thirty
days and no one did.

At last, when far beyond the last claimant, we turned
and looked back upon a score of these glittering guidons
of progress, banners of the army of settlement, I realized
that I was a vedette in the van of civilization, and when
I turned to the west where nothing was to be seen save
the mysterious plain and a long low line of still more
mysterious hills, I thrilled with joy at all I had won.

It seemed a true invasion, this taking possession of the
virgin sod, but as I considered, there was a haunting sad
ness in it, for these shining pine pennons represented the
inexorable plow. They prophesied the death of all wild
creatures and assured the devastation of the beautiful,
the destruction of all the signs and seasons of the sod.

Apparently none of my companions shared this feeling,
for they all leaped from the wagon and planted their
stakes, each upon his chosen quarter-section with whoops
of joy, cries which sounded faint and far, like the futile
voices of insects, diminished to shrillness by the echoless
abysses of the unclouded sky.

A Son of the Middle Border

As we had measured the distance from the township
lines by counting the revolutions of our wagon-wheels,
so now with pocket compass and a couple of laths,
Charles and I laid out inner boundaries and claimed three
quarter-sections, one for Frank and one each for our
selves. Level as a floor these acres were, and dotted with
the bones of bison.

We ate our dinner on the bare sod while all around us
the birds of spring-time moved in myriads, and over the
swells to the east other wagons laden with other land-
seekers crept like wingless beetles — stragglers from the
main skirmish line.

Having erected our pine-board straddle-bugs with
our names written thereon, we jubilantly started back
toward the railway. Tired but peaceful, we reached
Ordway at dark and Mrs. Wynn's supper of ham and
eggs and potatoes completed our day most satisfactorily.

My father, who had planned to establish a little store
on his claim, now engaged me as his representative, his
clerk, and I spent the next week in hauling lumber and in
helping to build the shanty and ware-room on the section
line. As soon as the place was habitable, my mother and
sister Jessie came out to stay with me, for in order to
hold his pre-emption mv father was obliged to make it
his "home."

Before we were fairly settled, my mother was forced to
feed and house a great many land-seekers who had no
other place to stay. This brought upon her once again
all the drudgery of a pioneer house-wife^ and filled her
with longing for the old home in Iowa. It must have
seemed to her as if she were never again to find rest except
beneath the sod.

Nothing that I have ever been called upon to do caused
me more worry than the act of charging those land-
seekers for their meals and bunks, and yet it was per-

304

The Land of the Straddle-Bug

fectly right that they should pay. Our buildings had
been established with great trouble and at considerable
expense, and my father said, "We cannot afford to feed
so many people without return," and yet it seemed to me
like taking an unfair advantage of poor and homeless
men. It was with the greatest difficulty that I brought
myself to charge them anything at all. Fortunately
the prices had been fixed by my father.

Night by night it became necessary to lift a lantern on
a high pole in front of the shack, in order that those who
were traversing the plain after dark might find their way,
and often I was aroused from my bed by the arrival of a
worn and bewildered party of pilgrims rescued from a
sleepless couch upon the wet sod.

For several weeks mother was burdened with these
wayfarers, but at last they began to thin out. The
skirmish line moved on, the ranks halted, and all about
the Moggeson ranch hundreds of yellow shanties sparkled
at dawn like flecks of gold on a carpet of green velvet
Before the end of May every claim was taken and "im
proved" — more or less.

Meanwhile I had taken charge of the store and Frank
was the stage driver. He was a very bad salesman, but
I was worse — that must be confessed. If a man wanted
to purchase an article and had the money to pay for it,
we exchanged commodities right there, but as far as my
selling anything — father used to say, "Hamlin couldn't
sell gold dollars for ninety cents a piece," and he was
right — entirely right.

I found little to interest me in the people who came to
the store for they were "just ordinary folk" from Illinois,
and Iowa, and I had never been a youth who made
acquaintances easily, so with nothing of the politician in
me, I seldom inquired after the babies or gossiped with
the old women about their health and housekeeping

3°5

A Son of the Middle Border

I regretted this attitude afterward. A closer relationship
with the settlers would have furnished me with a greater
variety of fictional characters, but at the time I had no
suspicion that I was missing anything.

As the land dried off and the breaking plow began its
course, a most idyllic and significant period of life came
on. The plain became very beautiful as the soil sent
forth its grasses. On the shadowed sides of the ridges
exquisite shades of pink and purple bloomed, while the
most radiant yellow-green flamed from slopes on which
the sunlight fell. The days of May and June succeeded
one another in perfect harmony like the notes in a song,
broken only once or twice by thunderstorms.

An opalescent mist was in the air, and everywhere, on
every swell, the settlers could be seen moving silently
to and fro with their teams, while the women sang at
their work about the small shanties, and in their new
gardens. On every side was the most cheerful acceptance
of hard work and monotonous fare. No one acknowl
edged the transient quality of this life, although it was
only a novel sort of picnic on the prairie, soon to end.

Many young people and several groups of girls (teach
ers from the east) were among those who had taken
claims, and some of these made life pleasant for themselves
and helpful to others by bringing to their cabins, books
and magazines and pictures. The store was not only
the social center of the township but the postofnce, and
Frank, who carried the mail (and who was much more
gallant than I) seemed to draw out all the school ma'ams
of the neighborhood. The raising of a flag on a high pole
before the door was the signal for the post which brought
the women pouring in from every direction eager for
news of the eastern world.

In accordance with my plan to become a teacher, I
determined to go to the bottom of the laws which govern

306

- The Land of the Straddle-Bug

literary development, and so with an unexpurgated
volume of Taine, a set of Chambers' Encyclopaedia of
English Literature, and a volume of Greene's History of the
English People, I set to work to base myself profoundly
in the principles which govern a nation's self-expression.
I still believed that in order to properly teach an apprecia
tion of poetry, a man should have the power of dramatic
expression, that he should be able to read so as to make
the printed page live in the ears of his pupils. In short
I had decided to unite the orator and the critic.

As a result, I spent more time over my desk than be
side the counter. I did not absolutely refuse to wait on a
purchaser but no sooner was his package tied up than
I turned away to my work of digesting and transcribing
in long hand Taine's monumental book.

Day after day I bent to this task, pondering all the
great Frenchman had to say of race, environment, and
momentum and on the walls of the cabin I mapped out
in chalk the various periods of English society as he had
indicated them. These charts were the wonder and
astonishment of my neighbors whenever they chanced to
enter the living room, and they appeared especially in
terested in the names written on the ceiling over my bed.
I had put my favorites there so that when I opened my
eyes of a morning, I could not help absorbing a knowledge
of their dates and works.

However, on Saturday afternoon when the young men
came in from their claims, I was not above pitching
quoits or " putting the shot" with them — in truth I took
a mild satisfaction in being able to set a big boulder some
ten inches beyond my strongest competitor. Occasionally
I practiced with the rifle but was not a crack shot. I
could still pitch a ball as well as any of them and I
served as pitcher in the games which the men occasionally
organized.

3°7

A Son of the Middle Border

As harvest came on, mother and sister returned to
Ordway, and cooking became a part of my daily routine.
Charles occasionally helped out and we both learned to
make biscuits and even pies. Frank loyally declared my
apple-pies to be as good as any man could make.

Meanwhile an ominous change had crept over the
plain. The winds were hot and dry and the grass, baked
on the stem, had became as inflammable as hay. The
birds were silent. The sky, absolutely cloudless, began
to scare us with its light. The sun rose through the dusty
air, sinister with flare of horizontal heat. The little
gardens on the breaking withered, and many of the
women began to complain bitterly of the loneliness, and
lack of shade. The tiny cabins were like ovens at mid
day.

Smiling faces were less frequent. Timid souls began
to inquire, "Are all Dakota summers like this? " and those
with greatest penetration reasoned, from the quality of
the grass which was curly and fine as hair, that they had
unwittingly settled upon an arid soil.

And so, week by week the holiday spirit faded from
the colony and men in feverish unrest uttered words of
bitterness. Eyes ached with light and hearts sickened
with loneliness. Defeat seemed facing every man.

By the first of September many of those who were in
greatest need of land were ready to abandon their ad
vanced position on the border and fall back into the
ranks behind. We were all nothing but squatters. The
section lines had not been run and every pre-emptor
looked and longed for the coming of the surveying crew,
because once our filings were made we could all return
to the east, at least for six months, or we could prove up
and buy our land. In other words, the survey offered a
chance to escape from the tedious monotony of the burn
ing plain into which we had so confidently thrust ourselves*

The Land of the Straddle-Bug

But the surveyors failed to appear though they were
reported from day to day to be at work in the next town
ship and so, one by one, these of us who were too poor
to buy ourselves food, dropped away. Hundreds of
shanties were battened up and deserted. The young
women returned to their schools, and men who had
counted upon getting work to support their families
during the summer, and who had failed to do so, aban
doned their claims and went east where settlement had
produced a crop. Our song of emigration seemed but
bitter mockery now.

Moved by the same desire to escape, I began writing
to various small towns in Minnesota and Iowa in the
hope of obtaining a school, but with little result. My
letters written from the border line did not inspire con
fidence in the School Boards of " the East." Then winter
came.

Winter! No man knows what winter means until he
has lived through one in a pine-board shanty on a Dakota
plain with only buffalo bones for fuel. There were
those who had settled upon this land, not as I had done
with intent to prove up and sell, but with plans to make
a home, and many of these, having toiled all the early
spring in hope of a crop, now at the beginning of winter
found themselves with little money and no coal. Many
of them would have starved and frozen had it not been
for the buffalo skeletons which lay scattered over the sod,
and for which a sudden market developed. Upon the
proceeds of this singular harvest they almost literally
lived. Thus "the herds of deer and buffalo" did indeed
strangely "furnish the cheer."

As for Charles and myself, we also returned to Ordway
and there spent a part of each month, brooding darkly
over the problem of our future. I already perceived the
futility of my return to the frontier. The mysterious

A Son of the Middle Border

urgings of a vague yet deep-seated longing to go east
rendered me restless, sour and difficult. I saw nothing
before me, and yet my hard experiences in Wisconsin
and in New England made me hesitate about going far.
Teaching a country school seemed the only thing I was
fitted for, and there shone no promise of that.

Furthermore, like other pre-emptors I was forced to
hold my claim by visiting it once every thirty days, and
these trips became each time more painful, more menac
ing. February and March were of pitiless severity. One
blizzard followed another with ever-increasing fury.
No sooner was the snow laid by a north wind than it took
wing above a southern blast and returned upon us sifting
to and fro until at last its crystals were as fine as flour,
so triturated that it seemed to drive through an inch
board. Often it filled the air for hundreds of feet above
the earth like a mist, and lay in long ridges behind every
bush or weed. Nothing lived on these desolate uplands
but the white owl and the wolf.

One cold, bright day I started for my claim accom
panied by a young Englishman, a fair-faced delicate
young clerk from London, and before we had covered
half our journey the west wind met us with such fury
that the little cockney would certainly have frozen
had I not forced him out of the sleigh to run by its side.

Poor little man! This was not the romantic home he
had expected to gain when he left his office on the Strand.

Luckily, his wretched shanty was some six miles nearer
than mine or he would have died. Leaving him safe
in his den, I pushed on toward my own claim, in the
teeth of a terrific gale, the cold growing each moment
more intense. "The sunset regions" at that moment
did not provoke me to song.

In order to reach my cabin before darkness fell, I
urged mv team desperately, and it was well that I did,

The Land of the Straddle-Bug

for I could scarcely see my horses during the last mile,
and the wind was appalling even to me — an experienced
plainsman. Arriving at the barn I was disheartened to
find the doors heavily banked with snow, but I fell to in
desperate haste, and soon shoveled a passageway.

This warmed me, but in the delay one of my horses
became so chilled that he could scarcely enter his stall.
He refused to eat also, and this troubled me very much.
However, I loaded him with blankets and fell to work
rubbing his legs with wisps of hay, to start the circula
tion, and did not desist until the old fellow began nib
bling his forage.

By this time the wind was blowing seventy miles an
hour, and black darkness was upon the land. With a
rush I reached my shanty only to rind that somebody
had taken all my coal and nearly all my kindling, save
a few pieces of pine. This was serious, but I kindled a
fire with the blocks, a blaze which was especially grateful
by reason of its quick response.

Hardly was the stove in action, when a rap at the door
startled me. " Come," I shouted. In answer to my call,
a young man, a neighbor, entered, carrying a sack filled
with coal. He explained with some embarrassment,
that in his extremity during the preceding blizzard,
he had borrowed from my store, and that (upon seeing
my light) he had hurried to restore the fuel, enough, at
any rate, to last out the night. His heroism appeased
my wrath and I watched him setting out on his return
journey with genuine anxiety.

That night is still vivid in my memory. The frail
shanty, cowering close, quivered in the wind like a fright
ened hare. The powdery snow appeared to drive directly
through the solid boards, and each hour the mercury
slowly sank. Drawing my bed close to the fire, I covered
myself with a buffalo robe and so slept for an hour or two.

A Son of the Middle Border

When I woke it was still dark and the wind, though
terrifying, was intermittent in its attack. The timbers of
the house creaked as the blast lay hard upon it, and now
and again the faint fine crystals came sifting down upon
my face, — driven beneath the shingles by the tempest.
At last I lit my oil lamp and shivered in my robe till
dawn. I felt none of the exultation of a "king in fairy
land " nor that of a " lord of the soil."

The morning came, bright with sun but with the ther
mometer forty degrees below zero. It was so cold that
the horses refused to face the northwest wind. I
could not hitch them to the sleigh until I had blanketed
them both beneath their harness; even then they snorted
and pawed in terror. At last, having succeeded in hook
ing the traces I sprang in and, wrapping the robe about
me, pushed eastward with all speed, seeking food and
fire.

This may be taken as a turning point in my career,
for this experience (followed by two others almost as
severe) permanently chilled my enthusiasm for pioneer
ing the plain. Never again did I sing " Sunset Regions"
with the same exultant spirit. "O'er the hills in legions,
boys," no longer meant sunlit savannahs, flower mead
ows and deer-filled glades. The mingled "wood and
prairie land" of the song was gone and Uncle Sam's
domain, bleak, semi-arid, and wind-swept, offered little
charm to my imagination. From that little cabin on the
ridge I turned my face toward settlement, eager to es
cape the terror and the loneliness of the treeless sod.
I began to plan for other work in other airs.

Furthermore, I resented the conditions under which
my mother lived and worked. Our home was in a small
building next to the shop, and had all the short-comings
of a cabin and none of its charm. It is true nearly all
our friends lived in equal discomfort, but it seemed to mo

The Land of the Straddle-Bug

that mother had earned something better. Was it for
this she had left her home in Iowa? Was she never to
enjoy a roomy and comfortable dwelling?

She did not complain and she seldom showed her sense
of discomfort. I knew that she longed for the friends and
neighbors she had left behind, and yet so far from being
able to help her I was even then planning to leave her.

In a sullen rage I endured the winter and when at last
the sun began to ride the sky with fervor and the prairie
cock announced the spring, hope of an abundant crop,
the promise of a new railroad, the incoming of jocund
settlers created in each of us a confidence which expressed
itself in a return to the land. With that marvellous
faith which marks the husbandmen, we went forth once
more with the drill and the harrow, planting seed against
another harvest.

Sometime during these winter days, I chanced upon a
book which effected a profound change in my outlook
on the world and led to far-reaching complications in my
life. This volume was the Lovell edition of Progress and
Poverty which was at that time engaging the attention of
the political economists of the world.

Up to this moment I had never read any book or essay
in which our land system had been questioned. I had
been raised in the belief that this was the best of all na
tions in the best of all possible worlds, in the happiest
of all ages. I believed (of course) that the wisdom of
those who formulated our constitution was but little less
than that of archangels, and that all contingencies of our
progress in government had been provided for or antici
pated in that inspired and deathless instrument.

Now as I read this book, my mind following step by
step the author's advance upon the citadel of privilege,
I was forced to admit that his main thesis was right.
Unrestricted individual ownership of the earth I ac-

A Son of the Middle Border

knowledged to be wrong and I caught some glimpse o(
the radiant plenty of George's ideal Commonwealth*
The trumpet call of the closing pages filled me with a
desire to battle for the right. Here was a theme for the
great orator. Here was opportunity for the most devoted
evangel.

Raw as I was, inconspicuous as a grasshopper by the
roadside, I still had something in me which responded
to the call of "the prophet of San Francisco," and yet
I had no definite intention of becoming a missionary.
How could I?

Penniless, dependent upon the labor of my hands for a
livelihood, discontented yet unable to decide upon a
plan of action, I came and went all through that long
summer with laggard feet and sorrowful countenance.

My brother Franklin having sold his claim had boldly
advanced upon Chicago. His ability as a book-keeper
secured him against want, and his letters were confident
and cheerful.

At last in the hour when my perplexity was greatest—
the decisive impetus came, brought by a chance visitor,
a young clergyman from Portland, Maine, who arrived
in the town to buy some farms for himself and a friend.
Though a native of Madison Mr. Bashford had won a
place in the east and had decided to put some part of
his salary into Dakota's alluring soil. Upon hearing
that we were also from Wisconsin he came to call and
stayed to dinner, and being of a jovial and candid nature
soon drew from me a fairly coherent statement of my
desire to do something in the world.

At the end of a long talk he said, "Why don't you come
to Boston and take a special course at the University?
I know the Professor of Literature, and I can also give you
a letter to the principal of a school of Oratory."

This offer threw me into such excitement that I was

The Land of the Straddle-Bug

unable to properly thank my adviser, but I fell into
depths of dejection as soon as he left town. "How can
I go east? How can I carry out such a plan? " I asked
myself with bitter emphasis.

All I had in the world was a small trunk, a couple of
dozen books, a valise and a few acres of barren unplowed
land. My previous visit to Boston was just the sort to
tempt me to return, but my experiences as a laborer in
New England had lessened my confidence in its re
sources — and yet the thought of being able to cross the
Common every day opened a dazzling vista. The very
fact that Mr. Bashford had gone there from the west
as a student, a poor student, made the prodigiously
daring step seem possible to me. "If only I had a couple
of hundred dollars," I said to my mother who listened
to my delirious words in silence. She divined what was
surging in my heart and feared it.

Thereafter I walked the floor of my room or wandered
the prairie roads in continual debate. "What is there
for me to do out here?" I demanded. "I can farm on
these windy dusty acres — that's all. I am a failure as a
merchant and I am sick of the country."

There were moments of a morning or at sunset when
the plain was splendid as a tranquil sea, and in such
moments I bowed down before its mysterious beauty —
but for the most part it seemed an empty, desolate,
mocking world. The harvest was again light and the
earth shrunk and seamed for lack of moisture.

A hint of winter in the autumn air made me remember
the remorseless winds and the iron earth over which
the snows swept as if across an icy polar sea. I shud
dered as I thought of again fighting my way to that
desolate little cabin in McPherson County. I recalled
but dimly the exultation with which I had made my
claim. Boston, by contrast, glowed with beauty, with

3*5

A Son of the Middle Border

romance, with history, with glory like the vision of
some turretted town built in the eastern sky at sun
set.

'Til do it," I said at last. 'Til sell my claim. I'll go
east. I'll find some little hole to creep into. I'll study
night and day and so fit myself for teaching, then I'll
come back west to Illinois or Wisconsin. Never will I
return to this bleak world."

I offered my claim for sale and while I continued my
daily labor on the farm, my mind was faraway amid
the imagined splendors of the east.

My father was puzzled and a good deal irritated by
his son's dark moods. My failure to fit into the store
was unaccountable and unreasonable. "To my think
ing," said he, "you have all the school you need. You
ought to find it easy to make a living in a new, progres
sive community like this."

To him, a son who wanted to go east was temporarily
demented. It was an absurd plan. "Why, it's against
the drift of things. You can't make a living back east.
Hang onto your land and you'll come out all right.
The place for a young man is in the west."

Bitter and rebellious of mood, uneasy and uncertain
of purpose my talks with him resulted only in irritation
and discord, but my mother, with an abiding faith in
my powers, offered no objection. She could not advise,
it was all so far above and beyond her, but she patted
my hand and said, "Cheer up! I'm sure it will come out
all right. I hate to have you go, but I guess Mr. Bash-
ford is right. You need more schooling."

I could see that she was saddened by the thought of
the separation which was to follow — with a vague knowl
edge of the experience of all the mothers of pioneer sons
she feared that the days of our close companionship were
ended. The detachment was not for a few months, it

316

The Land of the Straddle-Bug

was final. Her face was very wistful and her voice
tremulous as she told me to go.

"It is hard for me to leave you and sister," I replied,
"but I must. I'm only rotting here. I'll come back —
at least to visit you."

In tremendous excitement I mortgaged my claim for
two hundred dollars and with that in my hand, started
for the land of Emerson, Longfellow, and Hawthorne,
believing that I was in truth reversing all the laws of
development, breasting the current of progress, stemming
the tide of emigration. All about me other young men
were streaming toward the sunset, pushing westward to
escape the pressure of the earth-lords behind, whilst I
alone and poor, was daring all the dangers, all the dif
ficulties from which they were so eagerly escaping.

There was in my heart an illogical exaltation as though
I too were about to escape something — and yet when
the actual moment of parting came, I embraced my
sorrowing mother, and kissed my quaint little sister
good-bye without feeling in the least heroic or self-
confident. At the moment sadness weakened me, re
ducing me to boyish timidity.

3*7

CHAPTER XXVI
On to Boston

WITH plenty of time to think, I thought, crouched
low in my seat silent as an owl. True, I dozed off
now and again but even when shortened by these periods
of forgetfulness, the journey seemed interminable and
when I reached the grimy old shed of a station which
was the Chicago terminal of the Northwestern in those
days, I was glad of a chance to taste outside air, no
matter how smoky it reported itself to be.

My brother, who was working in the office of a weekly
farm journal, met me with an air of calm superiority.
He had become a true Chicagoan. Under his confident
leadership I soon found a boarding place and a measure
of repose. I must have stayed with him for several days
for I recall being hypnotized into ordering a twenty-
dollar tailor-made suit from a South Clark street mer
chant — you know the kind. It was a "Prince Albert
Soot" — my first made-to-order outfit, but the extrava
gance seemed justified in face of the known elegance
of man's apparel in Boston.

It took me thirty-six hours more to get to Boston,
and as I was ill all the way (I again rode in the smoking
car) a less triumphant Jason never entered the City of
Light and Learning. The day was a true November
day, dark and rainy and cold, and when I confronted my
cloud-built city of domes and towers I was concerned
only with a place to sleep — I had little desire of battle
and no remembrance of the Golden Fleece.

318

On to Boston

Up from the Hoosac Station and over the slimy,
greasy pavement I trod with humped back, carrying my
heavy valise (it was the same imitation-leather concern
with which I had toured the city two years before),
while gay little street cars tinkled by, so close to my
shoulder that I could have touched them with my hand.

Again I found my way through Haymarket Square
to Tremont street and so at last to the Common, which
presented a cold and dismal face at this time. The glory
of my dream had fled. The trees, bare and brown and
dripping with rain, offered no shelter. The benches were
sodden, the paths muddy, and the sky, lost in a desolate
mist shut down over my head with oppressive weight.
I crawled along the muddy walk feeling about as im
portant as a belated beetle in a July thunders torm.
Half of me was ready to surrender and go home on the
next train but the other half, the obstinate half, sullenly
forged ahead, busy with the problem of a roof and bed.

My experience in Rock River now stood me in good
hand. Stopping a policeman I asked the way to the
Young Men's Christian Association. The officer pointed
out a small tower not far away, and down the Tremont
street walk I plodded as wretched a youth as one would
care to see.

Humbled, apologetic, I climbed the stairway, ap
proached the desk, and in a weak voice requested the
address of a cheap lodging place.

From the cards which the clerk carelessly handed to
me I selected the nearest address, which chanced to be
on Boylston Place, a short narrow street just beyond
the Public Library. It was a deplorably wet and gloomy
alley, but I ventured down its narrow walk and des
perately knocked on the door of No. 12.

A handsome elderly woman with snow-white hair
met me at the threshold. She looked entirely respect-

A Son of the Middle Border

able, and as she named a price which I could afford to
pay I accepted her invitation to enter. The house
swarmed with life. Somebody was strumming a banjo,
a girl was singing, and as I mounted the stair to the first
floor, a slim little maid of about fourteen met us. "This
is my daughter Fay," said the landlady with manifest
pride.

Left to myself I sank into a chair with such relief as
only the poor homeless country boy knows when at the
end of a long tramp from the station, he lets slip his
handbag and looks around upon a room for which he
has paid. It was a plain little chamber, but it meant
shelter and sleep and I was grateful. I went to bed
early.

I slept soundly and the world to which I awoke was
new and resplendent. My headache was gone, and as
I left the house in search of breakfast I found the sun
shining.

Just around the comer on Tremont street I discovered
a little old man who from a side- walk booth, sold de
licious coffee in cups of two sizes, — one at three cents
and a larger one at five cents. He also offered doughnuts
at a penny each.

Having breakfasted at an outlay of exactly eight cents
I returned to my chamber, which was a hall-room, eight
feet by ten, and faced the north. It was heated (theo
retically) from a register in the floor, and there was just
space enough for my trunk, a cot and a small table at
the window but as it cost only six dollars per month I
was content. I figured that I could live on five dollars
per week which would enable me to stay till spring. I
had about one hundred and thirty dollars in my purse.

From this sunless nook, this narrow niche, I began my
study of Boston, whose historic significance quite over
powered me. I was alone. Mr. Bashford, in Portland,

320

On to Boston

Maine, was the only person in all the east on whom I
could call for aid or advice in case of sickness. My father
wrote me that he had relatives living in the city but I did
not know how to find them. No one could have been
more absolutely alone than I during that first month.
I made no acquaintances, I spoke to no one.

A part of each day was spent in studying the historical
monuments of the city, and the remaining time was
given to reading at the Young Men's Union or in the
Public Library, which stood next door to my lodging
house.

At night I made detailed studies of the habits of the
cockroaches with which my room was peopled. There
was something uncanny in the action of these beasts.
They were new to me and apparently my like had never
before been observed by them. They belonged to the
shadow, to the cold and to the damp of the city, whereas
I was fresh from the sunlight of the plain, and as I
watched them peering out from behind my wash-basin,
they appeared to marvel at me and to confer on my case
with almost elfish intelligence.

Tantalized by an occasional feeble and vacillating
current of warm air from the register, I was forced at times
to wear my overcoat as I read, and at night I spread it
over my cot. I did not see the sun for a month. The
wind was always filled with rain or sleet, and as the lights
in Bates' Hall were almost always blazing, I could hardly
tell when day left off and night began. It seemed as if I
had been plunged into another and darker world, a
world of storm, of gray clouds, of endless cold.

Having resolved to keep all my expenses within five
dollars per week, I laid down a scientific plan for cheap
living. I first nosed out every low-priced eating place
within ten minutes walk of my lodging and soon knew
vrhich of these "joints" were wholesome, and which were

321

A Son of the Middle Border

not. Just around the corner was a place where a filling
dinner could be procured for fifteen cents, including
pudding, and the little lunch counter on Tremont street
supplied my breakfast. Not one nickel did I spend in
carfare, and yet I saw almost every celebrated building
in the city. However, I tenderly regarded my shoe soles
each night, for the cost of tapping was enormous.

My notion of studying at some school was never
carried out. The Boston University classes did not
attract me. The Harvard lectures were inaccessible,
and my call upon the teacher of " Expression" to whom
Mr. Bashford had given me a letter led to nothing. The
professor was a nervous person and made the mistake of
assuming that I was as timid as I was silent. His manner
irritated me and the outburst of my resentment was
astonishing to him. I was hungry at the moment and
to be patronized was too much!

This encounter plunged me into deep discouragement
and I went back to my reading in the library with a
despairing resolution to improve every moment, for my
stay in the east could not last many weeks. At the rate
my money was going May would see me bankrupt.

I read both day and night, grappling with Darwin,
Spencer, Fiske, Helmholtz, Haeckel, — all the mighty
masters of evolution whose books I had not hitherto
been able to open. For diversion I dived into early
English poetry and weltered in that sea of song which
marks the beginnings of every literature, conning the
ballads of Ireland and Wales, the epics of Ireland, the
early German and the songs of the troubadours, a course
of reading which started me on a series of lectures to be
written directly from a study of the authors themselves.
This dimly took shape as a volume to be called The
Development of English Ideals, a sufficiently ambitious
project.

322

un to Boston

Among other proscribed books I read Whitman's
Leaves of Grass and without doubt that volume changed
the world for me as it did for many others. Its rhythmic
chants, its wonderful music filled me with a keen sense
of the mystery of the near at hand. I rose from that
first reading with a sense of having been taken up into
high places. The spiritual significance of America was
let loose upon me.

Herbert Spencer remained my philosopher and master.
With eager haste I sought to compass the "Synthetic
Philosophy." The universe took on order and harmony
as, from my five cent breakfast, I went directly to the
consideration of Spencer's theory of the evolution of
music or painting or sculpture. It was thrilling, it was
joyful to perceive that everything moved from the simple
to the complex — how the bow-string became the harp,
and the egg the chicken. My mental diaphragm creaked
with the pressure of inrushing ideas. My brain young,
sensitive to every touch, took hold of facts and theories
like a phonographic cylinder, and while my body softened
and my muscles wasted from disuse, I skittered from
pole to pole of the intellectual universe like an impatient
bat. I learned a little of everything and nothing very
thoroughly. With so many peaks in sight, I had no
time to spend on digging up the valley soil.

My only exercise was an occasional slow walk. I
could not afford to waste my food in physical effort, and
besides I was thinly dressed and could not go out except
when the sun shone. My overcoat was considerably
more than half cotton and a poor shield against the bitter
wind which drove straight from the arctic sea into my
bones. Even when the weather was mild, the crossings
were nearly always ankle deep in slush, and walking was
anything but a pleasure, therefore it happened that fct
days I took no outing whatsoever. From my meals I

323

A Son of the Middle Border

returned to my table in the library and read until closing
time, conserving in every way my thirty cents' worth of
"food units."

In this way I covered a wide literary and scientific
territory. Humped over my fitful register I discussed the
Nebular Hypothesis. My poets and scientists not
merely told me of things I had never known, they con
firmed me in certain conceptions which had come to me
without effort in the past. I became an evolutionist
in the fullest sense, accepting Spencer as the greatest
living thinker. Fiske and Galton and Allen were merely
assistants to the Master Mind whose generalizations
included in their circles all modern discovery.

It was a sad change when, leaving the brilliant reading
room where my mind had been in contact with these
masters of scientific world, I crept back to my minute
den, there to sit humped and shivering (my overcoat
thrown over my shoulders) confronting with scared re
sentment the sure wasting of my little store of dollars.
In spite of all my care, the pennies departed from my
pockets like grains of sand from an hour-glass and most
disheartening of all I was making no apparent gain
toward fitting myself for employment in the west.

Furthermore, the greatness, the significance, the
beauty of Boston was growing upon me. I felt the
neighboring presence of its autocrats more definitely
and powerfully each day. Their names filled the daily
papers, their comings and goings were carefully noted.
William Dean Howells, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John
G. Whittier, Edwin Booth, James Russell Lowell, all
these towering personalities seemed very near to me now,
and their presence, even if I never saw their faces, was
an inspiration to one who had definitely decided to com
pose essays and poems, and to write possibly a history
of American Literature. Symphony concerts, the Lowell

324

On to Boston

Institute Lectures, the Atlantic Monthly — (all the dis
tinctive institutions of the Hub) had become very pre
cious to me notwithstanding the fact that I had little
actual share in them. Their nearness while making
my poverty more bitter, aroused in me a vague ambition
to succeed — in something. "I won't be beaten, I will
not surrender," I said.

Being neither a resident of the city nor a pupil of any
school I could not take books from the library and this
inhibition wore upon me till at last I determined to seek
the aid of Edward Everett Hale who had long been a
great and gracious figure in my mind. His name had
been among the "Authors" of our rainy-day game on
the farm. I had read his books, and I had heard him
preach and as his "Lend-a-hand" helpfulness was pro
verbial, I resolved to call upon him at his study in the
church, and ask his advice. I was not very definite
as to what I expected him to do, probably I hoped for
sympathy in some form.

The old man received me with kindness, but with a
look of weariness which I quickly understood. Accus
tomed to helping people he considered me just another
"Case." With hesitation I explained my difficulty
about taking out books.

With a bluff roar he exclaimed, "Well, well! That
is strange! Have you spoken to the Librarian about
it?"

"I have, Dr. Hale, but he told me there were twenty
thousand young students in the city in precisely my con
dition. People not residents and with no one to vouch
for them cannot take books home."

"I don't like that," he said. "I will look into that.
You shall be provided for. Present my card to Judge
Chamberlain; I am one of the trustees, and he will sec
that you have all the books you want."

325

A Son of the Middle Border

I thanked him and withdrew, feeling that I had gained
a point. I presented the card to the librarian whose
manner softened at once. As a protege of Dr. Hale I
was distinguished. "I will see what can be done for
you," said Judge Chamberlain. Thereafter I was able
to take books to my room, a habit which still further
imperilled my health, for I read fourteen hours a day
instead of ten.

Naturally I grew white and weak. My Dakota tan
and my corn-fed muscle melted away. The only part of
me' which flourished was my hair. I begrudged every
quarter which went to the barbers and I was cold most
of the time (except when I infested the library) and I
was hungry all the time.

I knew that I was physically on the down-grade, but
what could I do? Nothing except to cut down my ex
penses. I was living on less than five dollars a week,
but even at that the end of my stay in the city was not
far off. Hence I walked gingerly and read fiercely.

Bates' Hall was deliciously comfortable, and every day
at nine o'clock I was at the door eager to enter. I spent
most of my day at a desk in the big central reading room,
but at night I haunted the Young Men's Union, thus
adding myself to a dubious collection of half-demented,
ill-clothed derelicts, who suffered the contempt of the
attendants by reason of their filling all the chairs and
monopolizing all the newspaper racks. We never con
versed one with another and no one knew my name, but
there came to be a certain diplomatic understanding
amongst us somewhat as snakes, rabbits, hyenas, and
turtles sometimes form " happy families."

There was one old ruffian who always sniffled and
snuffled like a fat hog as he read, monopolizing my favor'
ite newspaper. Another member of the circle perused
the same page of the same book day after day, laughing

326

On to Boston

Vacuously over its contents. Never by any mistake did
he call for a different book, and I never saw him turn a
leaf. No doubt I was counted as one of this group of
irresponsibles.

All this hurt me. I saw no humor in it then, for I was
even at this time an intellectual aristocrat. I despised
brainless folk. I hated these loafers. I loathed the clerk
at the desk who dismissed me with a contemptuous
smirk, and I resented the formal smile and impersonal
politeness of Mr. Baldwin, the President. Of course I
understood that the attendants knew nothing of my
dreams and my ambitions, and that they were treating
me quite as well as my looks warranted, but I blamed
them just the same, furious at my own helplessness to
demonstrate my claims for higher honors.

During all this time the only woman I knew was my
landlady, Mrs. Davis, and her daughter Fay. Once a
week I curtly said, "Here is your rent, Mrs. Davis,"
and yet, several times she asked with concern, "How are
you feeling? — You don't look well. Why don't you
board with me? I can feed you quite as cheaply as you
can board yourself."

It is probable that she read slow starvation in my face,
but I haughtily answered, "Thank you, I prefer to take
my meals out." As a matter of fact, I dreaded contact
with the other boarders.

As a member of the Union a certain number of lectures
were open to me and so night by night, in company with
my fellow "nuts," I called for my ticket and took my
place in line at the door, like a charity patient at a hos
pital. However, as I seldom occupied a seat to the ex
clusion of anyone else and as my presence usually helped
to keep the speaker in countenance, I had no qualms.

The Union audience was notoriously the worst au
dience in Boston, being in truth a group of intellectual

A Son of the Middle Border

mendicants waiting for oratorical hand-me-outs. If
we didn't happen to like the sandwiches or the dry
dough-nuts given us, we threw them down and walked
away.

Nevertheless in this hall I heard nearly all the great
preachers of the city, and though some of their cant
phrases worried me, I was benefited by the literary
allusions of others. Carpenter retained nothing of the
old-fashioned theology, and Hale was always a delight —
so was Minot Savage. Dr. Bartol, a quaint absorbing
survival of the Concord School of Philosophy, came
once, and I often went to his Sunday service. It was
always joy to enter the old West Meeting House for it
remained almost precisely as it was in Revolutionary
days. Its pews, its curtains, its footstools, its pulpit,
were all deliciously suggestive of the time when stately
elms looked in at the window, and when the minister,
tall, white-haired, black-cravatted arose in the high
pulpit and began to read with curious, sing-song cadences
a chant from Job I easily imagined myself listening to
Ralph Waldo Emerson.

His sermons held no cheap phrases and his sentences
delighted me by their neat literary grace. Once in an
address on Grant he said, "He was an atmospheric
man. He developed from the war-cloud like a bolt of
lightning." ?

Perhaps Minot Savage pleased me best of all for he too
was a disciple of Spencer, a logical, consistent, and fear
less evolutionist. He often quoted from the poets in his
sermon. Once he read Whitman's "Song of Myself"
with such power, such sense of rhythm that his congre
gation broke into applause at the end. I heard also
(at Tremont temple and elsewhere) men like George
William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, and Frederick
Douglas, but greatest of all in a certain sense was the

328

On to Boston

influence of Edwin Booth who taught me the greatness
of Shakespeare and the glory of English speech.

Poor as I was, I visited the old Museum night after
night, paying thirty-five cents which admitted me to
a standing place in the first balcony, and there on my
feet and in complete absorption, I saw in wondrous
procession Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Petruchio, Sir Giles
Overreach, Macbeth, lago, and Richelieu emerge from the
shadow and re-enact their tragic lives before my eyes.
These were my purple, splendid hours. From the light
of this glorious mimic world I stumbled down the stairs
out into the night, careless of wind or snow, my brain
in a tumult of revolt, my soul surging with high re
solves.

The stimulation of these performances was very great
The art of this "Prince of Tragedy" was a powerful
educational influence along the lines of oratory, poetry
and the drama. He expressed to me the soul of English
Literature. He exemplified the music of English speech.
His acting was at once painting and sculpture and music
and I became still more economical of food in order that
I might the more often bask in the golden atmosphere of
his world. I said, "I, too, will help to make the dead lines
of the great poets speak to the living people of today,'*
and with new fervor bent to the study of oratory as the
handmaid of poetry.

The boys who acted as ushers in the balcony came at
length to know me, and sometimes when it happened that
some unlucky suburbanite was forced to leave his seat
near the railing, one of the lads would nod at me and
allow me to slip down and take the empty place.

In this way I got closer to the marvellous lines of the
actor's face, and was enabled to read and record the
subtler, fleeter shadows of his expression. I have neve*
looked upon a face with such transcendent power of

329

A Son of the Middle Border

externalizing and differentiating emotions, and I have
never heard a voice of equal beauty and majesty.

Booth taught millions of Americans the dignity, the
power and the music of the English tongue. He set a
high mark in grace and precision of gesture, and the mys
terious force of his essentially tragic spirit made so
deep an impression upon those who heard him that they
confused him with the characters he portrayed. As for
me — I could not sleep for hours after leaving the theater.

Line by line I made mental note of the actor's gestures,
accents, and cadences and afterward wrote them care
fully down. As I closed my eyes for sleep I could hear
that solemn chant "Duncan is in his grave. After life's
fitful fever he sleeps well.1' With horror and admiration
I recalled him, when as Sir Giles, with palsied hand help
less by his side, his face distorted, he muttered as if to
himself, "Some undone widow sits upon my sword,"
or when as Petruchio in making a playful snatch at
Kate's hand with the blaze of a lion's anger in his eye
his voice rang out, "Were it the paw of an angry bear,
I'd smite it off— but as it's Kate's I kiss it."

To the boy from the cabin on the Dakota plain these
stage pictures were of almost incommunicable beauty
and significance. They justified me in all my daring.
They made any suffering past, present, or future, worth
while, and the knowledge that these glories were evanes
cent and that I must soon return to the Dakota plain
only deepened their power and added to the grandeur
of every scene.

Booth's home at this time was on Beacon Hill, and
I used to walk reverently by just to see where the
great man housed. Once, the door being open, \
caught a momentary glimpse of a curiously ornate um
brella stand, and the soft glow of a distant lamp, and
the vision greatly enriched me. This singularly endowed

330

On to Boston

artist presented to me the radiant summit of human
happiness and glory, and to see him walk in or out of his
door was my silent hope, but alas, this felicity was denied
me!

Under the spell of these performers, I wrote a series of
studies of the tragedian in his greatest roles. "Edwin
Booth as Lear," " Edwin Booth as Hamlet," and so on, re
cording with minutest fidelity every gesture, every accent,
till four of these impersonations were preserved on the
page as if in amber. I re-read my Shakespeare in the light
of Booth's eyes, in the sound of his magic voice, and
when the season ended, the city grew dark, doubly dark
for me. Thereafter I lived in the fading glory of that
month.

These were growing days ! I had moments of tremen
dous expansion, hours when my mind went out over the
earth like a freed eagle, but these flights were always
succeeded by fits of depression as I realized my weakness
and my poverty. Nevertheless I persisted in my studies.

Under the influence of Spencer I traced a parallel
development of the Arts and found a measure of scien
tific peace. Under the inspiration of Whitman I pondered
the significance of democracy and caught some part of
its spiritual import. With Henry George as guide, I
discovered the main cause of poverty and suffering in
the world, and so in my little room, living on forty cents
a day, I was in a sense profoundly happy. So long as I
had a dollar and a half with which to pay my rent and
two dollars for the keepers of the various dives in which
I secured my food, I was imaginatively the equal of Booth
and brother to the kings of song.

And yet one stern persistent fact remained, my money
was passing and I was growing weaker and paler every
day. The cockroaches no longer amused me. Coming as
I did from a land where the sky made up half the world

A Son of the Middle Border

I resented being thus condemned to a nook from which
I could see only a gray rag of mist hanging above a
neighboring chimney.

In the moments when I closely confronted my situa
tion the glory of the western sky came back to me, and
it must have been during one of these dreary storms that
I began to write a poor faltering little story which told
of the adventures of a cattleman in the city. No doubt
it was the expression of the homesickness at my own
heart but only one or two of the chapters ever took shape,
for I was tortured by the feeling that no matter how
great the intellectual advancement caused by hearing
Edwin Booth in Hamlet might be, it would avail me noth
ing when confronted by the school committee of Blank-
ville, Illinois.

I had moments of being troubled and uneasy and at
times experienced a feeling that was almost despair.

332

CHAPTER XXVH
Enter a Friend

night seeing that the principal of a well known
School of Oratory was bulletined to lecture at
the Young Men's Union upon "The Philosophy of Ex
pression" I went to hear him, more by way of routine than
with any expectation of being enlightened or even inter
ested, but his very first words surprised and delighted
me. His tone was positive, his phrases epigrammatic,
and I applauded heartily. "Here is a man of thought,"
I said.

At the close of the address I ventured to the platform
and expressed to him my interest in what he had said.
He was a large man with a broad and smiling face, framed
in a brown beard. He appeared pleased with my com
pliments and asked if I were a resident of Boston. "No,
I am a western man," I replied. "I am here to study
and I was especially interested in your quotations from
Darwin's book on Expression in Man and Animals"

His eyes expressed surprise and after a few minutes'
conversation, he gave me his card saying, "Come and see
me to-morrow morning at my office."

I went home pleasantly excited by this encounter.
After months of unbroken solitude in the midst of throngs
of strangers, this man's cordial invitation meant much to
me.

On the following morning, at the hour set, I called at
the door of his office on the top floor of No. 7 Beacon

333

A Son of the Middle Border

Street, which was an old-fashioned one-story building
without an elevator.

Brown asked me where I came from, what my plans
were, and I replied with eager confidence. Then we
grew harmoniously enthusiastic over Herbert Spencer
and Darwin and Mantegazza and I talked a stream <
My long silence found vent. Words poured from me in a
torrent but he listened smilingly, his big head cocked on
one side, waiting patiently for me to blow off steam.
Later, when given a chance, he showed me the manu
script of a book upon which he was at work and together
we discussed its main thesis. He asked me my opinion
of this passage and that — and I replied, not as a pupil
but as an equal, and the author seemed pleased at my
candor.

Two hours passed swiftly in this way and as the inter
view was about to end he asked, "Where do you live?"

I told him and explained that I was trying to fit my
self for teaching and that I was living as cheaply as pos
sible. "I haven't any money for tuition/' I confessed.

He mused a moment, then said, "If you wish to come
into my school I shall be glad to have you do so. Never
mind about tuition, — pay me when you can." j

This generous offer sent me away filled with gratitud
and an illogical hope. Not only had I gained a friend,
I had found an intellectual comrade, one who was far
more widely read, at least in science, than I. I went
to my ten-cent lunch with a feeling that a door had un
expectedly opened and that it led into broader, sunnier
fields of toil.

The school, which consisted of several plain offices
and a large class-room, was attended by some seventy
or eighty pupils, mostly girls from New England and
Canada with a few from Indiana and Ohio. It was a
simple little work-shop but to me it was the most im-

334

Enter a Friend

portant institution in Boston. It gave me welcome, and
as I came into it on Monday morning at nine o'clock and
was introduced to the pretty teacher of Delsarte, Miss
Maida Craigen, whose smiling lips and big Irish-gray
eyes made her beloved of all her pupils, I felt that my
lonely life in Boston was ended.

The teachers met me with formal kindliness, finding
in me only another crude lump to be moulded into form,
and while I did not blame them for it, I instantly drew
inside my shell and remained there — thus robbing my
self of much that would have done me good. Some of
the girls went out of their way to be nice to me, but I
kept aloof, filled with a savage resentment of my poverty
and my threadbare clothing.

Before the week was over, Professor Brown asked me
to assist in reading the proof-sheets of his new book and
this I did, going over it with him line by line. His def
erence to my judgment was a sincere compliment to
my reading and warmed my heart like some elixir. It
was my first authoritative appreciation and when at the
end of the third session he said, "I shall consider your
criticism more than equal to the sum of your tuition,"
I began to faintly forecast the time when my brain would
make me self-supporting.

My days were now cheerful. My life had direction.
For two hours each afternoon (when work in the school
was over) I sat with Brown discussing the laws of dra
matic art, and to make myself still more valuable in
this work, I read every listed book or article upon ex
pression, and translated several French authorities,
transcribing them in longhand for his use.

In this work the weeks went by and spring approached.
In a certain sense I felt that I was gaining an education
which would be of value to me but I was not earning one
cent of money, and my out-go was more than five dollars

335

A Sen of the Middle Border

per week, for I occasionally went to the theater, and I had
also begun attendance at the Boston Symphony concerts
in Music Hall.

By paying twenty-five cents students were allowed to
fill the gallery and to stand on the ground floor, and
Friday afternoons generally found me leaning against the
wall listening to Brahms and Wagner. At such times I
often thought of my mother, and my uncle David and
wished that they too might hear these wondrous har
monies. I tried to imagine what the effect of this tu
mult of sound would be, as it beat in upon their inherited
deeply musical brain-cells!

One by one I caught up the threads of certain other
peculiar Boston interests, and by careful reading of the
Transcript was enabled to vibrate in full harmony
with the local hymn of gratitude. New York became a
mere emporium, a town without a library, a city without
a first class orchestra, the home of a few commercial
painters and several journalistic poets! Chicago was a
huge dirty town on the middle border. Washington a
vulgar political camp — only Philadelphia was admitted
to have the quality of a real city and her literary and
artistic resources were pitiably slender and failing!

But all the time that I was feasting on these insub
stantial glories, my meat was being cut down and my
coat hung ever more loosely over my ribs. Pale and
languid I longed for spring, for sunshine, with all the
passion of a prisoner, and when at last the grass began
io show green in the sheltered places on the Common
and the sparrows began to utter their love notes, I went
often of an afternoon to a bench in lee of a clump of
trees and there sprawled out like a debilitated fox, bask
ing in the tepid rays of a diminished sun.

For all his expressed admiration of my literary and
scientific acumen, Brown did not see fit to invite me to

336

Enter a Friend

dinner, probably because of my n»Rty suit and frayed
cuffs. I did not blame him. I was in truth a shabby
figure, and the dark-brown beard which had come upon
me added to the unhealthy pallor of my skin, so that
Mrs. Brown, a rather smart and socially ambitious lady,
must have regarded me as something of an anarchist,
a person to avoid. She always smiled as we met, but her
smile was defensive.

However, a blessed break in the monotony of my fare
came during April when my friend Bashford invited me
to visit him in Portland. I accepted his invitation with
naive precipitation and furbished up my wardrobe as best
I could, feeling that even the wife of a clergyman might
not welcome a visitor with fringed cuffs and celluloid
collars.

This was my first sea voyage and I greatly enjoyed the
trip — after I got there!

Mrs. Bashford received me kindly, but (I imagined)
with a trace of official hospitality in her greeting. It
was plain that she (like Mrs. Brown) considered me a
" Charity Patient." Well, no matter, Bashford and I got
on smoothly.

Their house was large and its grandeur was almost
oppressive to me, but I spent nearly a week in it. As I
was leaving, Bashford gave me a card to Dr. Cross, a
former parishioner in Jamaica Plain, saying, "Call upon
the Doctor as soon as you return. He'll be glad to hear
of Dakota."

My little den in Boylston Place was almost intolerable
to me now. Spring sunshine, real sunshine flooded the
land and my heart was full of longing for the country.
Therefore — though I dreaded meeting another stranger, —
I decided to risk a dime and make the trip to Jamaica
Plains, to call upon Dr. Cross.

This ride was a further revelation of the beauty of New

337

A Son of the Middle Border

England. For half an hour the little horse-car ran along
winding lanes under great overarching elm trees, past
apple-orchards in bursting bloom. On every hand lus
cious lawns spread, filled with crocuses and dandelions
just beginning to spangle the green. The effect upon me
was somewhat like that which would be produced in the
mind of a convict who should suddenly find his prison
doors opening into a June meadow. Standing with
the driver on the front platform, I drank deep of the
flower-scented air. I had never seen anything more
beautiful.

Dr. Cross, a sweet and gentle man of about sixty years
of age (not unlike in manner and habit Professor Bush,
my principal at the Cedar Valley Seminary) received his
seedy visitor with a kindly smile. I liked him and
trusted him at once. He was tall and very thin, with
dark eyes and a long gray beard. His face was absolutely
without suspicion or guile. It was impossible to conceive
of his doing an unkind or hasty act, and he afterward
said that I had the pallor of a man who had been living
in a cellar. "I was genuinely alarmed about you," he
said.

His small frame house was simple, but it stood in the
midst of a clump of pear trees, and when I broke out in
lyrical praise of the beauty of the grass and glory of the
flowers, the doctor smiled and became even more dis
tinctly friendly. It appeared that through Mr. Bashford
he had purchased a farm in Dakota, and the fact that I
knew all about it and all about wheat farming gave me
distinction.

He introduced me to his wife, a wholesome hearty soul
who invited me to dinner. I stayed. It was my first
chance at a real meal since my visit to Portland, and I
left the house with a full stomach, as well as a full heart,
feeling that the world was not quite so unfriendly after

338

^ Enter a Friend

all. "Come again on Sunday," the doctor almost com
manded. "We shall expect you."

My money had now retired to the lower corner of my
left-hand pocket and it was evident that unless I called
upon my father for help I must go back to the West;
and much as I loved to talk of the broad fields and pleas
ant streams of Dakota, I dreaded the approach of the
hour when I must leave Boston, which was coming to
mean more and more to me every day.

In a blind vague way I felt that to leave Boston was to
leave all hope of a literary career and yet I saw no way of
earning money in the city. In the stress of my need I
thought of an old friend, a carpenter in Greenfield. "I'm
sure he will give me a job," I said.

With this in mind I went into Professor Brown's office
one morning and I said, "Well, Professor, I must leave
you."

"What's that? What's the matter?" queried the
principal shrilly.

"My money's gone. I've got to get out and earn
more," I answered sadly.

He eyed me gravely. "What are you going to do?"
he inquired.

"I am going back to shingling," I said with tragic
accent.

"Shingling!" the old man exclaimed, and then began
to laugh, his big paunch shaking up and down with the
force of his mirth. "Shingling!" he shouted finally.
" Can you shingle?"

" You bet I can," I replied with comical access of pride,
"but I don't like to. That is to say I don't like to give
up my work here in Boston just when I am beginning to
feel at home."

Brown continued to chuckle. To hear that a man who
knew Mantegazza and Darwin and Whitman and Brown-

339

A Son of the Middle Border

ing could even think of shingling, was highly humorous,
but as he studied my forlorn face he sensed the despairing
quiver in my voice and his kind heart softened. He
ceased to smile. "Oh, you mustn't do that," he said
earnestly. "You mustn't surrender now. We'll fix up
some way for you to earn vour keep. Can't you borrow
a little?"

"Yes, I could get a few dollars from home, but I don't
feel justified hi doing so, — times are hard out there and
besides I see no way of repaying a loan."

He pondered a moment, "Well, now I'll tell you what
we'll do. I'll make you our Instructor in Literature for
the summer term and I'll put your Booth lecture on the
programme. That will give you a start, and perhaps
something else will develop for the autumn."

This noble offer so emboldened me that I sent west for
twenty-five dollars to pay my board, and to have my suit
dyed. — It was the very same suit I had bought of the
Clark Street tailor, and the aniline purple had turned
pink along the seams — or if not pink it was some other
color equally noticeable in the raiment of a lecturer, and
not to be endured. I also purchased a new pair of shoes
and a necktie of the Windsor pattern. This cravat and
my long Prince Albert frock, while not strictly in fashion,
made me feel at least presentable.

Another piece of good fortune came to me soon after.
Dr. Cross again invited me to dine and after dinner as we
were driving together along one of the country lanes, the
good doctor said, "Mrs. Cross is going up into New
Hampshire for the summer and I shall be alone in the
house. Wliy don't you come and stay with me? You
need the open air, and I need company."

This generous offer nearly shipwrecked my dignity.
Several moments passed before I could control my voice
to thank him. At last I said, "That's very kind of you,

340

Enter a Friend

Doctor. I'll come if you will let me pay at least the cost
of my board."

The Doctor understood this feeling and asked, "How
r&uch are you paying nov. ? ' '

With slight evasion I replied, "Well, I try to keep
within five dollars a week."

He smiled. "I don't see how you do it, but I can give
you an attic room and you can pay me at your con
venience."

This noble invitation translated me from my dark,
cold, cramped den (with its night-guard of redoubtable
cockroaches) into the light and air of a comfortable
suburban home. It took me back to the sky and the
birds and the grass — and Irish Man*, the cook, put red
blood into my veins. In my sabbath walks along the
beautiful country roads, I heard again the song of
the cat-bird and the trill of the bobolink. For the first
time in months I slept in freedom from hunger, in security
of the morrow. Oh, good Hiram Cross, your golden
crown should be studded with jewels, for your life was
filled with kindnesses like this!

Meanwhile, in preparation for the summer term I
gladly helped stamp and mail Brown's circulars. The
lecture "Edwin Booth as Iago?' I carefully re- wrote
— for Brown had placed it on his printed programme and
had also announced me as "Instructor in Literature."
I took care to send this circular to all my friends and
relatives in the west.

Decidedly that summer of Taine in a Dakota cabin
was bearing fruit, and yet just in proportion as Brown
came to believe in my ability so did he proceed to "hec
tor" me. He never failed to ask of a morning, "Well,
when are you going back to shingling? "

The Summer School opened in July. It was well
attended, and the membership being made up of teachers

341

A Son of the Middle Border

of English and Oratory from several states was very im
pressive to me. Professors of elocution and of literature
from well-known colleges and universities gave dignity
and distinction to every session.

My class was very small and paid me very little but
it brought me to know Mrs. Payne, a studious, kindly
woman (a resident of Hyde Park), who for some reason
which will forever remain obscure, considered me not
merely a youth of promise, but a lecturer of value.
Having heard from Brown how sadly I needed money
— perhaps she even detected poverty in my dyed coat,
she not only invited me to deliver an immediate course
of lectures at her house in Hyde Park but proceeded to
force tickets upon all her friends.

The importance of this engagement will appear when
the reader is informed that I was owing the Doctor for a
month's board, and saw no way of paying it, and that
my one suit was distressingly threadbare. There are
other and more interesting ways of getting famous but
alas! I rose only by inches and incredible effort. My
reader must be patient with me.

My subjects were ambitious enough, "The Art of
Edwin Booth," was ready for delivery, but "Victor Hugo
and his Prose Masterpieces," was only partly composed
and "The Modern German Novel" and "The American
Novel" were in notes merely, therefore with puckered
brow and sturdy pen I set to work in my little attic room,
and there I toiled day and night to put on paper the no
tions I had acquired concerning these grandiose subjects.

In after years I was appalled at the audacity of that
schedule, and I think I had the grace to be scared at the
time, but I swung into it recklessly. Tickets had been
taken by some of the best known men among the teach
ers, and I was assured by Mrs. Payne that we would
have the most distinguished audience that ever graced

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Enter a Friend

Hyde Park. "Among your listeners will be the literary
editors of several Boston papers, two celebrated painters,
and several well-known professors of oratory," she said,
and like Lieutenant Napoleon called upon to demonstrate
his powers, I graved with large and ruthless fist, and
approached my opening date with palpitating but de
termined heart.

It was a tense moment for me as (while awaiting my
introduction) I looked into the faces of the men and
women seated in that crowded parlor. Just before the
dais, shading his eyes with his hand, was a small man with
a pale face and brown beard. This was Charles E. Hurd,
literary editor of the Transcript. Near him sat Theodore
Weld, as venerable in appearance as Socrates (with
long white hair and rosy cheeks) , well known as one of the
anti-slavery guard, a close friend of Wendell Phillips and
William Lloyd Garrison. Beside him was Professor
Raymond of Princeton, the author of several books,
while Churchill of Andover and half a dozen other rep
resentatives of great colleges loomed behind him. I
faced them all with a gambler's composure but behind
my mask I was jellied with fear.

However, when I rose to speak, the tremor passed out
of my limbs, the blood came back to my brain, and I
began without stammering. This first paper, fortunately
for us all, dealt with Edwin Booth, whom I revered. To
my mind he not only expressed the highest reach of
dramatic art in his day, he was the best living interpreter
of Shakespeare, and no doubt it was the sincerity of my
utterance which held my hearers, for they all listened in
tently while I analyzed the character of I ago, and dis
closed what seemed to me to be the sources of the great
tragedian's power, and when I finished they applauded
with unmistakable approval, and Mrs. Payne glowed with
a sense of proprietorship in her protege who had veiled

343

.-

A Son of the Middle Border

the opportunity and made it his. I was absurd but
triumphant.

Many of the guests (kindly of spirit) came up to shake
hands and congratulate me. Mr. Kurd gave me a close
grip and said, "Come up to the Transcript office and see
me." John J. Enneking, a big, awkward red-bearded
painter, elbowed up and in his queer German way spoke
in approval. Churchill, Raymond, both said, "You'll
do," and Brown finally came along with a mocking smile
on his big face, eyed me with an air of quizzical comrade
ship, nudged me slyly with his elbow as he went by, and
said, "Going back to shingling, are you?"

On the homeward drive, Dr. Cross said very solemnly,
"You have no need to fear the future."

It was a very small event in the histoiy of Hyde Park,
but it was a veritable bridge of Lodi for me. I never
afterward felt lonely or disheartened in Boston. I had
been tested both as teacher and orator and I must be
pardoned for a sudden growth of boyish self-confidence.

The three lectures which followed were not so success
ful as the first, but my audience remained. Indeed I
think it would have increased night by night had the
room permitted it, and Mrs. Payne was still perfectly
sure that her protege had in him all the elements of
success, but I fear Prof. Church expressed the sad truth
when he said in writing, "Your man Garland is a dia
mond in the rough!" Of course I must have appeared
very seedy and uncouth to these people and I am filled
with wonder at their kindness to me. My accent was
western. My coat sleeves shone at the elbows, my
trousers bagged at the knees. Considering the anarch I
must have been, I marvel at their toleration. No west
ern audience could have been more hospitable, more
cordial.

The ninety dollars which I gained from this series cf

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Enter a Friend

lectures was, let me say, the less important part of my
victory, and yet it was wondrous opportune. They
enabled me to cancel my indebtedness to the Doctor,
and still have a little something to keep me going until
my classes began in October, and as my landlord did
not actually evict me, I stayed on shamelessly, fattening
visibly on the puddings and roasts which Mrs. Cross
provided and dear old Mary cooked with joy. She was
the true artist. She loved to see her work appreciated.

My class in English literature that term numbered
twenty and the money which this brought carried me
through till the mid-winter vacation, and permitted
another glorious season of Booth and the Symphony
Orchestra. In the month of January I organized a class
in American Literature, and so at last became self-support
ing in the city of Boston! No one who has not been
through it can realize the greatness of this victory.

I permitted myself a few improvements in hose and
linen. I bought a leather hand-bag with a shoulder
strap, and every day joined the stream of clerks and
students crossing the Common. I began to feel a pro
prietary interest in the Hub. My sleeping room (also
my study), continued to be in the attic (a true attic with
a sloping roof and one window) but the window faced the
south, and in it I did all my reading and writing. It
was hot on sunny days and dark on cloudy days, but it
was a refuge.

As a citizen with a known habitation I was permitted
to carry away books from the library, and each morning
from eight until half-past twelve I sat at my desk writing,
tearing away at some lecture, or historical essay, and
once in a while I composed a few lines of verse. Five
afternoons in each week I went to my classes and to the
library, returning at six o'clock to my dinner and to
my reading. This was my routine, and I was happy in it.

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A Son of the Middle Border

My letters to my people in the west were confident,
more confident than I ofttimes felt.

During my second summer Burton Babcock, who had
decided to study for the Unitarian ministry, came east
with intent to enter the Divinity School at Harvard.
He was the same old Burton, painfully shy, thoughtful,
quaintly abrupt in manner, and together we visited the
authorities at Cambridge and presented his case as best
we could.

For some reason not clear to either of us, the school
refused to aid and after a week's stay with me Burton,
a little disheartened but not resentful, went to Meadville,
Pennsylvania. Boston seemed very wonderful to him
and I enjoyed his visit keenly. We talked inevitably of
old friends and old days in the manner of middle-aged
men, and he told me that John Gammons had entered the
Methodist ministry and was stationed in Decorah, that
Charles, my former partner in Dakota, had returned to the
old home very ill with some obscure disease. Mitchell
Morrison was a watch-maker and jeweler in Winona
and Lee Moss had gone to Superior. The scattering
process had begun. The diverging wind-currents of des
tiny had already parted our little group and every year
would see its members farther apart. How remote it
all seems to me now, — like something experienced on
another planet!

Each month saw me more and more the Bostonian by
adoption. My teaching paid my board, leaving me free
to study and to write. I never did any hack-work for the
newspapers. Hawthorne's influence over me was still
powerful, and in my first attempts at writing fiction I
kept to the essay form and sought for a certain distinc
tion in tone. In poetry, however, Bret Harte, Joaquin
Miller, and Walt Whitman were more to my way of
thinking than either Poe or Emerson. In brief I was sadly

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Enter a Friend

"mixed." Perhaps the enforced confinement of my city
life gave all poems of the open air, of the prairies, their
great and growing power over me for I had resolved to
remain in Boston until such time as I could return to the
West in the guise of a conqueror. Just what I was about
to conquer and in what way I was to secure eminence was
not very clear to me, but I was resolved none the less, and
had no immediate intention of returning.

In the summer of 1886 Brown held another Summer
School and again I taught a class. Autumn brought
a larger success. Mrs. Lee started a Browning Class in
Chelsea, and another loyal pupil organized a Shakespeare
class in Waltham. I enjoyed my trips to these classes
very much and one of the first stories I ever wrote was
suggested by some characters I saw in an old grocery
store in Waltham. As I recall my method of teaching,
it consisted chiefly of readings. My critical comment
could not have been profound.

I was earning now twelve dollars per week, part of this
went for railway fare, but I still had a margin of profit.
True I still wore reversible cuffs and carried my laundry
bundles in order to secure the discount, but I dressed in
better style and looked a little less like a starving Rus
sian artist, and I was becoming an author!

My entrance into print came about through my good
friend, Mr. Hurd, the book reviewer of the Transcript.
For him I began to write an occasional critical article or
poem just to try my hand. One of my regular " beats"
was up the three long flights of stairs which led to Kurd's
little den above Washington Street, for there I felt my
self a little more of the literary man, a little nearer the
current of American fiction.

Let me repeat my appreciation of the fact that I met
with the quickest response and the most generous aid
among the people of Boston. There was nothing cold

347

A Son of the Middle Border

or critical in their treatment of me. My success, ad
mittedly, came from some sympathy in them rather than
from any real deserving on my part. I cannot under
stand at this distance why those charming people should
have consented to receive from me, opinions concerning
anything whatsoever, — least of all notions of literature, —
but they did, and they seemed delighted at " discovering "
me. Perhaps they were surprised at finding so much
intelligence in a man from the plains.

It was well that I was earning my own living at last,
for things were not going especially well at home. A
couple of dry seasons had made a great change in the
fortunes of my people. Frank, with his usual careless
good nature as clerk in the store had given credit to
almost every comer, and as the hard times came on,
many of those indebted failed to pay, and father was
forced to give up his business and go back to the farm
which he understood and could manage without the aid
of an accountant.

"The Junior" as I called my brother, being foot
loose and discontented, wrote to say that he was planning
to go farther west — to Montana, I think it was. His
letter threw me into dismay. I acknowledged once
again that my education had in a sense been bought at
his expense. I recalled the many weeks when the little
chap had plowed in my stead whilst I was enjoying the
inspiration of Osage. It gave me distress to think of him
separating himself from the family as David had done,
and yet my own position was too insecure to warrant me
promising much in his aid. Nevertheless, realizing that
mother would suffer less if she knew her two sons were
together, I wrote, saying, "If you have definitely de
cided on leaving home, don't go west. Come to Boston,
and I will see if I cannot get you something to do."

It ended in his coming to Boston, and my mother wa»
348

Enter a Friend

profoundly relieved. Father gave no sign either of pleas
ure or regret. He set to work once more increasing his
acreage, vigorous and unsubdued.

Frank's coming added to my burden of responsibility
and care, but increased my pleasure in the city, for I
now had someone to show it to. He secured a position
as an accountant in a railway office and though we seldom
met during the week, on Sundays we roamed the parks,
or took excursions down the bay, and in a short time
he too became an enthusiastic Bostonian with no
thought of returning to Dakota. Little Jessie was now
the sole stay and comfort of our mother.

As I look back now upon the busy, happy days of
1885 and 1886, I can grasp only a few salient expe
riences. ... A terrific storm is on the sea. We are at
Nantasket to study it. The enormous waves are charging
in from the illimitable sky like an army of horses, only
to fall and waste themselves in wrath upon the sand. I
feel the stinging blast against my face. ... I am riding
on a train over the marshes on my way to my class in
Chelsea. I look across the level bay and behold a soaring
banner of sunshot mist, spun by a passing engine, rising,
floating, vanishing in the air. ... I am sitting in an
old grocery shop in Waltham listening to the quaint
aphorism of a group of loafers around the stove. . . .
I am lecturing before a summer school in Pepperel, New
Hampshire. ... I am at the theater, I hear Salvini
thunderously clamoring on the stage. I see Modjeska's
beautiful hands. I thrill to Sarah Bernhardt's velvet
somber voice. . . .

It is summer, Frank and I are walking the lovely
lanes of Milton under gigantic elms, or lying on the grass
of the park in West Roxbury, watching the wild birds
come and go, hearing the sound of the scythestone in the
meadow. Day by day, week by week, Boston, New Eng-

349

A Son of the Middle Border

land, comes to fuse that part of me which is eastern. 1
grow at last into thinking myself a fixture. Boston is
the center of music, of art, of literature. My only wish
now is to earn money enough to visit my people in the
West.

And yet, notwithstanding all this, neither of us ever
really became a Bostonian. We never got beyond a feel
ing for the beauty, the picturesqueness and the charm
of our surroundings. The East caused me to cry out in
admiration, but it did not inspire me to write. It did
not appeal to me as my material. It was rather as a story
already told, a song already sung.

When I walked a lane, or saw the sloping roof of a
house set against a hillside I thought of Whittier or
Hawthorne and was silent. The sea reminded me of
Celia Thaxter or Lucy Larcom. The marshes brought
up the Wayside Inn of Longfellow; all, all was of the past.
New England, rich with its memories of great men and
noble women, had no direct inspiration for me, a son of
the West. It did not lay hold upon my creative imagina
tion, neither did it inspire me to sing of its glory. I
remained immutably of the Middle Border and strange
to say, my desire to celebrate the West was growing.

Each season dropped a thickening veil of mist between
me and the scenes of my youth, adding a poetic glamour
to every rememberable form and fact. Each spring
when the smell of fresh, uncovered earth returned to fret
my nostrils I thought of the wide fields of Iowa, of the
level plains of Dakota, and a desire to hear once more the
prairie chicken calling from the ridges filled my heart.
In the autumn when the wind swept through the bare
branches of the elm, I thought of the lonely days of
plowing on the prairie, and the poetry and significance
of those wild gray days came over me with such power
that I instinctively seized my pen to write of them.

Enter a Friend

One day, a man shoveling coal in the alley below my
window reminded me of that peculiar ringing scrape
which the farm shovel used to make when (on the Iowa
farm) at dusk I scooped my load of corn from the wagon
box to the crib, and straightway I fell a-dreaming, and
from dreaming I came to composition, and so it happened
that my first writing of any significance was an article
depicting an Iowa corn-husking scene.

It was not merely a picture of the life my brother and
I had lived, — it was an attempt to set forth a typical
scene of the Middle Border. "The Farm Life of New
England has been fully celebrated by means of innu
merable stories and poems," I began, "its husking bees,
its dances, its winter scenes are all on record; is it not
time that we of the west should depict our own distinc
tive life? The middle border has its poetry, its beauty,
if we can only see it."

To emphasize these differences I called this first article
"The Western Corn Husking," and put into it the grim
report of the man who had "been there," an insistence
on the painful as well as the pleasant truth, a quality
which was discovered afterwards to be characteristic of
my work. The bitter truth was strongly developed in
this first article.

-Up to this time I had composed nothing except several
more or less high-falutin7 essays, a few poems and one or
two stories somewhat in imitation of Hawthorne, but
in this my first real shot at the delineation of prairie life,
I had no models. Perhaps this clear field helped me to be
true. It was not fiction, as I had no intention at that time
of becoming a fictionist, but it was fact, for it included
the mud and cold of the landscape as well as its bloom
and charm.

I sent "The Corn Husking" to the New American Mag
azine, and almost by return mail the editor, William

A Son of the Middle Border

Wyckoff, wrote an inspiring letter to the effect that the
life I had described was familiar to him, and that it had
never been treated in this way. "I shall be very glad
to read anything you have written or may write, and
I suggest that you follow up this article by others of the
same nature."

It was just the encouragement I needed. I fell to
work at once upon other articles, taking up the seasons
one by one. Wyckoff accepted them gladly, but paid
for them slowly and meagerly — but I did not blame him
for that. His magazine was even then struggling for
life.

It must have been about this time that I sold to Har
per's Weekly a long poem of the prairie, for which I was
paid the enormous sum of twenty-five dollars. With this,
the first money I ever had received for magazine writing,
I hastened to purchase some silk for my mother, and
the Memoirs of General Grant for my father, with intent
to suitably record and celebrate my entrance into lit
erature. For the first time in her life, my mother was
able to wear a silk dress, and she wrote, soon after, a
proud and grateful letter saying things which blurred
my eyes and put a lump into my throat. If only I could
have laid the silk in her lap, and caught the light of her
happy smile!

352

CHAPTER XXVIH

A Visit to the West

AT twenty-seven years of age, and after having been
^/\_ six years absent from Osage, the little town in
which I went to school, I found myself able to re- visit
it. My earnings were still humiliatingly less than those
of a hod-carrier, but by shameless economy I had saved
a little over one hundred dollars and with this as a travel
ling fund, I set forth at the close of school, on a vacation
tour which was planned to include the old home in the
Coulee, the Iowa farm, and my father's house in Dakota.
I took passage in a first class coach this time, but was
still a long way from buying a berth in a sleeping car.

To find myself actually on the train and speeding west
ward was deeply and pleasurably exciting, but I did not
realize how keen my hunger for familiar things had grown,
till the next day when I reached the level lands of Indi
ana. Every field of wheat, every broad hat, every
honest treatment of the letter "r" gave me assur
ance that I was approaching my native place. The
reapers at work in the fields filled my mind with visions
of the past. The very weeds at the roadside had a
magical appeal and yet, eager as I was to reach old friends,
I found in Chicago a new friend whose sympathy was so
stimulating, so helpful that I delayed my journey for
two days in order that I might profit by his critical
comment.

This meeting came about in a literary way. Some
moatb* earlier, in May, to be exact, Hurd of the Trans-

353

A Son of the Middle Border

cript had placed in my hands a novel called Zury and my
review of it had drawn from its author, a western man,
a letter of thanks and a cordial invitation to visit him
as I passed through Chicago, on my way to my old
home. This I had gladly accepted, and now with keen
interest, I was on my way to his home.

Joseph Kirkland was at this time nearly sixty years of
age, a small, alert, dark-eyed man, a lawyer, who lived
in what seemed to me at the time, plutocratic grandeur,
but in spite of all this, and notwithstanding the differ
ence in our ages, I liked him and we formed an immedi
ate friendship. "Mrs. Kirkland and my daughters are
in Michigan for the summer, " he explained, "and I
am camping in my study." I was rather glad of this
arrangement for, having the house entirely to ourselves,
we could discuss realism, Howells and the land-question
with full vigor and all night if we felt like it.

Kirkland had read some of my western sketches and
in the midst of his praise of them suddenly asked, "Why
don't you write fiction?"

To this I replied, "I can't manage the dialogue."

"Nonsense!" said he. "You're lazy, that's all. You
use the narrative form because it's easier. Buckle to
it — you can write stories as well as I can — but you
must sweat!"

This so surprised me that I was unable to make any
denial of his charge. The fact is he was right. To
compose a page of conversation, wherein each actor
uses his own accent and speaks from his own point of
view, was not easy. I had dodged the hard spots.

The older man's bluntness and humor, and his almost
wistful appreciation of my youth and capacity for being
moved, troubled me, absorbed my mind even during our
talk. Some of his words stuck like burrs, because they
seemed so absurd. "When your name is known all over

354

A Visit to the West

the West," he said in parting, "remember what I say.
You can go far if you'll only work. I began too late. I
can't emotionalize present day western life — you can,
but you must bend to your desk like a man. You must
grind!"

I didn't feel in the least like a successful fictionist
and being a household word seemed very remote, — but
I went away resolved to " grind" if grinding would do
any good.

Once out of the city, I absorbed "atmosphere" like a
sponge. It was with me no longer (as in New England)
a question of warmed-over themes and appropriated
characters. Whittier, Hawthorne, Holmes, had no con
nection with the rude life of these prairies. Each weedy
field, each wire fence, the flat stretches of grass, the
leaning Lombardy trees, — everything was significant
rather than beautiful, familiar rather than picturesque.

Something deep and resonant vibrated within my brain
as I looked out upon this monotonous commonplace
landscape. I realized for the first time that the east
had surfeited me with picturesqueness. It appeared that
I had been living for six years amidst painted, neatly
arranged pasteboard scenery. Now suddenly I dropped
to the level of nature unadorned, down to the ugly un
kempt lanes I knew so well, back to the pungent realities
of the streamless plain.

Furthermore I acknowledged a certain responsibility
for the conditions of the settlers. I felt related to them,
an intolerant part of them. Once fairly out among the
fields of northern Illinois everything became so homely,
uttered itself so piercingly to me that nothing less than
song could express my sense of joy, of power. This was
my country — these my people.

It was the third of July, a beautiful day with a radiant
sky, darkened now and again with sudden showers.

355

A Son of the Middle Border

Great clouds, trailing veils of rain, enveloped the engine
as it roared straight into the west, — for an instant all was
dark, then forth we burst into the brilliant sunshine
careening over the green ridges as if drawn by run-away
dragons with breath of flame.

It was sundown when I crossed the Mississippi river
(at Dubuque) and the scene which I looked out upon
will forever remain a splendid page in my memory.
The coaches lay under the western bluffs, but away to
the south the valley ran, walled with royal purple, and
directly across the flood, a beach of sand flamed under
the sunset light as if it were a bed of pure untarnished
gold. Behind this an island rose, covered with noble
trees which suggested all the romance of the immemorial
river. The redman's canoe, the explorer's batteau, the
hunter's lodge, the emigrant's cabin, all stood related to
that inspiring vista. For the first time in my life I
longed to put this noble stream into verse.

All that day I had studied the land, musing upon its
distinctive qualities, and while I acknowledged the nat
ural beauty of it, I revolted from the gracelessness of its
human habitations. The lonely box-like farm-houses on
the ridges suddenly appeared to me like the dens of
wild animals. The lack of color, of charm in the lives
of the people anguished me. I wondered why I had never
before perceived the futility of woman's life on a farm.

I asked myself, "Why have these stern facts never
been put into our literature as they have been used in
Russia and in England? Why has this land no story
tellers like those who have made Massachusetts and New
Hampshire illustrious?"

These and many other speculations buzzed in my brain.
Each moment was a revelation of new uglinesses as well as
of remembered beauties.

At four o'clock of a wet morning I arrived at Charles

356

A Visit to the West

City, from which I was to take "the spur" for Osage.
Stiffened and depressed by my night's ride, I stepped
out upon the platform and watched the train as it passed
on, leaving me, with two or three other silent and sleepy
passengers, to wait until seven o'clock in the morning
for the " accommodation train." I was still busy with my
problem, but the salient angles of my interpretation
were economic rather than literary.

Walking to and fro upon the platform, I continued to
ponder my situation. In a few hours I would be among
my old friends and companions, to measure and be
measured. Six years before I had left them to seek my
fortune in the eastern world. I had promised little, —
fortunately — and I was returning, without the pot of
gold and with only a tinge of glory.

Exteriorly I had nothing but a crop of sturdy whiskers
to show for my years of exile but mentally I was much en
riched. Twenty years of development lay between my
thought at the moment and those of my simpler days.
My study of Spencer, Whitman and other of the great
leaders of the world, my years of absorbed reading in the
library, my days of loneliness and hunger in the city
had swept me into a far bleak land of philosophic doubt
where even the most daring of my classmates would
hesitate to follow me.

A violent perception of the mysterious, the irrevocable
march of human Hfe swept over me and I shivered before
a sudden realization of the ceaseless change and shift
of western life and landscape. How few of those I knew
were there to greet me! Walter and Charles were dead,
Maud and Lena were both married, and Burton was
preaching somewhere in the West.

Six short years had made many changes in the little
town and it was in thinking upon these changes that I
reached a full realization of the fact that I was no longer

357

A Son of the Middle Border

a "promising boy" of the prairie but a man, with a
notion of human life and duty and responsibility which
was neither cheerful nor resigned. I was returning as
from deep valleys, from the most alien climate.

Looking at the sky above me, feeling the rush of the
earth beneath my feet I saw how much I had dared and
how little, how pitifully little I had won. Over me the
ragged rainclouds swept, obscuring the stars and in their
movement and in the feeling of the dawn lay something
illimitable and prophetic. Such moments do not come
to men often — but to me for an hour, life was painfully
purposeless. "What does it all mean? " I asked myself.

At last the train came, and as it rattled away to the
north and I drew closer to the scenes of my boyhood,
my memory quickened. The Cedar rippling over its
limestone ledges, the gray old mill and the pond where
I used to swim, the farm-houses with their weedy lawns,
all seemed not only familiar but friendly, and when
at last I reached the station (the same grimy little den
from which I had started forth six years before), I
rose from my seat with the air of a world-traveller and
descended upon the warped and splintered platform,
among my one time friends and neighbors, with quickened
pulse and seeking eye.

It was the fourth of July and a crowd was at the station,
but though I recognized half the faces, not one of them
lightened at sight of me. The 'bus driver, the ragged old
dray-man (scandalously profane), the common loafers
shuffling about, chewing and spitting, seemed absolutely
unchanged. One or two elderly citizens eyed me closely
as I slung my little Boston valise with a long strap over
my shoulder and started up the billowing board sidewalk
toward the center of the town, but I gave out no word of
recognition. Indeed I took a boyish pride in the dis
guising effect of my beard.

358

A Visit to the West

How small and flat and leisurely the village seemed!
The buildings which had once been so imposing in my
eyes were now of very moderate elevation indeed, and
the opera house was almost indistinguishable from the
two-story structures which flanked it; but the trees had
increased in dignity, and some of the lawns were lovely.

With eyes singling out each familiar object I loitered
along the walk. There stood the grimy wagon shop from
which a hammer was ringing cheerily, like the chirp of a
cricket, — just as aforetime. Orrin Blakey stood at the
door of his lumber yard surveying me with curious eyes
but I passed him in silence. I wished to spend an hour
or two in going about in guise of a stranger. There was
something instructive as well as deliciously exciting in
thus seeing old acquaintances as from behind a mask.
They were at once familiar and mysterious — mysterious
with my new question, "Is this life worth living?"

The Merchants' Hotel which once appeared so luxu
rious (within the reach only of great lecturers like Joseph
Cook and Wendell Phillips) had declined to a shabby
frame tavern, but entering the dining room I selected a
seat near an open window, from which I could look out
upon the streets and survey the throng of thickening
sightseers as they moved up and down before me like
the figures in a vitascope.

I was waited upon by a slatternly girl and the break
fast she brought to me was so bad (after Mary's cooking)
that I could only make a pretense of eating it, but I
kept my seat, absorbed by the forms coming and going,
almost within the reach of my hand. Among the first
to pace slowly by was Lawyer Ricker, stately, solemn and
bibulous as ever, his red beard flowing over a vest un
buttoned in the manner of the old-fashioned southern
gentleman, his spotless linen and neat tie showing that
his careful, faithful wife was still on guard.

359

A Son of the Middle Border

Him I remembered for his astounding ability to recite
poetry by the hour and also because of a florid speech
which I once heard him make in the court room. For
six mortal hours he spoke on a case involving the stealing
of a horse-blanket worth about four dollars and a half.
In the course of his argument he ranged with leisurely
self-absorption, from ancient Egypt and the sacred
Crocodile down through the dark ages, touching at Athens
and Mount Olympus, reviewing Rome and the court of
Charlemagne, winding up at four P. M. with an im
passioned appeal to the jury to remember the power of
environment upon his client. I could not remember how
the suit came out, but I did recall the look of stupefaction
which rested on the face of the accused as he found him
self likened to Gurth the swine-herd and a peasant of
Carcassone.

Ricker seemed quite unchanged save for the few gray
hairs which had come into his beard and, as he stood in
conversation with one of the merchants of the town, his
nasal voice, his formal speech and the grandiloquent
gesture of his right hand brought back to me all the
stones I had heard of his drinking and of his wife's heroic
rescuing expeditions to neighboring saloons. A strange,
unsatisfactory end to a man of great natural ability.

Following him came a young girl leading a child of ten.
I knew them at once. Ella McKee had been of the size
of the little one, her sister, when I went away, and nothing
gave me a keener realization of the years which had
passed than the flowering of the child I had known into
this charming maiden of eighteen. Her resemblance to
her sister Flora was too marked to be mistaken, and the
little one by her side had the same flashing eyes and
radiant smile with which both of her grown up sisters
were endowed. Their beauty fairly glorified the dingy
street as they walked past my window.

360

A Visit to the West

Then an old farmer, bent and worn of frame, halted
before me to talk with a merchant. This was David
Babcock, Burton's father, one of our old time neighbors,
a little more bent, a little thinner, a little grayer — that
was all, and as I listened to his words I asked, " What pur
pose does a man serve by toiling like that for sixty years
with no increase of leisure, with no growth in mental
grace? "

There was a wistful note in his voice which went
straight to my heart. He said: "No, our wheat crop
ain't a-going to amount to much this year. Of course we
don't try to raise much grain — it's mostly stock, but I
thought I'd try wheat again. I wisht we could get back
to the good old days of wheat raising — it w'ant so con
fining as stock-raisin'." His good days were also in the
past!

As I walked the street I met several neighbors from
Dry Run as well as acquaintances from the Grove.
Nearly all, even the young men, looked worn and weather-
beaten and some appeared both silent and sad. Laughter
was curiously infrequent and I wondered whether in my
days on the farm they had all been as rude of dress, as
misshapen of form and as wistful of voice as they now
seemed to me to be. "Have times changed? Has a spirit
of unrest and complaining developed in the American
farmer?"

I perceived the town from the triple viewpoint of a
former resident, a man from the city, and a reformer, and
every minutest detail of dress, tone and gesture revealed
new meaning to me. Fancher and Gammons were
feebler certainly, and a little more querulous with age,
and their faded beards and rough hands gave pathetic
evidence of the hard wear of wind and toil. At the mo
ment nothing glozed the essential tragic futility of their
existence.

361

A Son of the Middle Border

Then down the street came "The Ragamuffins," the
little Fourth of July procession, which in the old days
had seemed so funny, so exciting to me. I laughed no
more. It filled me with bitterness to think that such a
makeshift spectacle could amuse anyone. " How dull and
eventless life must be to enable such a pitiful travesty to
attract and hold the attention of girls like Ella and
Flora/' I thought as I saw them standing with their
little sister to watch "the parade."

From the window of a law office, Emma and Matilda
Leete were leaning and I decided to make myself known
to them. Emma, who had been one of my high admira
tions, had developed into a handsome and interesting
woman with very little of the village in her dress or ex
pression, and when I stepped up to her and asked, "Do
you know me? " her calm gray eyes and smiling lips de
noted humor. "Of course I know you — in spite of the
beard. Come in and sit with us and tell all us about
yourself."

As we talked, I found that they, at least, had kept in
touch with the thought of the east, and Ella understood
in some degree the dark mood which I voiced. She, too,
occasionally doubted whether the life they were all living
was worth while. "We make the best of it," she said,
"but none of us are living up to our dreams."

Her musical voice, thoughtful eyes and quick intelli
gence, re-asserted their charm, and I spent an hour or
more in her company talking of old friends. It was not
necessary to talk down to her. She was essentially urban
in tone while other of the girls who had once impressed
me with their beauty had taken on the airs of village
matrons and did not interest me. If they retained as
pirations they concealed the fact. Their husbands and
children entirely occupied their minds.

Returning to the street, I introduced myself to Uncle
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A Visit to the West

Billy Fraser and Osmund Button and other Sun Prairie
neighbors and when it became known that "Dick Gar
land's boy " was in town, many friends gathered about
to shake my hand and inquire concerning "Belle " and
"Dick."

The hard, crooked fingers, which they laid in my palm
completed the sorrowful impression which their faces
had made upon me. A twinge of pain went through my
heart as I looked into their dim eyes and studied their
heavy knuckles. I thought of the hand of Edwin Booth,
of the flower-like palm of Helena Modjeska, of the subtle
touch of Inness, and I said, "Is it not time that the hu
man hand ceased to be primarily a bludgeon for hammer
ing a bare living out of the earth? Nature all bountiful,
undiscriminating, would, under justice, make such toil
unnecessary." My heart burned with indignation. With
William Morris and Henry George I exclaimed, "Nature
is not to blame. Man's laws are to blame," — but of this
I said nothing at the time — at least not to men like Bab-
cock and Fraser.

Next day I rode forth among the farms of Dry Run,
retracing familiar lanes, standing under the spreading
branches of the maple trees I had planted fifteen years
before. I entered the low stone cabin wherein Neighbor
Button had lived for twenty years (always intending
sometime to build a house and make a granary of this),
and at the table with the family and the hired men, I
ate again of Ann's "riz " biscuit and sweet melon pickles.
It was not a pleasant meal, on the contrary it was de
pressing to me. The days of the border were over, and
yet Arvilla his wife was ill and aging, still living in
pioneer discomfort toiling like a slave.

At neighbor Gardner's home, I watched his bent
complaining old wife housekeeping from dawn to dark,
Mterally dying on her feet. William Knapp's home was

363

A Son of the Middle Border

somewhat improved but the men still came to the table
in their shirt sleeves smelling of sweat and stinking of the
stable, just as they used to do, and Mrs. Knapp grown
more gouty, more unwieldly than ever (she spent twelve
or fourteen hours each day on her swollen and aching
feet), moved with a waddling motion because, as she
explained, "I can't limp — I'm just as lame in one laig
as I am in t'other. But 'tain't no use to complain, I've
just so much work to do and I might as well go ahead
and do it."

I slept that night in her "best room," yes, at last,
after thirty years of pioneer life, she had a guest chamber
and a new " bed-room soot." With open pride and joy
she led Belle Garland's boy in to view this precious ac
quisition, pointing out the soap and towels, and carefully
removing the counterpane! I understood her pride, for
my mother had not yet acquired anything so luxurious
as this. She was still on the border!

Next day, I called upon Andrew Ainsley and while
the women cooked in a red-hot kitchen, Andy stubbed
about the barnyard in his bare feet, showing me his
hogs and horses. Notwithstanding his town-visitor and
the fact that it was Sunday, he came to dinner in a dirty,
sweaty, collarless shirt, and I, sitting at his oil-cloth
covered table, slipped back, deeper, ever deeper among
the stern realities of the life from which I had emerged.
I recalled that while my father had never allowed his
sons or the hired men to come to the table unwashed or
uncombed, we usually ate while clothed in our sweaty
garments, glad to get food into our mouths in any decent
fashion, while the smell of the horse and the cow mingled
with the savor of the soup. There is no escape even
on a modern " model farm" from the odor of the barn.

Every house I visited had its individual message of
sordid struggle and half-hidden despair. Agnes had

364

A Visit to the West

married and moved away to Dakota, and Bess had taken
upon her girlish shoulders the burdens of wifehood and
motherhood almost before her girlhood had reached its
first period of bloom. In addition to the work of being
cook and scrub-woman, she was now a mother and
nurse. As I looked around upon her worn chairs, faded
rag carpets, and sagging sofas, — the bare walls of her
pitiful little house seemed a prison. I thought of her as
she was in the days of her radiant girlhood and my
throat filled with rebellious pain.

All the gilding of farm life melted away. The hard
and bitter realities came back upon me in a flood. Nature
was as beautiful as ever. The soaring sky was filled with
shining clouds, the tinkle of the bobolink's fairy bells rose
from the meadow, a mystical sheen was on the odor
ous grass and waving grain, but no splendor of cloud, no
grace of sunset could conceal the poverty of these people,
on the contrary they brought out, with a more intol
erable poignancy, the gracelessness of these homes, and
the sordid quality of the mechanical daily routine of these
lives.

I perceived beautiful youth becoming bowed and bent.
I saw lovely girlhood wasting away into thin and hope
less age. Some of the women I had known had withered
into querulous and complaining spinsterhood, and I
heard ambitious youth cursing the bondage of the farm.
"Of such pain and futility are the lives of the average
man and woman of both city and country composed,"
I acknowledged to myself with savage candor, "Why
lie about it?"

Some of my playmates opened their acrid hearts to
me. My presence stimulated their discontent. I was
one of them, one who having escaped had returned as
from some far-off glorious land of achievement. My
improved dress, my changed manner of speech, every-

365

'

A Son of the Middle Border

thing I said, roused in them a kind of rebellious rage
and gave them unwonted power of expression. Their
mood was no doubt transitory, but it was as real as my
own.

Men who were growing bent in digging into the soil
spoke to me of their desire to see something of the great
eastern world before they died. Women whose eyes
were faded and dun with tears, listened to me with
almost breathless interest whilst I told them of the great
cities I had seen, of wonderful buildings, of theaters,
of the music of the sea. Young girls expressed to me
their longing for a life which was better worth wMle,
and lads, eager for adventure and excitement, confided
to me their secret intention to leave the farm at the
earliest moment. "I don't intend to wear out my life
drudging on this old place," said Wesley Fancher with a
bitter oath.

In those few days, I perceived life without its glamor.
I no longer looked upon these toiling women with the
thoughtless eyes of youth. I saw no humor in the bent
forms and graying hair of the men. I began to under
stand that my own mother had trod a similar slavish
round with never a full day of leisure, with scarcely an
hour of escape from the tugging hands of children, and
the need of mending and washing clothes. I recalled
her as she passed from the churn to the stove, from the
stove to the bedchamber, and from the bedchamber
back to the kitchen, day after day, year after year,
rising at daylight or before, and going to her bed only
after the evening dishes were washed and the stockings
and clothing mended for the night.

The essential tragedy and hopelessness of most human
life under the conditions into which our society was
"\ swiftly hardening embittered me, called for expression,
/ but even then I did not know that I had found my theme.

366

A Visit to the West

I had no intention at the moment of putting it into
fiction.

The reader may interrupt at this point to declare that
all life, even the life of the city is futile, if you look at it
in that way, and I reply by saying that I still have mo
ments when I look at it that way. What is it all about,
anyhow, this life of ours? Certainly to be forever weary
and worried, to be endlessly soiled with thankless labor
and to grow old before one's time soured and disap
pointed, is not the whole destiny of man!

Some of these things I said to Emma and Matilda but
their optimism was too ingrained to yield to my gray
mood. " We can't afford to grant too much," said Emma.
"We are in it, you see."

Leaving the village of Osage, with my mind still in a
tumult of revolt, I took the train for the Northwest,
eager to see my mother and my little sister, yet beginning
to dread the changes which I must surely find in them.
Not only were my senses exceedingly alert and impres
sionable, my eyes saw nothing but the loneliness and
the lack of beauty in the landscape, and the farther west
I went, the lonelier became the boxlike habitations of the
plain. Here were the lands over which we had hurried
in 1 88 1, lured by the "Government Land" of the farther
west. Here, now, a kind of pioneering behind the lines
was going on. The free lands were gone and so, at last,
the price demanded by these speculators must be paid.

This wasteful method of pioneering, this desolate
business of lonely settlement took on a new and tragic
significance as I studied it. Instructed by my new philos
ophy I now perceived that these plowmen, these wives
and daughters had been pushed out into these lonely
ug]y shacks by the force of landlordism behind. These
plodding Swedes and Danes, these thrifty Germans, these
hairy Russians had all fled from the feudalism of their

A Son of the Middle Border

native lands and were here because they had no share
in the soil from which they sprung, and because in the
settled communities of the eastern states, the speculative
demand for land had hindered them from acquiring even
a leasing right to the surface of the earth.

I clearly perceived that our Song of Emigration had
been, in effect, the hymn of fugitives!

And yet all this did not prevent me from acknowledging
the beauty of the earth. On the contrary, social injustice
intensified nature's prodigality. I said, "Yes, the land
scape is beautiful, but how much of its beauty pen
etrates to the heart of the men who are in the midst of it
and battling with it? How much of consolation does the
worn and weary renter find in the beauty of cloud and
tree or in the splendor of the sunset? — Grace of flower
does not feed or clothe the body, and when the toiler is
both badly clothed and badly fed, bird-song and leaf-
shine cannot bring content." Like Millet, I asked,
"Why should all of a man's waking hours be spent in an
effort to feed and clothe his family? Is there not some
thing wrong in our social scheme when the unremitting
toiler remains poor?"

With such thoughts filling my mind, I passed through
this belt of recent settlement and came at last into the val
ley of the James. One by one the familiar flimsy little
wooden towns were left behind (strung like beads upon
a string) , and at last the elevator at Ordway appeared on
the edge of the horizon, a minute, wavering projection
against the skyline, and half an hour later we entered the
village, a sparse collection of weatherbeaten wooden
houses, without shade of trees or grass of ]awns, a
desolate, drab little town.

Father met me at the train, grayer of beard and hair,
but looking hale and cheerful, and his voice, his peculiar
expressions swept away all my city experience. In an

368*

A Visit to the West

instant I was back precisely where I had been when I
left the farm. He was Captain, I was a corporal in the
rear ranks.

And yet he was distinctly less harsh, less keen. He
had mellowed. He had gained in sentiment, in philos
ophy, that was evident, and as we rode away toward the
farm we fell into intimate, almost tender talk.

I was glad to note that he had lost nothing either in
dignity or manliness in my eyes. His speech though
sometimes ungrammatical was vigorous and precise and
his stories gave evidence of his native constructive skill.
"Your mother is crazy to see you," he said, "but I have
only this one-seated buggy, and she couldn't come down
to meet you."

When nearly a mile away I saw her standing outside
the door of the house waiting for us, so eager that she
could not remain seated, and as I sprang from the car
riage she came hurrying out to meet me, uttering a cu
rious little murmuring sound which touched me to the
heart.

The changes in her shocked me, filled me with a sense
of guilt. Hesitation was in her speech. Her voice once
so glowing and so jocund, was tremulous, and her brown
hair, once so abundant, was thin and gray. I realized
at once that in the three years of my absence she had
topped the high altitude of her life and was now descend
ing swiftly toward defenseless age, and in bitter sadness
I entered the house to meet my sister Jessie who was
almost a stranger to me.

She had remained small and was quaintly stooped in
neck and shoulders but retained something of her child
ish charm. To her I was quite alien, in no sense a
brother. She was very reticent, but it did not take me
long to discover that in her quiet fashion she commanded
the camp. For all his military bluster, the old soldier

369

A Son of the Middle Border

was entirely subject to her. She was never wilful con-/
cerning anything really important, but she assumed all
the rights of an individual and being the only child left
in the family, went about her affairs without remark or
question, serene, sweet but determined.

The furniture and pictures of the house were quite as
humble as I had remembered them to be, but mother
wore with pride the silk dress I had sent to her and was
so happy to have me at home that she sat in silent con
tent, while I told her of my life in Boston (boasting of
my success of course, I had to do that to justify myself),
and explaining that I must return, in time to resume my
teaching in September.

Harvest was just beginning, and I said, "Father, if
you'll pay me full wages, I'll take a hand."

This pleased him greatly, but he asked, "Do you
think you can stand it? "

"I can try," I responded. Next day I laid off my city
clothes and took my place as of old on the stack.

On the broad acres of the arid plains the header and
not the binder was then in use for cutting the wheat,
and as stacker I had to take care of the grain brought to
me by the three header boxes.

It was very hard work that first day. It seemed that
I could not last out the afternoon, but I did, and when
at night I went to the house for supper, I could hardly
sit at the table with the men, so weary were my bones.
I sought my bed early and rose next day so sore that
movement was torture. This wore away at last and
on the third day I had no difficulty in keeping up my
end of the whiffletree.

The part of labor that I hated was the dirt. Night
after night as I came in covered with dust, too tired to
bathe, almost too weary to change my shirt, I declared
against any further harvesting. However, I generally

A Visit to the West

managed to slosh myself with cold water from the well,
and so went to my bed with a measure of self-respect,
but even the "spare room" was hot and small, and the
conditions of my mother's life saddened me. It was so
hot and drear for her!

Every detail of the daily life of the farm now assumed
literary significance in my mind. The quick callousing
of my hands, the swelling of my muscles, the sweating of
my scalp, all the unpleasant results of severe physical
labor I noted down, but with no intention of exalting
toil into a wholesome and regenerative thing as Tolstoi,
an aristocrat, had attempted to do. Labor when so pro
longed and severe as at this time my toil had to be, is
warfare. I was not working as a visitor but as a hired
hand, and doing my full day's work and more.

At the end of the week I wrote to my friend Kirkland,
enclosing some of my detailed notes and his reply set me
thinking. "You're the first actual farmer in American
fiction, — now tell the truth about it," he wrote.

Thereafter I studied the glory of the sky and the
splendor of the wheat with a deepening sense of the
generosity of nature and monstrous injustice of social
creeds. In the few moments of leisure which came to
me as I lay in the shade of a grain-rick, I pencilled rough
outlines of poems. My mind was in a condition of tan
talizing productivity and I felt vaguely that I ought to
be writing books instead of pitching grain. Conceptions
for stories began to rise from the subconscious deeps of
my thought like bubbles, noiseless and swift — and still
I did not realize that I had entered upon a new career.

At night or on Sunday I continued my conferences
with father and mother. Together we went over the
past, talking of old neighbors and from one of these con
versations came the theme of my first story. It was a
very simple tale (told by my mother) of an old woman,

A Son of the Middle Border

who made a trip back to her York state home after an
absence in the West of nearly thirty years. I was able
to remember some of the details of her experience and
.when my mother had finished speaking I said to her,
"That is too good to lose. I'm going to write it out."
Then to amuse her, I added, "Why, that's worth seventy-
five dollars to me. I'll go halves with you."

Smilingly she held out her hand. " Very well, you may
give me my share now."

"Wait till I write it," I replied, a little taken aback.

Going to my room I set to work and wrote nearly two
thousand words of the sketch. This I brought out later
in the day and read to her with considerable excitement.
I really felt that I had struck out a character which, while
it did not conform to the actual woman in the case, was
almost as vivid in my mind.

Mother listened very quietly until I had finished, then
remarked with sententious approval. "That's good.
Go on." She had no doubt of my ability to go on — in
definitely!

I explained to her that it wasn't so easy as all that,
but that I could probably finish it in a day or two.
(As a matter of fact, I completed the story in Bos
ton but mother got her share of the "loot" just the
same.)

Soon afterward, while sitting in the door looking out
over the fields, I pencilled the first draft of a little poem
called Color in the Wheat which I also read to her.

She received this in the same manner as before, from
which it appeared that nothing I wrote could surprise
her. Her belief in my powers was quite boundless.
Father was inclined to ask, "What's the good of it?"

Of course all of my visit was not entirely made up of
hard labor in the field. There were Sundays when we
could rest or entertain the neighbors, and sometimes a

372

A Visit to the West

shower gave us a few hours' respite, but for the most part
the weeks which I spent at home were weeks of stern
service in the ranks of the toilers.

There was a very good reason for my close application
to the fork-handle. Father paid me an extra price as
"boss stacker," and I could not afford to let a day pass
without taking the fullest advantage of it. At the same
time I was careful not to convey to my pupils and friends
in Boston the disgraceful fact that I was still dependent
upon my skill with a pitch-fork to earn a living. I was
not quite sure of their approval of the case.

At last there came the time when I must set my face
toward the east.

It seemed a treachery to say good-bye to my aging
parents, leaving them and my untrained sister to this
barren, empty, laborious life on the plain, whilst I re
turned to the music, the drama, the inspiration, the glory
of Boston. Opposite poles of the world could not be
farther apart. Acute self-accusation took out of my
return all of the exaltation and much of the pleasure
which I had expected to experience as I dropped my
harvester's fork and gloves and put on the garments of
civilization once more.

With heart sore with grief and rebellion at "the in
exorable trend of things," I entered the car, and when
from its window I looked back upon my grieving mother,
my throat filled with a suffocating sense of guilt. I was
deserting her, recreant to my blood! — That I was re-
enacting the most characteristic of all American dramas
in thus pursuing an ambitious career in a far-off city
I most poignantly realized and yet — I went! It seemed
to me at the time that my duty lay in the way of giving
up all my selfish plans in order that I might comfort
my mother in her growing infirmity, and counsel and
defend my sister — but I did not. I went away borne

373

A Son of the Middle Border

on a stream of purpose so strong that I seemed but a leal
in its resistless flood.

This feeling of bitterness, of rebellion, of dissatisfac
tion with myself, wore gradually away, and by the time
I reached Chicago I had resolved to climb high. "I
will carry mother and Jessie to comfort and to some small
share, at least, in the world of art," was my resolve. In
this way I sought to palliate my selfish plan.

Obscurely forming in my mind were two great literary
concepts — that truth was a higher quality than beauty,
and that to spread the reign of justice should everywhere
be the design and intent of the artist. The merely beau
tiful in art seemed petty, and success at the cost of the
happiness of others a monstrous egotism.

In the spirit of these ideals I returned to my small
attic room in Jamaica Plain and set to work to put my
new conceptions into some sort of literary form.

CHAPTER XXIX
I Join the Anti-Poverty Brigade

IN the slow procession of my struggling fortunes
this visit to the West seems important, for it was
the beginning of my career as a fictionist. My talk with
Kirkland and my perception of the sordid monotony
of farm life had given me a new and very definite emo
tional relationship to my native state. I perceived now
the tragic value of scenes which had hitherto appeared
merely dull or petty. My eyes were opened to the en
forced misery of the pioneer. As a reformer my blood
was stirred to protest. As a writer I was beset with a
desire to record in some form this newly-born conception
of the border.

No sooner did I reach my little desk in Jamaica Plain
than I began to write, composing in the glow of a flam
ing conviction. With a delightful (and deceptive) sense
of power, I graved with heavy hand, as if with pen of
steel on brazen tablets, picture after picture of the plain.
I had no doubts, no hesitations about the kind of effect
I wished to produce. I perceived little that was poetic,
little that was idyllic, and nothing that was humorous
in the man, who, with hands like claws, was scratching
a scanty living from the soil of a rented farm, while his
wife walked her ceaseless round from tub to churn and
from churn to tub. On the contrary, the life of such a
family appealed to me as an almost unrelievedly tragic
futility.

In the few weeks between my return and the beginning

375

A Son of the Middle Border

of my teaching, I wrote several short stories, and out
lined a propagandist play. With very little thought as
to whether such stories would sell rapidly or not at all I
began to send them away, to the Century, to Harpers,
and other first class magazines without permitting my
self any deep disappointment when they came back — -
as they all did!

However, having resolved upon being printed by the
best periodicals I persisted. Notwithstanding rejection
after rejection I maintained an elevated aim and con
tinued to fire away.

There was a certain arrogance in all this, I will admit,
but there was also sound logic, for I was seeking the
ablest editorial judgment and in this way I got it. My
manuscripts were badly put together (I used cheap paper
and could not afford a typist), hence I could not blame
the readers who hurried my stories back at me. No
doubt my illegible writing as well as the blunt, unrelenting
truth of my pictures repelled them. One or two friendly
souls wrote personal notes protesting against my "false
interpretation of western life."

The fact that I, a working farmer, was presenting for
the first time in fiction the actualities of western coun
try life did not impress them as favorably as I had ex
pected it to do. My own pleasure in being true was not
shared, it would seem, by others. "Give us charming
love stories!" pleaded the editors.

"No, weVe had enough of lies," I replied. "Other
writers are telling the truth about the city, — the artisan's
narrow, grimy, dangerous job is being pictured, and it
appears to me that the time has come to tell the truth
about the barn-yard's daily grind. I have lived the life
and I know that farming is not entirely made up of berry
ing, tossing the new-mown hay and singing The Old
Oaken Bucket on the porch by moonlight.

376

I Join the Anti-Poverty Brigade

"The working farmer," I went on to argue, "has to
live in February as well as June. He must pitch manure
as well as clover. Milking as depicted on a blue china
plate where a maid in a flounced petticoat is caressing a
gentle Jersey cow in a field of daisies, is quite unlike sit
ting down to the steaming flank of a stinking brindle
heifer in fly time. Pitching odorous timothy in a poem
and actually putting it into a mow with the tempera
ture at ninety-eight in the shade are widely separated
in fact as they should be in fiction. Forme," I concluded,
"the grime and the mud and the sweat and the dust
tfxist. They still form a large part of life on the farm,
and I intend that they shall go into my stories in their
proper proportions."

Alas! Each day made me more and more the dissenter
from accepted economic as well as literary conventions.
I became less and less of the booming, indiscriminating
patriot. Precisely as successful politicians, popular
preachers and vast traders diminished in importance in
my mind, so the significance of Whitman, and Tolstoi
and George increased, for they all represented qualities
which make for saner, happier and more equitable con
ditions in the future. Perhaps I despised idlers and
time-savers unduly, but I was of an age to be extreme.

During the autumn Henry George was announced to
speak in Faneuil Hall, sacred ark of liberty, and with
eager feet my brother and I hastened to the spot to hear
this reformer whose fame already resounded through
out the English-speaking world. Beginning his campaign
in California he had carried it to Ireland, where he had
been twice imprisoned for speaking his mind, and now
after having set Bernard Shaw and other English Fabians
aflame with indignant protest, was about to run for
mayor of New York City.

I have an impression that the meeting was a noon-daj

377

A Son of the Middle Border

meeting for men, at any rate the historical old hall,
which had echoed to the voices of Garrison and Phillips
and Webster was filled with an eager expectant throng.
The sanded floor was packed with auditors standing
shoulder to shoulder and the galleries were crowded
with these who, like ourselves, had gone early in order
to ensure seats. From our places in the front row we
looked down upon an almost solid mosaic of derby hats,
the majority of which were rusty by exposure to wind and
rain.

As I waited I recalled my father's stories of the stern
passions of anti-slavery days. In this hall Wendell
Phillips in the pride and power of his early manhood,
had risen to reply to the cowardly apologies of entrenched
conservatism, and here now another voice was about to
be raised in behalf of those whom the law oppressed.
My brother had also read Progress and Property and
both of us felt that we were taking part in a distinctly
historical event, the beginning of a new abolition mover
ment.

At last, a stir at the back of the platform announced
the approach of the speaker. Three or four men suddenly
appeared from some concealed door and entered upon the
stage. One of them, a short man with a full red beard,
we recognized at once, — "The prophet of San Francisco"
as he was then called (in fine derision) was not a notice
able man till he removed his hat. Then the fine line of
his face from the crown of his head to the tip of his chin
printed itself ineffaceably upon our minds. The dome
like brow was that of one highly specialized on lines of
logic and sympathy. There was also something in the
tense poise of his body which foretold the orator.

Impatiently the audience endured the speakers who
prepared the way and then, finally, George stepped for
ward, but prolonged waves of cheering again and again

378

I Join the Anti-Poverty Brigade

prevented his beginning. Thereupon he started pacing
to and fro along the edge of the platform, his big head
thrown back, his small hands clenched as if in anticipa
tion of coming battle. He no longer appeared small.
His was the master mind of that assembly.

His first words cut across the air with singular calm
ness. Coming after the applause, following the nervous
movement of a moment before, his utterance was sur
prisingly cold, masterful, and direct. Action had con
densed into speech. Heat was transformed into light.

His words were orderly and well chosen. They had
precision and grace as well as power. He spoke as other
men write, with style and arrangement. His address
could have been printed word for word as it fell from his
lips. This self-mastery, this graceful lucidity of utter
ance combined with a personal presence distinctive and
dignified, reduced even his enemies to respectful silence.
His altruism, his sincere pity and his hatred of injustice
sent me away in the mood of a disciple.

Meanwhile a few of his followers had organized an
" Anti-Poverty Society" similar to those which had
already sprung up in New York, and my brother and I
used to go of a Sunday evening to the old Horticultural
Hall on Tremont Street, contributing our presence and
our dimes in aid of the meeting. Speakers were few
and as the weeks went by the audiences grew smaller
and smaller till one night Chairman Roche announced
with sad intonation that the meetings could not go on.
"You've all got tired of hearing us repeat ourselves and
we have no new speaker, none at all for next week. I
am afraid we'll have to quit."

My brother turned to me — "Here's your 'call,'"
he said. "Volunteer to speak for them."

Recognizing my duty I rose just as the audience was
leaving and sought the chairman. With a tremor of ex-

379

A Son of the Middle Border

citement in my voice I said, "If you can use me as
a speaker for next Sunday I will do my best for you."

Roche glanced at me for an instant, and then without
a word of question, shouted to the audience, "Wait a
moment! We have a speaker for next Sunday." Then,
bending down, he asked of me, "What is your name and
occupation?"

I told him, and again he lifted his voice, this time in
triumphant shout, "Professor Hamlin Garland will
speak for us next Sunday at eight o'clock. Come and
bring all your friends."

"You are in for it now," laughed my brother glee
fully. "You'll be lined up with the anarchists sure! "

That evening was in a very real sense a parting ,of the
ways for me. To refuse this call was to go selfishly and
comfortably along the lines of literary activity I had
chosen. To accept was to enter the arena where problems
of economic justice were being sternly fought out. I
understood already something of the disadvantage which
attached to being called a reformer, but my sense of
duty and the influence of Herbert Spencer and Walt
Whitman rose above my doubts. I decided to do my
part.

All the week I agonized over my address, and on Sun
day spoke to a crowded house with a kind of partisan
success. On Monday my good friend Chamberlin,
The Listener of The Transcript filled his column with a
long review of my heretical harangue. — With one leap
I had reached the lime-light of conservative Boston's
disapproval!

Chamberlin, himself a "philosophical anarchist," was
pleased with the individualistic note which ran through
my harangue. The Single Taxers were of course, de
lighted for I admitted my discipleship to George, and
my socialistic friends urged that the general effect of my

380

I Join the Anti-Poverty Brigade

argument was on their side. Altogether, for a penniless
student and struggling story writer, I created something
of a sensation. All my speeches thereafter helped to
dye me deeper than ever with the color of reform.

However, in the midst of my Anti-Poverty Campaign,
I did not entirely forget my fiction and my teaching.
I was becoming more and more a companion of artists
and poets, and my devotion to things literary deepened
from day to day. A dreadful theorist in some ways, I
was, after all, more concerned with literary than with
social problems. Writing was my life, land reform one
of my convictions.

High in my attic room I bent above my manuscript
with a fierce resolve. From eight o'clock in the morning
until half past twelve, I dug and polished. In the after
noon, I met my classes. In the evening I revised what
I had written and in case I did not go to the theater or
to a lecture (I had no social engagements) I wrote until
ten o'clock. For recreation I sometimes drove with Dr.
Cross on his calls or walked the lanes and climbed the
hills with my brother.

In this way most of my stories of the west were writ
ten. Happy in my own work, I bitterly resented the
laws which created millionaires at the expense of the
poor. •

These were days of security and tranquillity, and good
friends thickened. Each week I felt myself in less danger
of being obliged to shingle, though I still had difficulty in
clothing myself properly.

Again I saw Booth play his wondrous round of parts
and was able to complete my monograph which I called
The Art of Edwin Booth. I even went so far as to send to
the great actor the chapter on his Macbeth and received
from him grateful acknowledgments, in a charming
letter.

A Son of the Middle Border

A little later I had the great honor of meeting him for
a moment and it happened in this way. The veteran
reader, James E. Murdock, was giving a recital in a small
hall on Park Street, and it was privately announced that
Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett would be present.
This was enough to justify me in giving up one of my
precious dollars on the chance of seeing the great trage
dian enter the room.

He came in a little late, flushing, timid, apologetic! It
seemed to me a very curious and wonderful thing that
this man who had spoken to millions of people from be
hind the footlights should be timid as a maid when con
fronted by less than two hundred of his worshipful
fellow citizens in a small hall. So gentle and kindly did
he seem.

My courage grew, and after the lecture I approached
the spot where he stood, and Mr. Barrett introduced me
to him as " the author of the lecture on Macbeth." — Never
had I looked into such eyes — deep and dark and sad — and
my tongue failed me miserably. I could not say a word.
Booth smiled with kindly interest and murmured his
thanks for my critique, and I went away, down across
the Common in a glow of delight and admiration.

In the midst of all my other duties I was preparing my
brother Franklin for the stage. Yes, through some mis
chance, this son of the prairie had obtained the privilege
of studying with a retired "leading lady" who still
occasionally made tours of the " Kerosene Circuit" and
who had agreed to take him out with her, provided he
made sufficient progress to warrant it. It was to prepare
him for this trip that I met him three nights in the week
at his office (he was bookkeeper in a cutlery firm) and
there rehearsed East Lynne, Leah the Forsaken, and The
Lady of Lyons.

From seven o'clock until nine I held the book whilst

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he pranced and shouted and gesticulated through his
lines.

At last, emboldened by his star's praise, he cut loose
from his ledger and went out on a tour which was ex
tremely diverting but not at all remunerative. The com
pany ran on a reef and Frank sent for carfare which I
cheerfully remitted, crediting it to his educational account.

The most vital literary man in all America at this time
was Wm. Dean Howells who was in the full tide of his
powers and an issue. All through the early eighties,
reading Boston was divided into two parts, — those who
liked Howells and those who fought him, and the most
fiercely debated question at the clubs was whether his
heroines were true to life or whether they were carica
tures. In many homes he was read aloud with keen
enjoyment of his delicate humor, and his graceful, incisive
English; in other circles he was condemned because of his
"injustice to the finer sex."

As for me, having begun my literary career (as the
reader may recall) by assaulting this leader of the real
istic school I had ended, naturally, by becoming his
public advocate. How could I help it?

It is true a large part of one of my lectures consisted of
a gratuitous slam at "Mr. Howells and the so-called
realists, " but further reading and deeper thought along
the lines indicated by Whitman, had changed my view.
One of Walt's immortal invitations which had appealed
to me with special power was this:

Stop this day and night with me

And you shall possess the origin of all poems;

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand

Nor look through the eyes of the dead,

Nor through my eyes either,

But through your own eyes. . . .

You shall listen to all sides,

And filter them from yourself.

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A Son of the Middle Border

Thus by a circuitous route I had arrived at a position
where I found myself inevitably a supporter not only of
Howells but of Henry James whose work assumed ever
larger significance in my mind. I was ready to concede
with the realist that the poet might go round the earth
and come back to find the things nearest at hand the
sweetest and best after all, but that certain injustices,
certain cruel facts must not be blinked at, and so, white
admiring the grace, the humor, the satire of Howells'
books, I was saved from anything like imitation by the
sterner and darker material in which I worked.

My wall of prejudice against the author of A Modern
Instance really began to sag when during the second year
of my stay in Boston, I took up and finished The Undis
covered Country (which I had begun five or six years be
fore), but it was The Minister's Charge which gave the
final push to my defenses and fetched them tumbling
about my ears in a cloud of dust. In fact, it was a review
of this book, written for the Transcript which brought
about a meeting with the great novelist.

My friend Kurd liked the review and had it set up.
The editor, Mr. Clement, upon reading it in proof said
to Kurd, "This is an able review. Put it in as an edito
rial. Who is the writer of it? " Kurd told him about me
and Clement was interested. " Send him to me,'* he said-

On Saturday I was not only surprised and delighted by
the sight of my article in large type at the head of the
literary page, I was fluttered by the word which Mr.
Clement had sent to me.

Humbly as a minstrel might enter the court of his king,
I went before the editor, and stood expectantly while he
said: "That was an excellent article. I have sent it to
Mr. Howells. You should know him and sometime I will
give you a letter to him, but not now. Wait awhile.
War is being made upon him just now, and if you were

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to meet him your criticism would have less weight. His
enemies would say that you had come under his personal
influence. Go ahead with the work you have in hand,
and after you have put yourself on record concerning
him and his books I will see that you meet him."

Like a knight enlisted in a holy war I descended the
long narrow stairway to the street, and went to my home
without knowing what passed me.

I ruminated for hours on Mr. Clement's praise. I read
and re-read my "able article" till I knew it by heart and
then I started in, seriously, to understand and estimate
the school of fiction to which Mr. Howells belonged.
I read every one of his books as soon as I could obtain
them. I read James, too, and many of the European
realists, but it must have been two years before I called
upon Mr. Clement to redeem his promise.

Deeply excited, with my note of introduction carefully
stowed in my inside pocket, I took the train one summer
afternoon bound for Lee's Hotel in Auburndale, where
Mr. Howells was at this time living.

I fervently hoped that the building would not be too
magnificent for I felt very small and very poor on alight
ing at the station, and every rod of my advance sensibly
decreased my self-esteem. Starting with faltering feet
I came to the entrance of the grounds in a state of panic,
and as I looked up the path toward the towering portico
of the hotel, it seemed to me the palace of an emperor
and my resolution entirely left me. Actually I walked
up the street for some distance before I was able to
secure sufficient grip on myself to return and enter.

"It is entirely unwarranted and very presumptuous
in me to be thus intruding on a great author's time,"
I admitted, but it was too late to retreat, and so I kept
on. Entering the wide central hall I crept warily across
its polished, hardwood floor to the desk where a highly

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A Son of the Middle Border

ornate clerk presided. In a meek, husky voice I asked,
"Is Mr. Howellsin?"

"He is, but he's at dinner," the despot on the othel
side of the counter coldly replied, and his tone implied
that he didn't think the great author would relish being
disturbed by an individual who didn't even know the
proper time to call. However, I produced my letter of
introduction and with some access of spirit requested
His Highness to have it sent in.

A colored porter soon returned, showed me to a recep
tion room off the hall, and told me that Mr. Howells
would be out in a few minutes. During these minutes
I sat with eyes on the portieres and a frog in my throat.
"How will he receive me? How will he look? What
shall I say to him? " I asked myself, and behold I hadn't
an idea left!

Suddenly the curtains parted and a short man with a
large head stood framed in the opening. His face was
impassive but his glance was one of the most piercing
I had ever encountered. In the single instant before
he smiled he discovered my character and my thought
as though his eyes had been the lenses of some singular
,and powerful x-ray instrument. It was the glance of a
novelist.

Of course all this took but a moment's time. Then
his face softened, became winning and his glance was
gracious. "I'm glad to see you," he said, and his tone
was cordial. "Won't you be seated?"

We took seats at the opposite ends of a long sofa, and
Mr. Howells began at once to inquire concerning the
work and the purposes of his visitor. He soon drew
forth the story of my coming to Boston and developed
my theory of literature, listening intently while I told
him of my history of American Ideals and my attempt
at fiction.

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I Join the Anti-Poverty Brigade

My conception of the local novel and of its great im
portance in American literature, especially interested
the master who listened intently while I enlarged upon
my reasons for believing that the local novel would con
tinue to grow in power and insight. At the end I said,
"In my judgment the men and women of the south,
the west and the east, are working (without knowing
it) in accordance with a great principle, which is this:
American literature, in order to be great, must be na
tional, and in order to be national, must deal with condi
tions peculiar to our own land and climate. Every
genuinely American writer must deal with the life he
knows best and for which he cares the most. Thus Joel
Chandler Harris, George W. Cable, Joseph Kirkland,
Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary Wilkins, like Bret Harte,
are but varying phases of the same movement, a move
ment which is to give us at last a really vital and original
literature! "

Once set going I fear I went on like the political orator
who doesn't know how to sit down. I don't think I
did quit. Howells stopped me with a compliment.
" You're doing a fine and valuable work," he said, and I
thought he meant it — and he did mean it. "Each of us
has had some perception of this movement but no one
has correlated it as you have done. I hope you will go
on and finish and publish your essays."

These words uttered, perhaps, out of momentary
conviction brought the blood to my face and filled me
with conscious satisfaction. Words of praise by this
keen thinker were like golden medals. I had good reason
to know how discriminating he was in his use of adjec
tives for he was even then the undisputed leader in the
naturalistic school of fiction and to gain even a moment's
interview with him would have been a rich reward for
a youth who had only just escaped from spreading

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A Son of the Middle Border

manure on an Iowa farm. Emboldened by his gracious
manner, I went on. I confessed that I too was deter
mined to do a little at recording by way of fiction the
manners and customs of my native West. "I don't
know that I can write a novel, but I intend to try," I
added.

He was kind enough then to say that he would like to
see some of my stories of Iowa. "You have almost a
clear field out there — no one but Howe seems to be
tilling it."

How long he talked or how long I talked, I do not
know, but at last (probably in self-defense), he suggested
that we take a walk. We strolled about the garden a
few minutes and each moment my spirits rose, for he
treated me, not merely as an aspiring student, but as a
fellow author in whom he could freely confide. At last,
in his gentle way, he turned me toward my train.

It was then as we were walking slowly down the street,
that he faced me with the trust of a comrade and asked,
"What would you think of a story dealing with the
effect of a dream on the life of a man? — I have in mind
a tale to be called The Shadow of a Dream, or some
thing like that, wherein a man is to be influenced in some
decided way by the memory of a vision, a ghostly figure
which is to pursue him and have some share in the final
catastrophe, whatever it may turn out to be. What
would you think of such a plot? "

Filled with surprise at his trust and confidence, I man-^
aged to stammer a judgment. "It would depend entirely
upon the treatment," I answered. "The theme is a
little like Hawthorne, but I can understand how, under
your hand, it would not be in the least like Haw
thorne."

His assent was instant. "You think it not quite like
me? You are right. It does sound a little lurid. I may

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never write it, but if I do, you may be sure it will be
treated in my own way and not in Hawthorne's way."

Stubbornly I persisted. "There are plenty who can
do the weird kind of thing, Mr. Howells, but there is
only one man who can write books like A Modern
Instance and Silas Lapham."

All that the novelist said, as well as his manner of
saying it was wonderfully enriching to me. To have
such a man, one whose fame was even at this time inter
national, desire an expression of my opinion as to the
fitness of his chosen theme, was like feeling on my
shoulder the touch of a kingly accolade.

I went away, exalted. My apprenticeship seemed
over! To America's chief literary man I was a fellow-
writer, a critic, and with this recognition the current of
my ambition shifted course. I began to hope that I,
too, might some day become a social historian as
well as a teacher of literature. The reformer was still
present, but the literary man had been reinforced, and
yet, even here, I had chosen the unpopular, unprofitable
side!

Thereafter the gentle courtesy, the tact, the exquisite,
yet simple English of this man was my education. Every
hour of his delicious humor, his wise advice, his ready
sympathy sent me away in mingled exaltation and de
spair — despair of my own blunt and common diction,
exaltation over his continued interest and friendship.

How I must have bored that sweet and gracious soul!
*He could not escape me. If he moved to Belmont I
pursued him. If he went to Nahant or Magnolia or
Kittery I spent my money like water in order to follow
him up and bother him about my work, or worry him
into a public acceptance of the single tax, and yet every
word he spoke, every letter he wrote was a benediction
and an inspiration.

A Son of the Middle Border

He was a constant revelation to me of the swift transi
tions of mood to which a Celtic man of letters is liable.
His humor was like a low, sweet bubbling geyser spring.
It rose with a chuckle close upon some very somber
mood and broke into exquisite phrases which lingered
in my mind for weeks. Side by side with every jest was
a bitter sigh, for he, too, had been deeply moved by new
social ideals, and we talked much of the growing contrasts
of rich and poor, of the suffering and loneliness of the
farmer, the despair of the proletariat, and though I
could never quite get him to perceive the difference
between his program and ours (he was always for some
vague socialistic reform), he readily admitted that land
monopoly was the chief cause of poverty, and the first
injustice to be destroyed. "But you must go farther,
much farther," he would sadly say.

Of all of my literary friends at this time, Edgar Cham-
berlin of the Transcript was the most congenial. He, too,
was from Wisconsin, and loved the woods and fields
with passionate fervor. At his house I met many of the
young writers of Boston — at least they were young
then — Sylvester Baxter, Imogene Guiney, Minna Smith,
Alice Brown, Mary E. Wilkins, and Bradford Torrey
were often there. No events in my life except my oc
casional calls on Mr. Howells were more stimulating to me
than my visits to the circle about Chamberlin's hearth —
(he was the kind of man who could not live without an
open fire) and Mrs. Chamberlin's boundlessly hospitable
table was an equally appealing joy. •

How they regarded me at that time I cannot surely de
fine — perhaps they tolerated me out of love for the West.
But I here acknowledge my obligation to "The Listener/'
He taught me to recognize literary themes in the city,
for he brought the same keen insight, the same tender
sympathy to bear upon the crowds of the streets that he

390

I Join the Anti-Poverty Brigade r

used in describing the songs of the thrush or the whir of
the partridge.

He was especially interested in the Italians who were
just beginning to pour into The North End, displacing
the Irish as workmen in the streets, and often in his
column made gracious and charming references to them,
softening without doubt the suspicion and dislike with
which many citizens regarded them.

Hurd, on the contrary, was a very bookish man. He
sat amidst mountains of "books for review'7 and yet
he was always ready to welcome the slender volume of
the new poet. To him I owe much. From him I secured
my first knowledge of James Whitcomb Riley, and it
was Hurd who first called my attention to Kirkland's
Zury. Through him I came to an enthusiasm for the
study of Ibsen and Bjornsen, for he was widely read in
the literature of the north.

On the desk of this hard-working, ill-paid man of
letters (who never failed to utter words of encourage
ment to me) I wish to lay a tardy wreath of grateful
praise. He deserves the best of the world beyond, for he
got little but hard work from this. He loved poetry
of all kinds and enjoyed a wide correspondence with
those "who could not choose but sing." His desk was
crammed with letters from struggling youths whose
names are familiar now, and in whom he took an almost
paternal interest.

One day as I was leaving Kurd's office he said, "By
the way, Garland, you ought to know Jim Herne. He's
doing much the same sort of work on the stage that you
and Miss Wilkins are putting into the short story. Here
are a couple of tickets to his play. Go and see it and
come back and tell what you think of it."

Herne's name was new to me but Kurd's commenda
tion was enough to take me down to the obscure theater

A Son of the Middle Border

in the South End where Drifting Apart was playing.
The play was advertised as "a story of the Gloucester
fishermen" and Katharine Herne was the " Mary Miller w
of the piece. Herne's part was that of a stalwart fisher
man, married to a delicate young girl, and when the cur
tain went up on his first scene I was delighted with the
setting. It was a veritable cottage interior — not an
English cottage but an American working man's home.
The worn chairs, the rag rugs, the sewing machine doing
duty as a flowerstand, all were in keeping.

The dialogue was homely, intimate, almost trivial and
yet contained a sweet and touching quality. It was,
indeed, of a piece with the work of Miss Jewett only
more humorous, and the action of Katharine and James
Herne was in key with the text. The business of " Jack's "
shaving and getting ready to go down the street was most
delightful in spirit and the act closed with a touch of
true pathos.

The second act, a "dream act" was not so good, but the
play came back to realities in the last act and sent us all
away in joyous mood. It was for me the beginning of the
local color American drama, and before I went to sleep
that night I wrote a letter to Herne telling him how sig
nificant I found his play and wishing him the success he
deserved.

Almost by return mail came his reply thanking me for
my good wishes and expressing a desire to meet me.
" We are almost always at home on Sunday and shall be
very glad to see you whenever you can find time to come."

A couple of weeks later — as soon as I thought it
seemly — I went out to Ashmont to see them, for my in
terest was keen. I knew no one connected with the
stage at this time and I was curious to know — I wa*
almost frenziedly eager to know the kind of folk the
Hernes were.

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I Join the Anti-Poverty Brigade

My first view of their house was a disappointment.
It was quite like any other two-story suburban cottage.
It had a small garden but it faced directly on the walk
and was a most uninspiring color. But if the house dis
appointed me the home did not. Herne, who looked
older than when on the stage, met me with a curiously
impassive face but I felt his friendship through this
mask. Katharine who was even more charming than
' ' Mary Miller " wore no mask. She was radiantly cordial
and we were friends at once. Both persisted in calling
me "professor" although I explained that I had no
right to any such title. In the end they compromised
by calling me "the Dean," and "the Dean" I remained
in all the happy years of our friendship.

Not the least of the charms of this home was the com
panionship of Herne's three lovely little daughters Julie,
Chrystal and Dorothy, who liked "the Dean"— I don't
know why — and were always at the door to greet me
when I came. No other household meant as much to
me. No one understood more clearly than the Hernes
the principles I stood for, and no one was more interested
in my plans for uniting the scattered members of my
family. Before I knew it I had told them all about my
mother and her pitiful condition, and Katharine's ex
pressive face clouded with sympathetic pain. "You'll
work it out," she said, "I am sure of it," and her confident
words were a comfort to me.

They were true Celts, swift to laughter and quick
with tears; they inspired me to bolder flights. They
met me on every plane of my intellectual interests, and
our discusssions of Herbert Spencer, Henry George, and
William Dean Howells often lasted deep into the night.
In all matters concerning the American Drama we
were in accord.

Having found these rare and inspiring souls I was nor

293

A Son of the Middle Border

content until I had introduced them to all my literary
friends. I became their publicity agent without au
thority and without pay, for I felt the injustice of a
situation where such artists could be shunted into a
theater in The South End where no one ever saw them
— at least no one of the world of art and letters. Their
cause was my cause, their success my chief concern.

Drifting Apart, I soon discovered, was only the begin
ning of Herne's ambitious design to write plays which
should be as true in their local color as Howells' stories.
He was at this time working on two plays which were to
bring lasting fame and a considerable fortune. One of
these was a picture of New England coast life and the
other was a study of factory life. One became Shore
Acres and the other Margaret Fleming.

From time to time as we met he read me these plays,
scene by scene, as he wrote them, and when Margaret
Fleming was finished I helped him put it on at Chicker-
ing Hall. My brother was in the cast and I served as
"Man in Front" for six weeks — again without pay of
course — and did my best to let Boston know what was
going on there in that little theater — the first of all the
" Little Theaters " in America. Then came the success of
Shore Acres at the Boston Museum and my sense of
satisfaction was complete.

How all this puts me back into that other shining
Boston! I am climbing again those three long flights of
stairs to the Transcript office. Chamberlin extends a
cordial hand, Clement nods as I pass his door. It is
raining, and in the wet street the vivid reds, greens, and
yellows of the horse-cars, splash the pavement with
gaudy color. Round the tower of the Old South Church
the doves are whirling.

It is Saturday. I am striding across the Common to
Park Square, hurrying to catch the 5:02 train. The

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I Join the Anti-Poverty Brigade

trees of the Mall are shaking their heavy tears upon me.
Drays thunder afar off. Bells tinkle.— How simple,
quiet, almost village-like this city of my vision seems in
contrast with the Boston of today with its diabolic
subways, its roaring overhead trains, its electric cars and
its streaming automobiles!

Over and over again I have tried to re-discover that
Boston, but it is gone, never to return. Herne is dead,
Kurd is dead, Clement no longer edits the Transcript,
Howells and Mary Wilkins live in New York. Louise
Chandler Moulton lies deep in that grave of whose restful
quiet she so often sang, and Edward Everett Hale, type
of a New England that was old when I was young, has
also passed into silence. His name like that of Higginson
and Holmes is only a faint memory in the marble splen
dors of the New Public Library. The ravening years —
how they destroy!

39S

CHAPTER XXX
My Mother is Stricken

IN the summer 0^^889, notwithstanding a widening
opportunity for lectures in the East, I decided to
make another trip to the West. In all my mother's
letters I detected a tremulous undertone of sadness, of
longing, and this filled me with unrest even in the midst
of the personal security I had won. I could not forget
the duty I owed to her who had toiled so uncomplain
ingly that I might be clothed and fed and educated, and
so I wrote to her announcing the date of my arrival.

My friend, Dr. Cross, eager to see The Short-Grass
Country which was a far-off and romantic territory to
him, arranged to go with me. It was in July, and very
hot the day we started, but we were both quite disposed
to make the most of every good thing and to ignore all
discomforts. I'm not entirely certain, but I think I oc
cupied a sleeping car berth on this trip; if I did so it was
for the first time in my life. Anyhow, I must have
treated myself to regular meals, for I cannot recall being
ill on the train. This, in itself, was remarkable.

Strange to say, most of the incidents of the journey
between Boston and Wisconsin are blended like the faded
figures on a strip of sun-smit cloth, nothing remains
definitely distinguishable except the memory of our
visit to my Uncle William's farm in Neshonoc, and the
recollection of the pleasure we took in the vivid bands
of wild flowers which spun, like twin ribbons of satin,
from beneath the wheels of the rear coach as we rushed

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My Mother is Stricken

across the state. All else has vanished as though it had
never been.

These primitive blossoms along the railroad's right-of-
way deeply delighted my friend, but to me they were
more than flowers, they were cups of sorcery, torches of
magic incense. Each nodding pink brought back to me
the sights and sounds and smells of the glorious meadows
of my boyhood's vanished world. Every weed had its
mystic tale. The slopes of the hills, the cattle grouped
under the trees, all wrought upon me like old half-
forgotten poems.

My uncle, big, shaggy, gentle and reticent, met us at
the faded little station and drove us away toward the
sun-topped " sleeping camel" whose lines and shadows
were so lovely and so familiar. In an hour we were at
the farmhouse where quaint Aunt Maria made us wel
come in true pioneer fashion, and cooked a mess of hot
biscuit to go with the honey from the bees in the garden.
They both seemed very remote, very primitive even to
me, to my friend Cross they were exactly like characters
in a story. He could only look and listen and smile from
his seat in the corner.

William, a skilled bee-man, described to us his methods
of tracking wild swarms, and told us how he handled
those in his hives. "I can scoop 'em up as if they were
so many kernels of corn," he said. After supper as we
all sat on the porch watching the sunset, he reverted to
the brave days of fifty-five when deer and bear came
down over the hills, when a rifle was almost as necessary
as a hoe, and as he talked I revived in him the black-
haired smiling young giant of my boyhood days, un
touched of age or care.

He was a poet, in his dreamy reticent way, for when
next morning I called attention to the beauty of the view
down the valley, his face took on a kind of wistful sweet-

397

A Son of the Middle Border

ness and a certain shyness as he answered with a visible
effort to conceal his feeling — "I like it — No place better.
I wish your father and mother had never left the valley."
And in this wish I joined.

On the third day we resumed our journey toward
Dakota, and the Doctor, though outwardly undismayed
by the long hard ride and the increasing barrenness of
the level lands, sighed with relief when at last I pointed
out against the level sky-line the wavering bulk of the
grain elevator which alone marked the wind-swept de
serted site of Ordway, the end of our journey. He was
tired.

Business, I soon learned, had not been going well on the
border during the two years of my absence. None of the
towns had improved. On the contrary, all had lost
ground.

Another dry year was upon the land and the settlers
were deeply disheartened. The holiday spirit of eight
years before had entirely vanished. In its place was a
sullen rebellion against government and against God.
The stress of misfortune had not only destroyed hope,
it had brought out the evil side of many men. Dissen
sions had grown common. Two of my father's neighbors
had gone insane over the failure of their crops. Several
had slipped away " between two days" to escape their
debts, and even little Jessie, who met us at the train,
brave as a meadow lark, admitted that something gray
had settled down over the plain.

Graveyards, jails, asylums, all the accompaniments of
civilization, were now quite firmly established. On the
west lay the lands of the Sioux and beyond them the
still more arid foot-hills. The westward movement of the
Middle Border for the time seemed at an end.

My father, Jessie told me, was now cultivating more
than five hundred acres of land, and deeply worried, for

My Mother is Stricken

his wheat was thin and light and the price less than sixty
cents per bushel.

It was nearly sunset as we approached the farm, and
a gorgeous sky was overarching it, but the bare little
house in which my people lived seemed a million miles
distant from Boston. The trees which my father had
planted, the flowers which my mother had so faithfully
watered, had withered in the heat. The lawn was burned
brown. No green thing was in sight, and no shade
offered save that made by the little cabin. On every
side stretched scanty yellowing fields of grain, and from
every worn road, dust rose like smoke from crevices,
giving upon deep-hidden subterranean fires. It was not
a good time to bring a visitor to the homestead, but it was
too late to retreat.

Mother., grayer, older, much less vigorous than she
had been two years before, met us, silently, shyly, and I
bled, inwardly, every time I looked at her. A hesitation
had come into her speech, and the indecision of her move
ments scared me, but she was too excited and too happy
to admit of any illness. Her smile was as sweet as ever.

Dr. Cross quietly accepted the hot narrow bedroom
which was the best we could offer him, and at supper took
his place among the harvest help without any noticeable
sign of repugnance. It was all so remote, so character
istic of the border that interest dominated disgust.

He was much touched, as indeed was I, by the handful
of wild roses which father brought in to decorate the
little sitting-room. "There's nothing I like better," he
said, "than a wild rose." The old trailer had noticeably
softened. While retaining his clarion voice and much of
his sleepless energy, he was plainly less imperious of
manner, less harsh of speech.

Jessie's case troubled me. As I watched her, studied
her, I perceived that she possessed uncommon powers,

399

A Son of the Middle Border

but that she must be taken out of this sterile environ
ment. "She must be rescued at once or she will live and
die the wife of some Dakota farmer," I said to mother.

Again I was disturbed by the feeling that in some way
my own career was disloyal, something built upon the
privations of my sister as well as upon those of my
mother. I began definitely to plan their rescue. "They
must not spend the rest of their days on this barren
farm," I said to Dr. Cross, and my self -accusation
spurred me to sterner resolve.

It was not a pleasant time for my good friend, but,
as it turned out, there was a special providence in his
being there, for a few days later, while Jessie and I were
seated in the little sitting-room busily discussing plans
for her schooling we heard a short, piercing cry, followed
by low sobbing.

Hurrying out into the yard, I saw my mother standing
a few yards from the door, her sweet face distorted, the
tears streaming down her cheeks. " What is it, mother? "
I called out.

"I can't lift my feet," she stammered, putting her
arms about my neck. "I can't move!" and in her voice
was such terror and despair that my blood chilled.

It was true! She was helpless. From the waist down
ward all power of locomotion had departed. Her feet
were like lead, drawn to the earth by some terrible
magnetic power.

In a frenzy of alarm, Jessie and I carried her into the
house and laid her on her bed. My heart burned with
bitter indignation. "This is the end," I said. "Here is
the result of long years of ceaseless toil. She has gone
as her mother went, in the midst of the battle."

At the moment I cursed the laws of man, I cursed
myself. I accused my father. Each moment my remorse
and horror deepened, and yet I could do nothing, nothing

400

My Mother is Stricken

but kneel beside the bed and hold her hand while Jessie
ran to call the doctor. She returned soon to say she
could not find him.

Slowly the stricken one grew calmer and at last, hear
ing a wagon drive into the yard, I hurried out to tell
my father what had happened. He read in my face
something wrong. "What's the matter?" he asked as I
drew near.

"Mother is stricken," I said. "She cannot walk."
He stared at me in silence, his gray eyes expanding
like those of an eagle, then calmly, mechanically he got
down and began to unhitch the team. He performed each
habitual act with most minute care, till I, impatient of
his silence, his seeming indifference, repeated, "Don't
you understand? Mother has had a stroke! She is
absolutely helpless."

Then he asked, "Where is your friend Dr. Cross?"
"I don't know, I thought he was with you."
Even as I was calling for him, Dr. Cross came into the
cabin, his arms laden with roses. He had been strolling
about on the prairie.

With his coming hope returned. Calmly yet skillfully
he went to the aid of the sufferer, while father, Jessie and
I sat in agonized suspense awaiting his report.

At last he came back to us with gentle reassuring
smile.

"There is no immediate danger," he said, and the tone
in which he spoke was even more comforting than his
words. "As soon as she recovers from her terror she
will not suffer" — then he added gravely, "A minute
blood vessel has ruptured in her brain, and a small clot
has formed there. If this is absorbed, as I think it wiU
be, she will recover. Nothing can be done for her. No
medicine can reach her. It is just a question of rest and
quiet." Then to me he added something which stung

401

Son of the Middle Border

like a poisoned dart. "She should have been relieved
from severe household labor years ago."

My heart filled with bitterness and rebellion, bitter
ness against the pioneering madness which had scattered
our family, and rebellion toward my father who had
kept my mother always on the border, working like a
slave long after the time when she should have been
taking her ease. Above all, I resented my own failure,
my own inability to help in the case. Here was I, es
tablished in a distant city, with success just opening her
doors to me, and yet still so much the struggler that my
will to aid was futile for lack of means.

Sleep was difficult that night, and for days thereafter
my mind was rent with a continual and ineffectual at
tempt to reach a solution of my problem, which was in
deed typical of ambitious young America everywhere.
" Shall I give up my career at this point? How can I best
serve my mother?" These were my questions and I
could not answer either of them.

At the end of a week the sufferer was able to sit up, and
soon recovered a large part of her native cheerfulness
although it was evident to me that she would never
again be the woman of the ready hand. Her days of
labor were over.

Her magnificent voice was now weak and uncertain.
Her speech painfully hesitant. She who had been so
strong, so brave, was now both easily frightened and
readily confused. She who had once walked with the
grace and power of an athlete was now in terror of an
up-rolled rug upon the floor. Every time I looked at
her my throat ached with remorseful pain. Every plan
I made included a vow to make her happy if I could.
My success now meant only service to her. In no other
way could I justify my career.

Dr. Cross though naturally eager to return to the com-

402

My Mother is Stricken

fort of his own home stayed on until his patient had re
gained her poise. "The clot seems in process of being
taken up/' he said to me, one morning, "and I think it
safe to leave her. But you had better stay on for a few
weeks."

"I shall stay until September, at least," I replied. "I
will not go back at all if I am needed here."

"Don't fail to return," he earnestly advised. "The
field is just opening for you in Boston, and your earn
ing capacity is greater there than it is here. Success
is almost won. Your mother knows this and tells me
that she will insist on your going on with your
work."

Heroic soul! She was always ready to sacrifice herself
for others.

The Doctor's parting words comforted me as I returned
to the shadeless farmstead to share in the work of har
vesting the grain which was already calling for the reaper,
and could not wait either upon sickness or age. Again
I filled the place of stacker while my father drove the
four-horse header, and when at noon, covered with sweat
and dust, I looked at myself, I had very little sense of
being a "rising literary man."

I got back once again to the solid realities of farm life,
and the majesty of the colorful sunsets which ended
many of our days could not conceal from me the starved
lives and lonely days of my little sister and my aging
mother.

"Think of it!" I wrote to my brother. "After eight
years of cultivation, father's farm possesses neither tree
nor vine. Mother's head has no protection from the burn
ing rays of the sun, except the shadow which the house
casts on the dry, hard door-yard. Where are the ' woods
and prairie lands' of our song? Is this the 'fairy
land' in which we were all to 'reign like kings'?

403

A Son of the Middle Border

Doesn't the whole migration of the Garlands and Mo
Clintocks seem a madness? "

Thereafter when alone, my mother and I often talked
of the good old days in Wisconsin, of David and Deborah
and William and Frank. I told her of Aunt Loretta's
peaceful life, of the green hills and trees.

"Oh, I wish we had never left Green's Coulee!" she
said.

But this was as far as her complaint ever went, for
father was still resolute and undismayed. "We'll try
again," he declared. "Next year will surely bring a
crop."

In a couple of weeks our patient, though unable to lift
her feet, was able to shuffle across the floor into the
kitchen, and thereafter insisted on helping Jessie at her
tasks. From a seat in a convenient corner she picked
over berries, stirred cake dough, ground coffee and
wiped dishes, almost as cheerfully as ever, but to me it
was a pitiful picture of bravery, and I burned ceaselessly
with desire to do something to repay her for this almost
hopeless disaster.

The worst of the whole situation lay in the fact that
my earnings both as teacher and as story writer were as
yet hardly more than enough to pay my own carefully
estimated expenses, and I saw no way of immediately
increasing my income. On the face of it, my plain duty
was to remain on the farm, and yet I could not bring
myself to sacrifice my Boston life. In spite of my pitiful
gains thus far, I held a vital hope of soon, — very soon-
being in condition to bring my mother and my sister
east. I argued, selfishly of course, "It must be that Dr.
Cross is right. My only chance of success lies in the
east."

Mother did her best to comfort me. "Don't worry
about us," she said. "Go back to your work. I aw

404

My Mother is Stricken

gaining. I'll be all right in a little while." Her brave
heart was still unsubdued.

While I was still debating my problem, a letter came
which greatly influenced me, absurdly influenced all of
us. It contained an invitation from the Secretary of the
Cedar Valley Agriculture Society to be "the Speaker of
the Day" at the County Fair on the twenty-fifth of
September. This honor not only flattered me, it greatly
pleased my mother. It was the kind of honor she could
fully understand. In imagination she saw her son stand
ing up before a throng of old-time friends and neighbors
introduced by Judge Daly and applauded by all the bank
ers and merchants of the town. "You must do it,"
she said, and her voice was decisive.

Father, though less open in his expression, was equally
delighted. "You can go round that way just as well as
not," he said. "I'd like to visit the old town myself."

This letter relieved the situation in the most unex
pected way. We all became cheerful. I began to say, "Of
course you are going to get well," and I turned again to
my plan of taking my sister back to the seminary. "We'll
hire a woman to stay with you," I said, "and Jessie can
run up during vacation, or you and father can go down and
spend Christmas with old friends."

Yes, I confess it, I was not only planning to leave my
mother again — I was intriguing to take her only child
away from her. There is no excuse for this, none whatever
except the fact that I had her co-operation in the plan.
She wanted her daughter to be educated quite as strongly
as I could wish, and was willing to put up with a little
more loneliness and toil if only her children were on the
road to somewhere.

Jessie was the obstructionist. She was both scared
and resentful. She had no desire to go to school in Osage,
She wanted to stay where she was. Mother needed

405

A Son of the Middle Border

her, — and besides she didn't have any decent clothes to
wear

Ultimately I overcame all her scruples, and by prom
ising her a visit to the great city of Minneapolis (with
the privilege of returning if she didn't like the school)
I finally got her to start with me. Poor, little scared
sister, I only half realized the agony of mind through
which you passed as we rode away into the Minnesota
prairies !

The farther she got from home the shabbier her gown
seemed and the more impossible her coat and hat. At
last, as we were leaving Minneapolis on our way to Osage
she leaned her tired head against me and sobbed out a
wild wish to go home.

Her grief almost wrecked my own self-control but I
soothed her as best I could by telling her that she would
soon be among old friends and that she couldn't turn
back now. "Go on and make a little visit anyway,"
I added. "It's only a few hours from Ordway and you
can go home at any time."

She grew more cheerful as we entered familiar scenes,
and one of the girls she had known when a child took
charge of her, leaving me free to play the part of dis
tinguished citizen.

The last day of the races was in action when I, with a
certain amount of justifiable pride, rode through the
gate (the old familiar sagging gate) seated beside the
President of the Association. I wish I could believe that
as "Speaker of the Day," I filled the sons of my neigh
bors with some small part of the awe with which the
speakers of other days filled me, and if I assumed some
thing of the polite condescension with \\hich all public
personages carry off such an entrance, I trust it will be
forgiven me.

The event, even to me, was more inspiring m antici*

406

My Mother is Stricken

pation than in fulfillment, for when I rose to speak ia
the band-stand the wind was blowing hard, and other
and less intellectual attractions were in full tide. My
audience remained distressingly small — and calm. I
have a dim recollection of howling into the face of the
equatorical current certain disconnected sentences con
cerning my reform theory, and of seeing on the familiar
faces of David Babcock, John Gammons and others
of my bronzed and bent old neighbors a mild wonder as
to what I was talking about.

On the whole I considered it a defeat. In the evening
I spoke in the Opera House appearing on the same plat
form whence, eight years before, I had delivered my im
passioned graduating oration on "Going West." True,
I had gone east but then, advice is for others, not for
oneself. Lee Moss, one of my class-mates, and in those
Seminary days a rival orator, was in my audience, and
so was Burton, wordless as ever, and a little sad, for his
attempt at preaching had not been successful — his
ineradicable shyness had been against him. Hattie
was there looking thin and old, and Ella and Matilda
with others of the girls I had known eight years before.
Some were accompanied by their children.

I suspect I aroused their wonder rather than their ad
miration. My radicalism was only an astonishment to
them. However, a few of the men, the more progressive
of them, came to me at the close of my talk and shook
hands and said, "Go on! The country needs just such
talks." One of these was Uncle Billy Frazer and his
allegiance surprised me, for he had never shown radical
tendencies before.

Summing it all up on my way to Chicago I must admit
that as a great man returning to his native village I had
not been a success.

After a few hours of talk with Kirkland I started east
407

A Son of the Middle Border

by way of Washington in order that I might stop at
Camden and call upon old Walt Whitman whose work
I had been lecturing about, and who had expressed a
willingness to receive me.

It was hot and dry in the drab little city in which he
lived, and the street on which the house stood was as
cheerless as an ash-barrel, even to one accustomed to
poverty, like myself, and when I reached the door
of his small, decaying wooden tenement, I was dis
mayed. It was all so unlike the home of a world-
famous poet.

It was indeed very like that in which a very destitute
mechanic might be living, and as I mounted the steps to
Walt's room on the second story my resentment increased.
Not a line of beauty or distinction or grace rewarded
my glance. It was all of the same unesthetic barrenness,
and not overly clean at that.

The old man, majestic as a stranded sea-God, was
sitting in an arm chair, his broad Quaker hat on his head,
waiting to receive me. He was spotlessly clean. His
white hair, his light gray suit, his fine linen all gave the
effect of exquisite neatness and wholesome living. His
clear tenor voice, his quiet smile, his friendly handclasp
charmed me and calmed me. He was so much gentler
and sweeter than I had expected him to be.

He sat beside a heap of half-read books, marked news
papers, clippings and letters, a welter of concerns which
he refused to have removed by the broom of the care
taker, and now and again as he wished to show me some
thing he rose and hobbled a step or two to fish a book or
a letter out of the pile. He was quite lame but could
move without a crutch. He talked mainly of his good
friends in Boston and elsewhere, and alluded to his
enemies without a particle of rancor. The lines on his
noble face were as placid as those on the brow of an ox — •

408

My Mother is Stricken

not one showed petulance or discouragement. He was
the optimist in every word.

He spoke of one of my stories to which Traubel had
called his attention, and reproved me gently for not
"letting in the light."

It was a memorable meeting for me and I went away
back to my work in Boston with a feeling that I had
seen one of the very greatest literary personalities of the
century, a notion I have had no cause to change in the
twenty-seven years which have intervened.

409

CHAPTER XXXI
Main Travelled Roads

MY second visit to the West confirmed me in all my
sorrowful notions of life on the plain, and I
resumed my writing in a mood of bitter resentment,
with full intention of telling the truth about western farm
life, irrespective of the land-boomer or the politicians.
I do not defend this mood, I merely report it.

In this spirit I finished a story which I called A Prairie
Heroine (in order that no one should mistake my meaning,
for it was the study of a crisis in the life of a despairing
farmer's wife), and while even here, I did not tell the
whole truth, I succeeded in suggesting to the sympa
thetic observer a tragic and hopeless common case.

It was a tract, that must be admitted, and realizing
this, knowing that it was entirely too grim to find a
place in the pages of the Century or Harpers I decided
to send it to the Arena, a new Boston review whose
spirit, so I had been told, was frankly radical.

A few days later I was amazed to receive from the edi
tor a letter of acceptance enclosing a check, but a para
graph in the letter astonished me more than the check
which was for one hundred dollars.

"I herewith enclose a check" wrote the editor,
" which I hope you will accept in payment of your
story. ... I note that you have cut out certain para
graphs of description with the fear, no doubt, that the
editor would object to them. I hope you will restore the
manuscript to its original form and return it. When I

Main Travelled Roads

ask a man to write for me, I want him to utter his mind
with perfect freedom. My magazine is not one that is
afraid of strong opinions."

This statement backed up by the writer's signature on
a blue slip produced in me a moment of stupefaction.
Entertaining no real hope of acceptance, I had sent the
manuscript in accordance with my principle of trying
every avenue, and to get such an answer — an immediate
answer — with a check!

As soon as I recovered the use of my head and hand,
I replied in eager acknowledgment. I do not recall
the precise words of my letter, but it brought about an
early meeting between B. O. Flower, the editor, and my
self.

Flower's personality pleased me. Hardly more than a
boy at this time, he met me with the friendliest smile,
and in our talk we discovered many common lines of
thought.

"Your story, "he said, "is the kind of fiction I need.
If you have any more of that sort let me see it. My mag
azine is primarily for discussion but I want to include at
least one story in each issue. I cannot match the prices
of magazines like the Century of course, but I will do the
best I can for you."

It would be difficult to exaggerate the value of this
meeting to me, for no matter what anyone may now say
of the Arena's logic or literary style, its editor's life was
nobly altruistic. I have never known a man who strove
more single-heartedly for social progress, than B. O.
Flower. He was the embodiment of unselfish public
service, and his ready sympathy for every genuine re
form made his editorial office a center of civic zeal. As
champions of various causes we all met in his open lists.

In the months which followed he accepted for his mag
azine several of my short stories and bought and printed

A Son of the Middle Border

Under the Wheel, an entire play, not to mention an essay
or two on The New Declaration of Rights. He named me
among his " regular contributors," and became not merely
my comforter and active supporter but my banker, for
the regularity of his payments raised me to comparative
security. I was able to write home the most encouraging
reports of my progress.

At about the same time (or a little later) the Ceniury
accepted a short story which I called A Spring Ro
mance, and a three-part tale of Wisconsin. For these
I received nearly five hundred dollars! Accompanying
the note of acceptance was a personal letter from Richard
Watson Gilder, so hearty in its words of appreciation
that I was assured of another and more distinctive avenue
of expression.

It meant something to get into the Century in those
days. The praise of its editor was equivalent to a di
ploma. I regarded Gilder as second only to Howells in
all that had to do with the judgment of fiction. Flower's
interests were ethical, Gilder's esthetic, and after all my
ideals were essentially literary. My reform notions were
subordinate to my desire to take honors as a novelist.

I cannot be quite sure of the precise date of this good
fortune, but I think it must have been in the winter of
1890 for I remember writing a lofty letter to my father,
in which I said, "If you want any money, let me know."

As it happened he had need of seed wheat, and it was
with deep satisfaction that I repaid the money I had
borrowed of him, together with three hundred dollars
more and so faced the new year clear of debt.

Like the miner who, having suddenly uncovered a
hidden vein of gold, bends to his pick in a confident be
lief in his "find" so I humped above my desk without
doubts, without hesitations. I had found my work in the
worjd. If I had any thought of investment at this time,

412

Main Travelled Roads

which I am sure I had not, it was concerned with the
west. I had no notion of settling permanently in the
east.

My success in entering both the Century and the Arena
emboldened me to say to Dr. Cross, "I shall be glad to
come down out of the attic and take a full-sized chamber
at regular rates."

Alas! he had no such room, and so after much perturba
tion, my brother and I hired a little apartment on More-
land street in Roxbury and moved into it joyously.
With a few dollars in my pocket, I went so far as to buy
a couple of pictures and a new book rack, the first prop
erty I had ever owned, and when, on that first night,
with everything in place we looked around upon our
" suite," we glowed with such exultant pride as only
struggling youth can feel. After years of privation, I
had, at last, secured a niche in the frowning escarpment
of Boston's social palisade.

Frank was twenty-seven, I was thirty, and had it not
been for a haunting sense of our father's defeat and a
growing fear of mother's decline, we would have been
entirely content. "How can we share our good fortune
with her and with sister Jessie?" was the question which
troubled us most. Jessie's fate seemed especially dreary
by contrast with our busy and colorful life.

"We can't bring them here," I argued. "They would
never be happy here. Father is a borderman. He would
enjoy coming east on a visit, but to shut him up in Boston
would be like caging an eagle. The case seems hopeless."

The more we discussed it the more insoluble the prob
lem became. The best we could do was to write often
and to plan for frequent visits to them.

One day, late in March, Flower, who had been using
my stories in almost every issue of his magazine, said to
me: "Why don't you put together some of your tales of

A Son of the Middle Border

the west, and let us bring them out in book form? I
believe they would have instant success."

His words delighted me for I had not yet begun to
hope for an appearance as the author of a book. Setting
to work at once to prepare such a volume I put into it
two unpublished novelettes called Up the Cooley and The
Branch Road, for the very good reason that none of the
magazines, not even The Arena, found them " available."
This reduced the number of sketches to six so that the
title page read:

MAIN TRAVELLED ROADS

Six Mississippi Valley Stories
BY HAMLIN GARLAND

The phrase "main travelled road" is common in the
west. Ask a man to direct you to a farmhouse and he
will say, "Keep the main travelled road till you come
to the second crossing and turn to the left." It seemed
to me not only a picturesque title, significant of my native
country, but one which permitted the use of a grimly
sardonic foreword. This I supplied.

"The main travelled road in the west (as everywhere)
is hot and dusty in summer and desolate and drear with
mud in fall and spring, and in winter the winds sweep
the snows across it, but it does sometimes cross a rich
meadow where the songs of the larks and blackbirds
and bobolinks are tangled. Follow it far enough, it may
lead past a bend in the river where the water laughs
eternally over its shallows. Mainly it is long and weary-
iul and has a dull little town at one end, and a home of
toil at the other. Like the main travelled road of life
it is traversed by many classes of people, but the poor
and the weary predominate."

This, my first book, was put together during a time
of deep personal sorrow. My little sister died suddenly,

414

Main Travelled Roads

leaving my father and mother alone on the bleak plain,
seventeen hundred miles from both their sons. Hope
lessly crippled, my mother now mourned the loss of her
"baby" and the soldier's keen eyes grew dim, for he
loved this little daughter above anything else in the
world. The flag of his sunset march was drooping on its
staff. Nothing but poverty and a lonely old age seemed
before him, and yet, in his letters to me, he gave out only
the briefest hints of his despair.

All this will explain, if the reader is interested to know,
why the dedication of my little book was bitter with
revolt: "To my father and mother, whose half-century
of pilgrimage on the main travelled road of life has
brought them only pain and weariness, these stories are
dedicated by a son to whom every day brings a deepen
ing sense of his parents' silent heroism." It will explain
also why the comfortable, the conservative, those who
farmed the farmer, resented my thin gray volume and
its message of acrid accusation.

It was published in 1891 and the outcry against it was
instant and astonishing — to me. I had a foolish notion
that the literary folk of the west would take a local pride
in the color of my work, and to find myself execrated by
nearly every critic as "a bird willing to foul his own nest"
was an amazement. Editorials and criticisms poured
into the office, all written to prove that my pictures of
the middle border were utterly false.

Statistics were employed to show that pianos and
Brussels carpets adorned almost every Iowa farmhouse.
Tilling the prairie soil was declared to be "the noblest
vocation in the world, not in the least like the pictures
this eastern author has drawn of it."

True, corn was only eleven cents per bushel at that
time, and the number of alien farm-renters was increasing.
True, all the bright boys and girls were leaving the farm,

A Son of the Middle Border »

following the example of my critics, but these I was told
were all signs of prosperity and not of decay. The
American farmer was getting rich, and moving to town,
only the renters and the hired man were uneasy and
clamorous.

My answer to all this criticism was a blunt statement
of facts. "Butter is not always golden nor biscuits in
variably light and flaky in my farm scenes, because
they're not so in real life," I explained. "I grew up on a
farm and I am determined once for all to put the essen
tial ugliness of its life into print. I will not lie, even to be
a patriot. A proper proportion of the sweat, flies, heat,
dirt and drudgery of it all shall go in. I am a competent
witness and I intend to tell the whole truth."

But I didn't! Even my youthful zeal faltered in the
midst of a revelation of the lives led by the women on the
farms of the middle border. Before the tragic futility
of their suffering, my pen refused to shed its ink. Over
the hidden chamber of their maternal agonies I drew
the veil.

The old soldier had nothing to say but mother wrote to
me, "It scares me to read some of your stories — they
are so true. You might have said more," she added,
"but I'm glad you didn't. Farmers' wives have enough
to bear as it is."

"My stories were not written for farmers' wives,"
I replied. "They were written to convict the selfish
monopolistic liars of the towns."

"I hope the liars read 'em," was her laconic retort.

Nevertheless, in spite of all the outcry against my book,
words of encouragement came in from a few men and
women who had lived out the precise experiences which
I had put into print. "You have delineated my life,"
one man said. "Every detail of your description is
true. The sound of the prairie chickens, the hum of the

416

Main Travelled Roads

threshing machine, the work of seeding, corn husking,
everything is familiar to me and new in literature."

A woman wrote, "You are entirely right about the
loneliness, the stagnation, the hardship. We are sick
of lies. Give the world the truth."

Another critic writing from the heart of a great uni
versity said, "I value your stories highly as literature,
but I suspect that in the social war which is coming you
and I will be at each other's throats."

This controversy naturally carried me farther and
farther from the traditional, the respectable. As a rebel
in art I was prone to arouse hate. Every letter I wrote
was a challenge, and one of my conservative friends
frankly urged the folly of my course. "It is a mistake
for you to be associated with cranks like Henry George
and writers like Whitman," he said. "It is a mistake
to be published by the Arena. Your book should have
been brought out by one of the old established firms.
If you will fling away your radical notions and consent
to amuse the governing classes, you will succeed."

Fling away my convictions ! It were as easy to do that
as to cast out my bones. I was not wearing my indigna
tion as a cloak. My rebellious tendencies came from
something deep down. They formed an element in my
blood. My patriotism resented the failure of our govern
ment. Therefore such advice had very little influence
upon me. The criticism that really touched and in
fluenced me was that which said, "Don't preach, — ex
emplify. Don't let your stories degenerate into tracts."
Howells said, "Be fine, be fine — but not too fine!"
and Gilder warned me not to leave Beauty out of the
picture.

In the light of this friendly council I perceived my
danger, and set about to avoid the fault of mixing my
fiction with my polemics.

/" 417

A Son of the Middle Border

The editor of the Arena remained my most loyal
supporter. He filled the editorial section of his magazine
with praise of my fiction and loudly proclaimed my
non-conformist character. No editor ever worked harder
to give his author a national reputation and the book
sold, not as books sell now, but moderately, steadily,
and being more widely read than sold, went far. This
proved of course, that my readers were poor and could
not afford to pay a dollar for a book, at least they didn't,
and I got very little royalty from the sale. If I had any
illusions about that they were soon dispelled. On the
paper bound book I got five cents, on the cloth bound,
ten. The sale was mainly in the fifty-cent edition.

It was not for me to criticise the methods by which
my publisher was trying to make me known, and I do
not at this moment regret Flower's insistence upon the
reforming side of me, — but for the reason that he was
essentially ethical rather than esthetic, some part of
the literary significance of my work escaped him. It
was from the praise of Howells, Matthews and Stedman,
that I received my enlightenment. I began to perceive
that in order to make my work carry its message, I must
be careful to keep a certain balance between Signifi
cance and Beauty. The artist began to check the
preacher.

Howells gave the book large space in "The Study"
in Harpers and what he said of it profoundly instructed
me. Edward Everett Hale, Mary E. Wilkins, Thomas
Wentworth Higginson, Charles Dudley Warner, Edmund
Clarence Stedman, and many other were most generous
of applause. In truth I was welcomed into the circle
of American realists with an instant and generous greet
ing which astonished, at the same time that it delighted
me.

I marvel at this appreciation as I look back upon it,

418

Main Travelled Roads

and surely in view of its reception, no one can blame me
for considering my drab little volume a much more
important contribution to American fiction than it
really was.

It was my first book, and so, perhaps, the reader will
excuse me for being a good deal uplifted by the noise
it made. Then too, it is only fair to call attention to
the fact that aside from Edward Eggleston's Hoosier
Schoolmaster, Howe's Story of a Country Town, and Zury,
by Joseph Kirkland, I had the middle west almost en
tirely to myself. Not one of the group of western writers
who have since won far greater fame, and twenty times
more dollars than I, had at that time published a single
volume. William Allen White, Albert Bigelow Payne,
Stewart Edward White, Jack London, Emerson Hough,
George Ade, Meredith Nicholson, Booth Tarkington,
and Rex Beach were all to come. " Octave Thanet " was
writing her stories of Arkansas life for Scribners but had
published only one book.

Among all my letters of encouragement of this
time, not one, except perhaps that from Mr. Howells,
meant more to me than a word which came from Walt
Whitman, who hailed me as one of the literary pioneers
of the west for whom he had been waiting. His judgment,
so impersonal, so grandly phrased, gave me the feeling
of having been "praised by posterity."

In short, I was assured that my face was set in the
right direction and that the future was mine, for I was
not yet thirty-one years of age, and thirty-one is a most
excellent period of life!

And yet, by a singular fatality, at this moment came
another sorrow, the death of Alice, my boyhood's ado
ration. I had known for years that she was not for me,
but I loved to think of her as out there walking the lanes
among the roses and the wheat as of old. My regard for

419

A Son of the Middle Border

her was no longer that of the lover desiring and hoping,
and though I acknowledged defeat I had been too
broadly engaged in my ambitious literary plans to permit
her deflection to permanently cloud my life. She had
been a radiant and charming figure in my prairie world,
and when I read the letter telling of her passing, my mind
was irradiated with the picture she had made when last
she said good-bye to me. Her gentle friendship had been
very helpful through all my years of struggle and now
in the day of my security, her place was empty.

CHAPTER XXXH
The Spirit of Revolt

DURING all this time while I had been living so
busily and happily in Boston, writing stories, dis
cussing Ibsen and arguing the cause of Impressionism,
a portentous and widespread change of sentiment was
taking place among the farmers of the Middle Border.
The discouragement which I had discovered in old
friends and neighbors in Dakota was finding collective
expression. A vast and non-sectional union of the corn-
growers, wheat-raisers, and cotton-growers had been
effected and the old time politicians were uneasy.

As ten cent corn and ten per cent interest were trou
bling Kansas so six-cent cotton was inflaming Georgia —
and both were frankly sympathetic with Montana and
Colorado whose miners were suffering from a drop in the
price of silver. To express the meaning of this revolt
a flying squadron of radical orators had been commis
sioned and were in the field. Mary Ellen Lease with
Cassandra voice, and Jerry Simpson with shrewd humor
were voicing the demands of the plainsman, while " Coin "
Harvey as champion of the Free Silver theory had stirred
the Mountaineer almost to a frenzy. It was an era of
fervent meetings and fulminating resolutions. The
Grange had been social, or at most commercially co
operative in its activities, but The Farmers' Alliance
came as a revolt.

The People's Party which was the natural outcome of
this unrest involved my father. He wrote me that he had

A Son of the Middle Border

joined "the Populists," and was one of their County
officers. I was not surprised at this action on his part,
for I had known how high in honor he held General
Weaver who was the chief advocate of a third party.

Naturally Flower sympathized with this movement,
and kept the pages of his magazine filled with impas
sioned defenses of it. One day, early in '91, as I was
calling upon him in his office, he suddenly said, " Garland,
why can't you write a serial story for us? One that shall
deal with this revolt of the farmers? It's perfectly legit
imate material for a novel, as picturesque in its way as
The Rise of the Vendee— Can't you make use of it? "

To this I replied, with some excitement — "Why yes,
I think I can. I have in my desk at this moment, several
chapters of an unfinished story which uses the early
phases of the Grange movement as a background. If
it pleases you I can easily bring it down to date. It
might be necessary for me to go into the field, and make
some fresh studies, but I believe I can treat the two
movements in the same story. Anyhow I should like to
try."

"Bring the manuscript in at once," replied Flower.
"It may be just what we are looking for. If it is we will
print it as a serial this summer, and bring it out in book
form next winter."

In high excitement I hurried home to dig up and re-read
the fragment which I called at this time Bradley Talcott.
It contained about thirty thousand words and its hero
was a hired man on an Iowa farm. Of course I saw pos
sibilities in this manuscript — I was in the mood to do
that — and sent it in.

Flower read it and reported almost by return mail.

"We'll take it," he said. "And as soon as you can
get away, I think that you'd better go out to Kansas
and Nebraska and make the studies necessary to com-

422

The Spirit of Revolt

plete the story. We'll pay all your expenses and pay
you for the serial besides."

The price agreed upon would seem very small in these
days of millionaire authors, but to me the terms of
flower's commission were nobly generous. They set me
Vee. They gave me wings! — For the first time in my life
1 was able to travel in comfort. I could not only eat
in the dining car, and sleep in the sleeping car, but I
could go to a hotel at the end of my journey with a de
lightful sense of freedom from worry about the bills.
Do you wonder that when I left Boston a week or two
later, I did so with elation — with a sense of conquest?

Eager to explore — eager to know every state of the
Union and especially eager to study the far plains and
the Rocky Mountains, I started westward and kept
going until I reached Colorado. My stay in the moun
tain country was short, but my glimpses of Ouray and
Telluride started me on a long series of stories of "the
high trails."

On the way out as well as on the way back, I took part
in meetings of rebellious farmers in bare-walled Kansas
school-houses, and watched protesting processions of
weather-worn Nebraska Populists as they filed through
the shadeless cities of their sun-baked plain. I attended
barbecues on drab and dusty fair grounds, meeting many
of the best known leaders in the field.

Everywhere I came in contact with the discontented.
I saw only those whose lives seemed about to end in
failure, and my grim notions of farm life were in no wise
softened by these experiences.

How far away all this seems in these days of three-
dollar wheat and twenty-six cent cotton — these days of
automobiles, tractor plows, and silos!

As I kept no diary in those days, I am a little uncertain
about dates and places — and no wonder, for I was doing

423

A Son of the Middle Border

something every moment (I travelled almost incessantly
for nearly two years) but one event of that summer does
stand clearly out — that of a meeting with my father at
Omaha in July.

It seems that some sort of convention was being held
there and that my father was a delegate from Brown
County, Dakota. At any rate I distinctly recall meeting
him at the train and taking him to my hotel and intro
ducing him to General Weaver. As a representative of
the Arena I had come to know many of the most prom
inent men in the movement, and my father was deeply
impressed with their recognition of me. For the first
time in his life, he deferred to me. He not only let me
take charge of him, he let me pay the bills.

He said nothing to me of his pride in my position, but
my good friends Robert and Elia Peattie told me that
to them he expressed the keenest satisfaction. "I never
thought Hamlin would make a success of writing," he
said, " although he was always given to books. I couldn't
believe that he would ever earn a living that way, but
it seems that he is doing it." My commission from
Flower and the fact that the Arena was willing to pay my
way about the country, were to him indubitable signs
of prosperity. They could not be misinterpreted by his
neighbors.

Elia Peattie sat beside him at a meeting when I spoke,
and she heard him say to an old soldier on the right,
"I never knew just what that boy of mine was fitted for,
but I guess he has struck his gait at last."

It may seem illogical to the reader, but this deference
on the part of the old soldier did not amuse me. On the
contrary it hurt me. A little pang went through me
every time he yielded his leadership. I hated to see him
display the slightest evidence of age, of weakness. I
would rather have had him storm than sigh. Part of his

424

The Spirit of Revolt

irresolution, his timidity, was due, as I could see, to the
unwonted noise, and to the crowds of excited men, but
more of it came from the vague alarm of self-distrust
which are signs of advancing years.

For two days we went about together, attending all
the sessions and meeting many of the delegates, but we
found time to discuss the problems which confronted
us both. "I am farming nearly a thousand acres this
year," he said, "and I'm getting the work systematized
so that I can raise wheat at sixty cents a bushel — if I can
only get fifteen bushels to the acre. But there's no
money in the country. We seem to be at the bottom of
our resources. I never expected to see this country in
such a state. I can't get money enough to pay my taxes.
Look at my clothes! I haven't had a new suit in three
years. Your mother is in the same fix. I wanted to
bring her down, but she had no clothes to wear — and
then, besides, it's hard for her to travel. The heat takes
hold of her terribly."

This statement of the Border's poverty and drought
was the more moving to me for the reason that the old
pioneer had always been so patriotic, so confident, so
sanguine of his country's future. He had come a long
way from the buoyant faith of '66, and the change in him
was typical of the change in the West — in America — and
it produced in me a sense of dismay, of rebellious bitter
ness. Why should our great new land fall into this
slough of discouragement?

My sympathy with the Alliance took on a personal
tinge. My pride in my own "success" sank away. How
pitiful it all seemed in the midst of the almost universal
disappointment and suffering of the West! In the face of
my mother's need my resources were pitifully inadequate.

"I can't go up to see mother this time," I explained to
my father, "but I am coming out again this fall to speak

425

A Son of the Middle Border

in the campaign and I shall surely run up and visit hef
then."

"I'll arrange for you to speak in Aberdeen," he said
"I'm on the County Committee."

All the way back to Boston, and during the weeks of
my work on my novel, I pondered the significance of the
spiritual change which had swept over the whole nation —
but above all others the problem of my father's desperate
attempt to retrieve his fortunes engaged my sympathy.
"Unless he gets a crop this year," I reported to my
brother — "he is going to need help. It fills me with
horror to think of those old people spending another
winter out there on the plain."

My brother who was again engaged by Herne to play
one of the leading parts in Shore Acres was beginning to
see light ahead. His pay was not large but he was saving
a little of it and was willing to use his savings to help me
out in my plan of rescue. It was to be a rescue although
we were careful never to put it in that form in our letters
to the old pioneer.

Up to this month I had retained my position in the
Boston School of Oratory, but I now notified Brown that
I should teach no more in his school or any other school.

His big shoulders began to shake and a chuckle pre
ceded his irritating joke — "Going back to shingling?"
he demanded.

"No," I replied, "I'm not going to shingle anymore —
except for exercise after I get my homestead in the west — •
but I think — I'm not sure — I think I can make a living
with my pen."

He became serious at this and said, "I'm sorry to have
you go — but you are entirely right. You have found
your work and I give you my blessing on it. But you
must always count yourself one of my teachers and come

426

" 1 am sorry to have you go." P. 420

The Spirit of Revolt

and speak for us whenever you can." This I promised to
do and so we parted.

Early in September I went west and having put my
self in the hands of the State Central Committee of
Iowa, entered the field, campaigning in the interests
of the People's Party. For six weeks I travelled, speaking
nearly every day — getting back to the farms of the west
and harvesting a rich fund of experiences.

It was delightful autumn weather, and in central
Iowa the crops were fairly abundant. On every hand
fields of corn covered the gentle hills like wide rugs of
lavender velvet, and the odor of melons and ripening
leaves filled the air. Nature's songs of cheer and abun
dance (uttered by innumerable insects) set forth the
monstrous injustice of man's law by way of contrast.
Why should children cry for food in our cities whilst
fruits rotted on the vines and wheat had no value to the
harvester?

With other eager young reformers, I rode across the
odorous prairie swells, journeying from one meeting place
to another, feeling as my companions did that something
grandly beneficial was about to be enacted into law.
In this spirit I spoke at Populist picnics, standing be
neath great oaks, surrounded by men and women, work-
worn like my own father and mother, shadowed by
the same cloud of dismay. I smothered in small halls
situated over saloons and livery stables, travelling by
freight-train at night in order to ride in triumph as
"Orator of the Day" at some county fair, until at last
I lost all sense of being the writer and recluse.

As I went north my indignation burned brighter, for
the discontent of the people had been sharpened by the
drought which had again cut short the crop. At Mill-
bank, Cyrus, one of my old Dry Run neighbors, met me.
He was now a grave, stooping middle-aged man also in

427

A Son of the Middle Border

the midst of disillusionment. "Going west" had been
a mistake for him as for my father — "But here we are,"
he said, "and I see nothing for it but to stick to the job.'*

Mother and father came to Aberdeen to hear me speak,
and as I looked down on them from the platform of the
opera house, I detected on their faces an expression which
was not so much attention, as preoccupation. They
were not listening to my words, they were thinking of my
relationship to them, of the mystery involved in my being
there on the platform surrounded by the men of the
county whom they most respected. They could not
take my theories seriously, but they did value and to
the full, the honor which their neighbors paid me —
their son! Their presence so affected me that I made,
I fear, but an indifferent address.

We did not have much time to talk over family affairs
but it was good to see them even for a few moments and
to know that mother was slowly regaining the use of her
limbs.

Another engagement made it necessary for me to take
the night train for St. Paul and so they both went down
to the station with me, and as the time came to part
I went out to the little covered buggy (which was all
the carriage my father owned) to start them off on their
lonely twelve-mile trip back to the farm. "I don't
know how it is all coming about, mother, but sometime,
somewhere you and I are going to live together, — not
here, back in Osage, or perhaps in Boston. It won't
be long now."

She smiled, but her voice was tremulous. "Don't
worry about me. I'm all right again — at least I am
better. I shall be happy if only you are successful."

This meeting did me good. My mother's smile les
sened my bitterness, and her joy in me, her faith in
me, sent me away in renewed determination to rescue

428

The Spirit of Revolt

her from the destitution and loneliness of this arid
land.

My return to Boston in November discovered a
startling change in my relationship to it. The shining
city in which I had lived for seven years, and which had
become so familiar to me (and so necessary to my prog
ress), had begun to dwindle, to recede. The warm, broad,
unkempt and tumultuous west, with its clamorous move
ment, its freedom from tradition, its vitality of political
thought, reasserted its power over me. New England
again became remote. It was evident that I had not
really taken root in Massachusetts after all. I per
ceived that Boston was merely the capital of New Eng
land while New York was fast coming to be the all-
conquering capital of The Nation.

My realization of this shift of values was sharpened
by the announcement that Howells had definitely de
cided to move to the Metropolis, and that Herne had
broken up his little home in Ashmont and was to make
his future home on Convent Avenue in Harlem. The
process of stripping Boston to build up Manhattan had
begun.

My brother who was still one of Herne's company of
players in Shore Acres, had no home to break up, but he
said, "I'm going to get some sort of headquarters in
New York. If you'll come on we'll hire a little apart
ment up town and 'bach' it. I'm sick of theatrical
boarding houses."

With suddenly acquired conviction that New York was
about to become the Literary Center of America, I
replied, "Very well. Get your flat. I'd like to spend
u winter in the old town anyway."

My brother took a small furnished apartment on
io5th Street, and together we camped above the tumult.
It was only twelve-and-a-half feet wide and about

429

A Son of the Middle Border

forty-eight long, and its furnishings were ugly, frayed
and meager, but its sitting room opened upon the sun,
and there, of a morning, I continued to write in growing
content. At about noon the actor commonly cooked
a steak or a chop and boiled a pot of coffee, and after
the dishes were washed, we both merrily descended upon
Broadway by means of a Ninth Avenue elevated train.
Sometimes we dined down town in reckless luxury at
one of the French restaurants, "where the tip was but a
nickel and the dinner thirty cents," but usually even our
evening meal was eaten at home.

Herne was playing an unlimited engagement at the
Broadway theater and I spent a good deal of time behind
the scenes with him. His house on Convent Avenue
was a handsome mansion and on a Sunday, I often dined
there, and when we all got going the walls resounded
with argument. Jim was a great wag and a delightful
story teller, but he was in deadly earnest as a reformer,
and always ready to speak on The Single Tax. He
took his art very seriously also, and was one of the best
stage directors of his day. Some of his dramatic methods
were so far in advance of his time that they puzzled
or disgusted many of his patrons, but without doubt
he profoundly influenced the art of the American stage.
Men like William Gillette and Clyde Fitch quite frankly
acknowledged their indebtedness to him.

Jim and Katharine both had an exaggerated notion
of my importance in the world of art and letters, and
listened to me with a respect, a fellowship and an ap
preciation which increased my sense of responsibility
and inspired me to greater effort as a novelist. To
gether we hammered out questions of art and economics,
and planned new plays. Those were inspiring hours to
us all and we still refer to them as " the good old Convent
Avenue days!"

430

The Spirit of Revolt

New York City itself was incredibly simpler and quietel
than it is now, but to me it was a veritable hell because
of the appalling inequality which lay between the palaces
of the landlords and the tenements of the proletariat.
The monstrous injustice of permitting a few men to
own the land on which millions toiled for the barest
living tore at my heart strings then, as it does now, and
the worst of it rested in the fact that the landless seemed
willing to be robbed for the pleasure of those who could
not even dissipate the wealth which rolled in upon them
in waves of unearned rent.

And yet, rpuch as I felt this injustice and much as the
city affected me, I could not put it into fiction. "It is
not my material," I said. " My dominion is the West."

Though at ease, I had no feeling of being at home in
this tumult. I was only stopping in it in order to be
near the Hernes, my brother, and Howells. The Georges,
whom I had come to know very well, interested me
greatly and often of an evening I went over to the East
Side, to the unpretentious brick house in which The
Prophet and his delightful family lived. Of course this
home was doctrinaire, but then I liked that flavor, and
so did the Hernes, although Katharine's keen sense of
humor sometimes made us all seem rather like thorough
going cranks — which we were.

In the midst of our growing security and expanding
acquaintanceship, my brother and I often returned to
fiie problem of our aging parents.

My brother was all for bringing them east but to this
I replied, "No, that is out of the question. The old
pioneer would never be happy in a city."

"We could buy a farm over in Jersey."

"What would he do there? He would be among
strangers and in strange conditions. — No, the only solu
tion is to get him to go back either to Iowa or to Wiscon-

A Son of the Middle Border

sin. He will find even that very hard to do for it wifl
seem like failure but he must do it. For mother's sake
I'd rather see him go back to the LaCrosse valley. It
would be a pleasure to visit them there."

"That is the thing to do," my brother agreed. "I'll
never get out to Dakota again."

The more I thought about this the lovelier it seemed.
The hills, the farmhouses, the roads, the meadows all
had delightful associations in my mind, as I knew they
must have in my mother's mind and the idea of a re
gained homestead in the place of my birth began to en
gage my thought whenever I had leisure to ponder my
problem and especially whenever I received a letter
from my mother.

There was a certain poetic justice in the return of my
father and mother to the land from which they had been
lured a quarter of a century before, and I was willing to
make any sacrifice to bring it about. I take no credit
for this, it was a purely selfish plan, for so long as they
were alone out there on the plain my own life must con
tinue to be troubled and uneasy.

432

CHAPTER XXXHI
The End of the Sunset Trail

IN February while attending a conference of reformers
in St. Louis I received a letter from my mother which
greatly disturbed me. "I wish I could see you," she
wrote. "I am not very well this winter, I can't go out
very often and I get very lonesome for my boys. If
only you did not live so far away!"

There was something in this letter which made all
that I was doing in the convention of no account, and on
the following evening I took the train for Columbia, the
little village in which my parents were spending the
winter, filled with remorseful forebodings. My pain and
self-accusation would not let me rest. Something clutched
my heart every time I thought of my crippled mother
prisoned in a Dakota shanty and no express train was
swift enough to satisfy my desire to reach her. The letter
had been forwarded to me and I was afraid that she
might be actually ill.

That ride next day from Sioux City to Aberdeen was
one of the gloomiest I had ever experienced. Not only
was my conscience uneasy, it seemed that I was being
hurled into a region of arctic storms. A terrific blizzard*
possessed the plain, and the engine appeared to fight
its way like a brave animal. All day it labored forward
while the coaches behind it swayed in the ever-increas
ing power of the tempest, their wheels emitting squeals
of pain as they ground through the drifts, and I sitting
in my overcoat with collar turned high above my ears,

433

A Son of the Middle Border

my hands thrust deep in my pockets, sullenly counted
the hours of my discomfort. The windows, furred deep
with frost, let in but a pallid half-light, thus adding a
mental dusk to the actual menace of the storm.

After each station the brakemen re-entered as if blown
in by the blast, and a vapor, white as a shower of flour,
, filled the doorway, behind them. Occasionally as I
cleared a space for a peephole through the rimy panes,
I caught momentary glimpses of a level, treeless earth,
desolate as the polar ocean swept by ferocious elemental
warfare.

No life was to be seen save here and there a suffering
steer or colt, humped under the lee of a straw-stack.
The streets of the small wooden towns were deserted.
No citizen was abroad, only the faint smoke of chimneys
testified to the presence of life beneath the roof -trees.

Occasionally a local passenger came in, puffing and
whistling with loud explosions of excited comment over
the storm which he seemed to treat as an agreeable
diversion, but the conductor, who followed, threshing his
hands and nursing his ears, swore in emphatic dislike of
the country and climate, but even this controversy of
fered no relief to the through passengers who sat in frozen
stoical silence. There was very little humor in a Dakota
blizzard for them — or for me.

At six o'clock that night I reached the desolate end
of my journey. My father met me at the station and led
the way to the low square bleak cottage which he had
rented for the winter. Mother, still unable to lift her
feet from the floor, opened the door to us, and reaching
her, as I did, through that terrifying tempest, made her
seem as lonely as a castaway on some gelid Greenland
coast.

Father was in unwonted depression. His crop had
again failed to mature. With nearly a thousand acres of

434

The End of the Sunset Trail

wheat, he had harvested barely enough for the next
year's seed. He was not entirely at the end of his faith,
however; on the contrary, he was filled with desire of the
farther west. "The irrigated country is the next field
for development. I'm going to sell out here and try
irrigation in Montana. I want to get where I can
regulate the water for my crops."

"You'll do nothing of the kind," I retorted. "You'll
go no further west. I have a better plan than that."

The wind roared on, all that night and all the next day,
and during this time we did little but feed the stove and
argue our widely separated plans. I told them of Frank
lin's success on the stage with Herne, and I described my
own busy, though unremunerative life as a writer, and
as I talked the world from which I came shone with in
creasing splendor.

Little by little the story of the country's decay came
out. The village of Ordway had been moved away,
nothing remained but the grain elevator. Many of our
old neighbors had gone "to the irrigation country" and
more were planning to go as soon as they could sell their
farms. Columbia was also in desolate decline. Its hotel
stood empty, its windows broken, its doors sagging.

Nothing could have been more depressing, more hope
less, and my throat burned with bitter rage every time
my mother shuffled across the floor, and when she shyly
sat beside me and took my hand in hers as if to hold
me fast, my voice almost failed me. I began to plead.
"Father, let's get a home together, somewhere. Sup
pose we compromise on old Neshonoc where you
were married and where I was born. Let's buy a
house and lot there and put the deed in mother's
name so that it can never be alienated, and make it the
Garland Homestead. Come! Mother's brothers are
there, your sister is there, all your old pioneer com-

435 /

A Son of the Middle Border

rades are there. It's in a rich and sheltered valley and is
filled with associations of your youth. — Haven't you had
enough of pioneering? Why not go back and be shel
tered by the hills and trees for the rest of your lives? If
you'll join us in this plan, Frank and I will spend our
summers with you and perhaps we can all eat our Thanks
giving dinners together in the good old New England
custom and be happy."

Mother yielded at once to the earnestness of my ap
peal. "I'm ready to go back," she said. "There's only
one thing to keep me here, and that is Jessie's grave,"
(Poor little girl! It did seem a bleak place in which to
leave her lying alone) but the old soldier was still too
proud, too much the pioneer, to bring himself at once to
a surrender of his hopes. He shook his head and said,
" I can't do it, Hamlin. I've got to fight it out right here
or farther west."

To this I darkly responded, "If you go farther west
you go alone. Mother's pioneering is done. She i-
coming with me, back to comfort, back to a real home
beside her brothers."

As I grew calmer, we talked of the past, of the early
days in Iowa, of the dimmer, yet still more beautiful
valleys of Wisconsin, till mother sighed, and said,
"I'd like to see the folks and the old coulee once more,
but I never shall."

"Yes, you shall," I asserted.

We spoke of David whose feet were still marching to
the guidons of the sunset, of Burton far away on an Is
land in Puget Sound, and together we decided that
placid old William, sitting among his bees in Gill's Cou
lee, was after all the wiser man. Of what avail this
constant quest of gold, beneath the far horizon's rim?

"Father," I bluntly said, "you've been chasing
a will-o'-the-wisp. For fifty years you've been mov-

43$

The End of the Sunset Trail

ing westward, and always you have gone from cer
tainty to uncertainty, from a comfortable home to a
shanty. For thirty years you've carried mother on
a ceaseless journey — to what end? Here you are, —
snowbound on a treeless plain with mother old and
crippled. It's a hard thing to say but the time has come
for a 'bout face. You must take the back trail. It will
hurt, but it must be done."

"I can't do it!" he exclaimed. "I've never 'backed
water' in my life, and I won't do it now. I'm not beaten
yet. We've had three bad years in succession — we'll
surely have a crop next year. I won't surrender so long
as I can run a team."

"Then, let me tell you something else," I resumed. "I
will never visit you on this accursed plain again. You
can live here if you want to, but I'm going to take mother
out of it. She shall not grow old and die in such sur
roundings as these. I won't have it — it isn't right."

At last the stern old Captain gave in, at least to the
point of saying, "Well, we'll see. I'll come down next
summer, and we'll visit William and look the ground
over. — But I won't consider going back to stay till I've
had a crop. I won't go back to the old valley dead-broke.
I can't stand being called a failure. If I have a crop and
can sell out I'll talk with you."

"Very well. I'm going to stop off at Salem on my
way East and tell the folks that you are about to sell out
and come back to the old valley."

This victory over my pioneer father gave me such relief
from my gnawing conscience that my whole sky lightened.
The thought of establishing a family hearth at the point
where my life began, had a fine appeal. All my school
ing had been to migrate, to keep moving. "If your
crop fails, go west and try a new soil. If disagreeable

437

A Son of the Middle Border

neighbors surround you, sell out and move, — always
toward the open country. To remain quietly in your
native place is a sign of weakness, of irresolution. Hap
piness dwells afar. Wealth and fame are to be found by
journeying toward the sunset star!" Such had been
the spirit, the message of all the songs and stories of my
youth.

Now suddenly I perceived the futility of our quest.
I felt the value, I acknowledged the peace of the old,
the settled. The valley of my birth even in the midst
of winter had a quiet beauty. The bluffs were draped
with purple and silver. Steel-blue shadows filled the
hollows of the sunlit snow. The farmhouses all put
forth a comfortable, settled, homey look. The farmers
themselves, shaggy, fur-clad and well-fed, came into
town driving fat horses whose bells uttered a song of
plenty. On the plain we had feared the wind with a
mortal terror, here the hills as well as the sheltering elms
(which defended almost every roof) stood against the
blast like friendly warders.

The village life, though rude and slow-moving, was
hearty and cheerful. As I went about the streets with
my uncle William — gray-haired old pioneers whose names
were startlingly familiar, called out, " Hello, Bill" — •
adding some homely jest precisely as they had been
doing for forty years. As young men they had threshed
or cradled or husked corn with my father, whom they
still called by his first name. "So you are Dick's boy?
How is Dick getting along?"

"He has a big farm," I replied, "nearly a thousand acres,
but he's going to sell out next year and come back here."

They were all frankly pleased. "Is that so! Made his
pile, I s'pose?"

" Enough to live on, I guess," I answered evasively.

" I'm glad to hear of it. I always liked Dick. We were
4*8

The End of the Sunset Trail

A a the woods together. I hated to see him leave the
valley. How's Belle?"

This question always brought the shadow back to my
face. "Not very well, — but we hope she'll be better
when she gets back here among her own folks."

"Well, we'll all be glad to see them both," was the
hearty reply.

In this hope, with this plan in mind, I took my way
back to New York, well pleased with my plan.

After nearly a third of a century of migration, the Gar
lands were about to double on their trail, and their de
cision was deeply significant. It meant that a certain
phase of American pioneering had ended, that "the
woods and prairie lands" having all been taken up,
nothing remained but the semi-arid valleys of the Rocky
Mountains. "Irrigation" was a new word and a vague
word in the ears of my father's generation, and had little
of the charm which lay in the " flowery savannahs " of the
Mississippi valley. In the years between 1865 and 1892
the nation had swiftly passed through the buoyant era
of free land settlement, and now the day of reckoning
had come.

439

CHAPTER XXXIV
We .Go to California

^| ^HE idea of a homestead now became an obsession
Jt with me. As a proletariat I knew the power of the
landlord and the value of land. My love of the wilder
ness was increasing year by year, but all desire to plow
the wild land was gone. My desire for a home did not
involve a lonely cabin in a far-off valley, on the con
trary I wanted roads and bridges and neighbors. My
hope now was to possess a minute isle of safety in the
midst of the streaming currents of western life — a little
solid ground in my native valley on which the surviving
members of my family could catch and cling.

All about me as I travelled, I now perceived the mourn
ful side of American " enterprise." Sons were deserting
their work-worn fathers, daughters were forgetting their
tired mothers. Families were everywhere breaking up.
Ambitious young men and unsuccessful old men were in
restless motion, spreading, swarming, dragging their
reluctant women and their helpless and wondering chil
dren into unfamiliar hardships — At times I visioned the
Middle Border as a colony of ants — which was an in
justice to the ants, for ants have a reason for their ap
parently futile and aimless striving.

My brother and I discussed my notion in detail as we
sat in our six-by-nine dining room, high in our Harlem
flat. " The house must be in a village. It must be New
England in type and stand beneath tall elm trees," I
said. "It must be broad-based and low — you know the

440

We Go to California

kind, we saw dozens of them on our tramp-trip down the
Connecticut Valley and we'll have a big garden and
a tennis court. We'll need a barn, too, for father will
want to keep a driving team. Mother shall have a girl
to do the housework so that we can visit her often," — and
so on and on!

Things were not coming our way very fast but they
were coming, and it really looked as though my dream
might become a reality. My brother was drawing a
small but regular salary as a member of Herne's company,
my stories were selling moderately well and as neither
of us was given to drink or cards, whatever we earned
we saved. To some minds our lives seemed stupidly
regular, but we were happy in our quiet way.

It was in my brother's little flat on One Hundred and
Fifth Street that Stephen Crane renewed a friendship
which had begun a couple of years before, while I was
lecturing in Avon, New Jersey. He was a slim, pale,
hungry looking boy at this time and had just written
The Red Badge of Courage, in fact he brought the first
half of it in his pocket on his second visit, and I loaned
him fifteen dollars to redeem the other half from the keep
of a cruel typist.

He came again and again to see me, always with a new
roll of manuscript in his ulster. Now it was The Men in
the Storm, now a bunch of Tlie Black Riders, curious poems,
which he afterwards dedicated to me, and while my
brother browned a steak, Steve and I usually sat in
council over his dark future.

"You will laugh over these lean years," I said to him,
but he found small comfort in that prospect.

To him I was a man established, and I took an absurd
pleasure in playing the part of Successful Author. It
was all very comical — for my study was the ratty little
parlor of a furnished flat for which we paid thirty dollars

441

A Son of the Middle Border

per month. Still to the man at the bottom of a pit the
fellow on top, in the sunlight, is a king, and to Crane
my brother and I were at least dukes.

An expression used by Suderman in his preface to
Dame Care had made a great impression on my mind and
in discussing my future with the Hernes I quoted these
lines and said, "I am resolved that my mother shall not
'rise from the feast of life empty/ Think of it! She has
never seen a real play in a real theater in all her life. She
has never seen a painting or heard a piece of fine music.
She knows nothing of the splendors of our civilization
except what comes to her in the newspapers, while here
am I in the midst of every intellectual delight. I take no
credit for my desire to comfort her — it's just my way of
having fun. It's a purely selfish enterprise on my part."

Katharine who was familiar with the theory of Egoistic
Altruism would not let my statement go uncontradictedJ
She tried to make a virtue of my devotion to my parents.1

"No," I insisted, — "if batting around town gave me
more real pleasure I would do it. It don't, in fact I
shall never be quite happy till I have shown mother
Shore Acres and given her an opportunity to hear a
symphony concert."

Meanwhile, having no business adviser, I was doing
honorable things in a foolish way. With no knowledge
of how to publish my work I was bringing out a problem
novel here, a realistic novelette there and a book of short
stories in a third place, all to the effect of confusing my
public and disgusting the book-seller. But then, no one
in those days had any very clear notion of how to launch
a young writer, and so (as I had entered the literary field
by way of a side-gate) I was doing as well as could have
been expected of me. My idea, it appears, was to get
as many books into the same market at the same time as
possible. As a matter of fact none of them paid me any

442

We Go to California

royalty, my subsistence came from the sale of such short
stories as I was able to lodge with The Century, and
Harpers, The Youth's Companion and The Arena.

The "Bacheller Syndicate" took a kindly interest in
me, and I came to like the big, blonde, dreaming youth
from The North Country who was the nominal head of
the firm. Irving Bacheller, even at that time struck me
as more of a poet than a business man, though I was
always glad to get his check, for it brought the Garland
Homestead just that much nearer. On the whole it was
a prosperous and busy winter for both my brother and
myself.

) Chicago was in the early stages of building a World's
Fair, and as spring came on I spent a couple of weeks in
the city putting Prairie Folks into shape for the printer.
Kirkland introduced me to the Chicago Literary Club,
and my publisher, Frances Schulte, took me to the Press
Club and I began to understand and like the city.

As May deepened I went on up to Wisconsin, full of my
plan for a homestead, and the green and luscious slopes
of the old valley gave me a new delight, a kind of pro
prietary delight. I began to think of it as home. It
seemed not only a natural deed but a dutiful deed, this
return to the land of my birth, it was the beginning of a
more settled order of life.

My aunt, Susan Bailey, who was living alone in the
old house in Onalaska made me welcome, and showed
grateful interest when I spoke to her of my ambition.
'TJ1 be glad to help you pay for such a place," she said,
"provided you will set aside a room in it for me. I am
lonely now. Your father is all I have and I'd like to
spend my old age with him. But don't buy a farm.
Buy a house and lot here or in LaCrosse."

" Mother wants to be in West Salem," I replied. "All
our talk has been of West Salem, and if you can content

443

A Son of the Middle Border

yourself to live with us there, I shall be very glad of your
co-operation. Father is still skittish. He will not come
back till he can sell to advantage. However, the season
has started well and I am hoping that he will at least
come down with mother and talk the matter over with
us."

To my delight, almost to my surprise, mother came,
alone. " Father will follow in a few days," she said — "if
he can find someone to look after his stock and tools while
he is gone."

She was able to walk a little now and together we went
about the village, and visited relatives and neighbors
in the country. We ate " company dinners" of fried
chicken and short-cake, and sat out on the grass beneath
the shelter of noble trees during the heat of the day.
There was something profoundly restful and satisfying
in this atmosphere. No one seemed in a hurry and no one
seemed to fear either the wind or the sun.

The talk was largely of the past, of the fine free life of
the " early days " and my mother's eyes often filled with
happy tears as she met friends who remembered her as a
girl. There was no doubt in her mind. " I'd like to live
here," she said. "It's more like home than any other
place. But I don't see how your father could stand it
on a little piece of land. He likes his big fields."

One night as we were sitting on William's porch,
talking of war times and of Hugh and Jane and Walter,
a sweet and solemn mood came over us. It seemed as if
the spirits of the pioneers, the McClintocks and Dudleys
had been called back and were all about us. It seemed
to me (as to my mother) as if Luke or Leonard might
at any moment emerge from the odorous June dusk and
speak to us. We spoke of David, and my mother's love
for him vibrated in her voice as she said, "I don't sup-
pose I'll ever see him again. He's too poor and too

444

We Go to California

proud to come back here, and I'm too old and lame and
poor to visit him."

This produced in me a sudden and most audacious
change of plan. "Fin not so certain about that," I re
torted. "Frank's company is going to play in California
this winter, and I am arranging a lecture tour — I've just
decided that you and father shall go along."

The boldness of my plan startled her. "Oh, we can't
do a crazy thing like that," she declared.

"It's not so crazy. Father has been talking for years
of a visit to his brother in Santa Barbara. Aunt Susan
tells me she wants to spend one more winter in Cal
ifornia, and so I see no reason in the world why you and
father should not go. I'll pay for your tickets and
Addison will be glad to house you. We're going!" I
asserted firmly. "We'll put off buying our homestead
till next year and make this the grandest trip of your
life."

Aunt Maria here put in a word, "You do just what
Hamlin tells you to do. If he wants to spend his money
giving you a good time, you let him."

Mother smiled wistfully but incredulously. To her
it all seemed as remote, as improbable as a trip to Egypt,
but I continued to talk of it as settled and so did William
and Maria.

I wrote at once to my father outlining my trip and
pleading strongly for his consent and co-operation.
"All your life long you and mother have toiled with
hardly a day off. Your travelling has been mainly in a
covered wagon. You have seen nothing of cities for
thirty years. Addison wants you to spend the winter
with him, and mother wants to see David once more-
why not go? Begin to plan right now and as soon as your
crops are harvested, meet me at Omaha or Kansas City
we'll all go along together."

445

A Son of the Middle Border

He replied with unexpected half -promise. • "The crops
look pretty well. Unless something very destructive
turns up I shall have a few dollars to spend. I'd like to
make that trip. I'd like to see Addison once more."

1 replied, "The more I think about it, the more
wonderful it all seems. It will enable you to see the
mountains, and the great plains. You can visit Los
Angeles and San Francisco. You can see the ocean.
Frank is to play for a month in Frisco, and we can all
meet at Uncle David's for Christmas."

The remainder of the summer was taken up with the
preparations for this gorgeous excursion. Mother went
back to help father through the harvest, whilst I returned
to Boston and completed arrangements for my lecture
tour which was to carry me as far north as Puget
Sound.

At last in November, when the grain was all safely
marketed, the old people met me in Kansas City, and
from there as if in a dream, started westward with me
in such holiday spirits as mother's health permitted.
Father was like a boy. Having cut loose from the
farm — at least for the winter, he declared his inten
tion to have a good time, "as good as the law allows,"
he added with a smile.

Of course they both expected to suffer on the journey,
that's what travel had always meant to them, but I
surprised them. I not only took separate lower berths
in the sleeping car, I insisted on regular meals at the
eating houses along the way, and they were amazed to
find travel almost comfortable. The cost of all this
disturbed my mother a good deal till I explained to her
that my own expenses were paid by the lecture com
mittees and that she need not worry about the price of
her fare. Perhaps I even boasted about a recent sale of
a story! If I did I hope it will be forgiven me for I was

446

We Go to California

determined that this should be the greatest event in
her life.

My father's interest in all that came to view was as
keen as my own. During all his years of manhood he
had longed to cross the plains and to see Pike's Peak,
and now while his approach was not as he had dreamed
it, he was actually on his way into Colorado. "By the
great Horn Spoons," he exclaimed as we neared the foot
hills, "I'd like to have been here before the railroad."

Here spoke the born explorer. His eyes sparkled,
his face flushed. The farther we got into the houseless
cattle range, the better he liked it. "The best times
I've ever had in my life," he remarked as we were look
ing away across the plain at the faint shapes of the
Spanish Peaks, "was when I was cruising the prairie
in a covered wagon."

Then he told me once again of his long trip into Min
nesota before the war, and of the cavalry lieutenant who
rounded the settlers up and sent them back to St. Paul
to escape the Sioux who were on the warpath. "I never
saw such a country for game as Northern Minnesota
was in those days. It swarmed with water-fowl and
chicken and deer. If the soldiers hadn't driven me
out I would have had a farm up there. I was just start
ing to break a garden when the troops came."

It was all glorious to me as to them. The Spanish
life of Las Vegas where we rested for a day, the Indians
of Laguna, the lava beds and painted buttes of the
desert, the beautiful slopes of the San Francisco Moun
tains, the herds of cattle, the careering cowboys, the
mines and miners — all came in for study and comment.
We resented the nights which shut us out from so much
that was interesting. Then came the hot sand of the
Colorado valley, the swift climb to the bleak heights of
the coast range — and, at last, the swift descent to the

447

A Son of the Middle Border

grange groves and singing birds of Riverside. A dozen
times father cried out, "This alone is worth the cost of
the trip."

Mother was weary, how weary I did not know till we
reached our room in the hotel. She did not complain
but her face was more dejected than I had ever seen it,
and I was greatly disturbed by it. Our grand excursion
had come too late for her.

A good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast restored
her to something like her smiling self and when we took
the train for Santa Barbara she betrayed more excite
ment that at any time on our trip. "Do we really see
the ocean?" she asked.

"Yes," I explained, "we run close along the shore.
You'll see waves and ships and sharks — may be a whale
or two."

Father was even more excited. He spent most of his
time on the platform or hanging from the window.
"Well, I never really expected to see the Pacific," he
said as we were nearing the end of our journey. "Now
I'm determined to see Frisco and the Golden Gate."

"Of course — that is a part of our itinerary. You can
see Frisco when you come up to visit David."

My uncle Addison who was living in a plain but roomy
house, was genuinely glad to see us, and his wife made
us welcome in the spirit of the Middle Border for she
was one of the early settlers of Green County, Wisconsin.
In an hour we were at home.

Our host was, as I remembered him, a tall thin man
of quiet dignity and notable power of expression. His
words were well chosen and his manner urbane. "I
want you people to settle right down here with me for
the winter," he said. "In fact I shall try to persuade
Richard to buy a place here."

This brought out my own plan for a home in West

448

We Go to California

Salem and he agreed with me that the old people should
never again spend a winter in Dakota.

There was no question in my mind about the hospi
tality of this home and so with a very comfortable, a
delightful sense of peace, of satisfaction, of security,
I set out on my way to San Francisco, Portland and
Olympia, eager to see California — all of it. Its moun
tains, its cities and above all its poets had long called
to me. It meant the Argonauts and The Songs of the
Sierras to me, and one of my main objects of desti
nation was Joaquin Miller's home in Oakland Heights.

No one else, so far as I knew, was transmitting this
Coast life into literature. Edwin Markham was an
Oakland school teacher, Frank Norris, a college student,
and Jack London a boy in short trousers. Miller domi
nated the coast landscape. The mountains, the streams,
the pines were his. A dozen times as I passed some
splendid peak I quoted his lines. " Sierras! Eternal
tents of snow that flash o'er battlements of mountains."

Nevertheless, in all my journeying, throughout all
*ny other interests, I kept in mind our design for a re
union at my uncle David's home in San Jose, and I wrote
him to tell him when to expect us. Franklin, who was
playing in San Francisco, arranged to meet me, and
father and mother were to come up from Santa Barbara.

It all fell out quite miraculously as we had planned it.
On the 24th of December we all met at my uncle's door.

This reunion, so American in its unexpectedness, de-
serves closer analysis. My brother had come from New
York City. Father and mother were from central
Dakota. My own home was still in Boston. David
and his family had reached this little tenement by way
of a long trail through Iowa, Dakota, Montana, Oregon
and Northern California. We who had all started from
the same little Wisconsin Valley were here drawn together,

449

A Son of the Middle Border

as if by the magic of a conjuror's wand, in a city strange
to us 'all. Can any other country on earth surpass the
United States in the ruthless broadcast dispersion of its
families? Could any other land furnish a more in
credible momentary re-assembling of scattered units?

The reader of this tale will remember that David was
my boyish hero, and as I had not seen him for fifteen
years, I had looked forward, with disquieting question
concerning our meeting. Alas! My fears were justified.
There was more of pain than pleasure in the visit, for us
all. Although my brother and I did our best to make it
joyous, the conditions of the reunion were sorrowful,
for David, who like my father, had been following the
lure of the sunset all his life, was in deep discourage
ment.

From his fruitful farm in Iowa he had sought the free
soil of Dakota. From Dakota he had been lured to
Montana. In the forests of Montana he had been robbed
by his partner, reduced in a single day to the rank of a
day laborer, and so in the attempt to retrieve his for
tunes, had again moved westward — ever westward, and
here now at last in San Jose, at the end of his means and
almost at the end of his courage, he was working at
whatever he could find to do.

Nevertheless, he was still the borderer, still the man
of the open. Something in his face and voice, something
in his glance set him apart from the ordinary workman.
He still carried with him something of the hunter, some
thing which came from the broad spaces of the Middle
Border, and though his bushy hair and beard were
streaked with white, and his eyes sad and dim, I could
still discern in him some part of the physical strength
and beauty which had made his young manhood so
glorious to me — and deeper yet, I perceived in him the
dreamer, the Celtic minstrel, the poet.

450

We Go to California

His limbs, mighty as of old, were heavy, and his
towering frame was beginning to stoop. His brave heart
was beating slow. Fortune had been harshly inimical to
him and his outlook on life was bitter. With all his
tremendous physical power he had not been able to re
gain his former footing among men.

In talking of his misfortunes, I asked him why he had
not returned to Wisconsin after his loss in Montana, and
he replied, as my father had done. "How could I do
that? How could I sneak back with empty pockets?"

Inevitably, almost at once, father spoke of the violin.
"Have you got it yet?" he asked.

"Yes," David replied. "But I seldom play on it now.
In fact, I don't think there are any strings on it."

I could tell from the tone of his voice that he had no
will to play, but he dug the almost forgotten instrument
out of a closet, strung it and tuned it, and that evening
after dinner, when my father called out in familiar im
perious fashion, "Come, come! now for a tune," David
was prepared, reluctantly, to comply.

"My hands are so stiff and clumsy now," he said by
way of apology to me.

It was a sad pleasure to me, as to him, this revival of
youthful memories, and I would have spared him if I
could, but my father insisted upon having all of the
jocund dances and sweet old songs. Although a man of
deep feeling in many ways, he could not understand the
tragedy of my uncle's failing skill.

But mother did! Her ear was too acute not to^ detect
the difference in tone between his playing at this time
and the power of expression he had once possessed, and
in her shadowy corner she suffered sympathetically when
beneath his work-worn fingers the strings cried out dis
cordantly. The wrist, once so strong and sure, the hands
so supple and swift were now hooks of horn and bronze.

A Son of the Middle Border

The magic touch of youth had vanished, and yet as he
went on, some little part of his wizardry came back.

At father's request he played once more Maggie, Air
Ye Sleeping and while the strings wailed beneath his bow
I shivered as of old, stirred by the winds of the past,
"roaring o'er Moorland craggy." Deep in my brain the
sob of the song sank, filling my inner vision with flitting
shadows of vanished faces, brows untouched of care, and
sweet kind eyes lit by the firelight of a secure abundant
hearth. I was lying once more before the fire in David's
little cabin in the deep Wisconsin valley and Grand
father McClintock, a dreaming giant, was drumming
on his chair, his face flame-lit, his hair a halo of snow and
gold.

Tune after tune the old Borderman played, in answer
to my father's insistent demands, until at last the pain
of it all became unendurable and he ended abruptly.
"I can't play any more. — I'll never play again," he
added harshly as he laid the violin away in its box like a
child in its coffin.

We sat in silence, for we all realized that never again
would we hear those wistful, meaningful melodies. Word
less, with aching throats, resentful of the present, my
mother and my aunt dreamed of the bright and beautiful
Neshonoc days when they were young and David was
young and all the west was a land of hope.

My father now joined in urging David to go back to
the middle border. "I'll put you on my farm/' he said.
"Or if you want to go back to Neshonoc, we'll help you
do that. We are thinking of going back there ourselves.'''

David sadly shook his grizzled head. "No, I can't do
that," he repeated. "I haven't money enough to pay
my carfare, and besides, Becky and the children would
never consent to it."

I understood. His proud heart rebelled at the thought

452

As he played I was a boy again, lying before the fire. P. 452

We Go to California

of the pitying or contemptuous eyes of his stay-at home
neighbors. He who had gone forth so triumphantly
thirty years before could not endure the notion of going
back on borrowed money. Better to die among strangers
like a soldier.

Father, stern old pioneer though he was, could not
think of leaving his wife's brother here, working like a
'Chinaman. "Dave has acted the fool," he privately said
to me, "but we will help him. If you can spare a little,
we'll lend him enough to buy one of these fruit farms he's
talking about."

To this I agreed. Together we loaned him enough to
make the first payment on a small farm. He was deeply
grateful for this and hope again sprang up in his heart.
"You won't regret it," he said brokenly. "This will put
me on my feet, and by and by perhaps we'll meet in the
old valley." — But we never did. I never saw him
again.

I shall always insist that a true musician, a superb
violinist was lost to the world in David McClintock —
but as he was born on the border and always remained on
the border, how could he find himself? His hungry
heart, his need of change, his search for the pot of gold
beyond the sunset, had carried him from one adventure
to another and always farther and farther from the
things he most deeply craved. He might have been a
great singer, for he had a beautiful voice and a keen
appreciation of the finer elements of song.

It was hard for me to adjust myself to his sorrowful
decline into old age. I thought of him as he appeared to
me when riding his threshing machine up the coulee
road. I recalled the long rifle with which he used to carry
off the prizes at the turkey shoots, and especially I re
membered him as he looked while playing the violin on
that far off Thanksgiving night in Lewis Valley.

453

A Son of the Middle Border

I left California with the feeling that his life was al
most ended, and my heart was heavy with indignant
pity for I must now remember him only as a broken and
discouraged man. The David of my idolatry, the laugh
ing giant of my boyhood world, could be found now, only
in the mist which hung above the hills and valleys of
Neshonoc.

454

CHAPTER XXXV
The Homestead in the Valley

f I ^O my father the Golden Gate of San Francisco was
JL grandly romantic. It was associated in his mind
with Bret Harte and the Goldseekers of Forty Nine, as
well as with Fremont and the Mexican War, hence one
of his expressed desires for many years had been to stand
on the hills above the bay and look out on the ocean.
"I know Boston," he said, "and I want to know Frisco."
My mother's interest in the city was more personal.
She was eager to see her son Franklin play his part in a
real play on a real stage. For that reward she was willing
to undertake considerable extra fatigue and so to please
her, to satisfy my father and to gratify myself, I accom
panied them to San Francisco and for several days with
a delightful sense of accomplishment, my brother and
I led them about the town. We visited the Seal Rocks
and climbed Nob Hill, explored Chinatown and walked
through the Old Spanish Quarter, and as each of these
pleasures was tasted my father said, "Well now, that's
done!" precisely as if he were getting through a list of
tedious duties.

There was no hint of obligation, however, in the hours
which they spent in seeing my brother's performance as
one of the "Three Twins" in Incog. The piece was in
truth very funny and Franklin hardly to be distinguished
from his "Star," a fact which astonished and delighted
my mother. She didn't know he could look so unlike
himself. She laughed herself quite breathless over the

455

A Son of the Middle "Border

absurd situations of the farce but father was not so easily
satisfied. ''This foolery is all well enough," said he,
"but I'd rather see you and your friend Herne in Shore
Acres:1

At last the day came when they both expressed a desire
to return to Santa Barbara. "We've had about all we
can stand this trip," they confessed, whereupon, leaving
Franklin at his job, we started down the valley on our
way to Addison Garland's home which had come to have
something of the quality of home to us all.

We were tired but triumphant. One by one the things
we had promised ourselves to see we had seen. The
Plains, the Mountains, the Desert, the Orange Groves, the
Ocean, all had been added to the list of our achievements.
We had visited David and watched Franklin play in his
11 troupe," and now with a sense of fullness, of victory,
we were on our way back to a safe harbor among the
fruits and flowers of Southern California.

This was the pleasantest thought of all to me and in
private I said to my uncle, "I hope you can keep these
people till spring. They must not go back to Dakota
now."

"Give yourself no concern about that!" replied Addi
son. "I have a program laid out which will keep them
busy until May. We're going out to Catalina and up
into the Ojai valley and down to Los Angeles. We are
to play for the rest of the winter like a couple of boys."

With mind entirely at ease I left them on the rose-
embowered porch of my uncle's home, and started east
by way of Denver and Chicago, eager to resume work on a
book which I had promised for the autumn.

Chicago was now full in the spot-light of the National
Stage. In spite of the business depression which still
engulfed the west, the promoters of the Columbian
Exposition were going steadily forward with their plans,

456

The Homestead in the Valley

and when I arrived in the city about the middle of Jan
uary, the bustle of preparation was at a very high point.

The newly-acquired studios were swarming with eager
and aspiring young artists, and I believed, (as many
others believed) that the city was entering upon an era
of swift and shining development. All the near-by states
were stirred and heartened by this esthetic awakening
of a metropolis which up to this time had given but little
thought to the value of art in the life of a community.
From being a huge, muddy windy market-place, it
seemed about to take its place among the literary cap
itals of the world.

Colonies of painters, sculptors, decorators and other
art experts now colored its life in gratifying degree.
Beauty was a work to advertise with, and writers like
Harriet Monroe, Henry B. Fuller, George Ade, Peter
Finley Dunne, and Eugene Field were at work celebrat
ing, each in his kind, the changes in the thought and
aspect of the town. Ambitious publishing houses were
springing up and "dummies" of new magazines were
being thumbed by reckless young editors. The talk was
all of Art, and the Exposition. It did, indeed seem as if
culture were about to hum.

Naturally this flare of esthetic enthusiasm lit the tow of
my imagination. I predicted a publishing center and a
literary market-place second only to New York, a pub
lishing center which by reason of its geographical position
would be more progressive than Boston, and more
American than Manhattan. "Here flames the spirit of
youth. Here throbs the heart of America," I declared in
Crumbling Idols, an essay which I was at this time writing
for the Forum.

In the heat of this conviction, I decided to give up my
residence in Boston and establish headquarters in Chi
cago. I belonged here. My writing was of the Middle

457

A Son of the Middle Border

Border, and must continue to be so. Its spirit was mine.
All of my immediate relations were dwellers in the west,
and as I had also definitely set myself the task of de
picting certain phases of mountain life, it was inevitable
that I should ultimately bring my workshop to Chicago
which was my natural pivot, the hinge on which my
varied activities would revolve. And, finally, to live
here would enable me to keep in closer personal touch
with my father and mother in the Wisconsin homestead
which I had fully determined to acquire.

Following this decision, I returned to Boston, and at
once announced my plan to Howells, Flower and other
of my good friends who had meant so much to me in the
past. Each was kind enough to express regret and all
agreed that my scheme was logical. "It should bring
you happiness and success," they added.

Alas! The longer I stayed, the deeper I settled into
my groove and the more difficult my removal became.
It was not easy to surrender the busy and cheerful life
I had been leading for nearly ten years. It was hard to
say good-bye to the artists and writers and musicians
with whom I had so long been associated. To leave the
Common, the parks, the Library and the lovely walks and
drives of Roxbury, was sorrowful business — but I did it!
I packed my books ready for shipment and returned to
Chicago in May just as the Exposition was about to open
its doors.

Like everyone else who saw it at this time I was
amazed at the grandeur of "The White City," and im
patiently anxious to have all my friends and relations
share in my enjoyment of it. My father was back on the
farm in Dakota and I wrote to him at once urging him
to come down. "Frank will be here in June and we will
take charge of you. Sell the cook stove if necessary and
come. You must see this fair. On the way back I will go

458

The Homestead in the Valley

as far as West Salem and we'll buy that homestead Fvc
been talking about."

My brother whose season closed about the twenty-fifth
of May, joined me in urging them not to miss the fair and
a few days later we were both delighted and a little sur
prised to get a letter from mother telling us when to
expect them. "I can't walk very well," she explained,
"but I'm coming. I am so hungry to see my boys that
I don't mind the long journey."

Having secured rooms for them at a small hotel near
the west gate of the exposition grounds, we were at the
station tr receive them as they came from the train sur
rounded by other tired and dusty pilgrims of the plains.
Father was in high spirits and mother was looking very
well considering the tiresome ride of nearly seven hun
dred miles. ''Give us a chance to wash up and we'll be
ready for anything," she said with brave intonation.

We took her at her word. With merciless enthusiasm
we hurried them to their hotel and as soon as they had
bathed and eaten a hasty lunch, we started out with in
tent to astonish and delight them. Here was another
table at "the feast of life" from which we did not intend
they should rise unsatisfied. "This shall be the richest
experience of their lives," we said.

With a wheeled chair to save mother from the fatigue
of walking we started down the line and so rapidly did
we pass from one stupendous vista to another that we
saw in a few hours many of the inside exhibits and all of
the finest exteriors — not to mention a glimpse of the
polyglot amazements of the Midway.

In pursuance of our plan to watch the lights come on,
we ate our supper in one of the big restaurants on the
grounds and at eight o'clock entered the Court of Honor.
It chanced to be a moonlit night, and as lamps were lit
and the waters of the lagoon began to reflect the gleam-

459

A Son of the Middle Border

ing walls of the great palaces with their sculptured orna
ments, and boats of quaint shape filled with singers came
and went beneath the arching bridges, the wonder and the
beauty of it all moved these dwellers of the level lands
to tears of joy which was almost as poignant as pain. In
addition to its grandeur the scene had for them the tran
sitory quality of an autumn sunset, a splendor which
they would never see again.

Stunned by the majesty of the vision, my mother sat
in her chair, visioning it all yet comprehending little of
its meaning. Her life had been spent among homely
small things, and these gorgeous scenes dazzled her, over
whelmed her, letting in upon her in one mighty flood a
thousand stupefying suggestions of the art and history
and poetry of the world. She was old and she was ill,
and her brain ached with the weight of its new concep
tions. Her face grew troubled and wistful, and her eyes
as big and dark as those of a child.

At last utterly overcome she leaned her head against
my arm, closed her eyes and said, "Take me home. I
can't stand any more of it."

Sadly I took her away, back to her room, realizing
that we had been too eager. We had oppressed her with
the exotic, the magnificent. She was too old and too
feeble to enjoy as we had hoped she would enjoy, the
color and music and thronging streets of The Magic City.

At the end of the third day father said, "Well, I've had
enough." He too, began to long for the repose of the
country, the solace of familiar scenes. In truth they were
both surfeited with the alien, sick of the picturesque.
Their ears suffered from the clamor of strange sounds as
their eyes ached with the clash of unaccustomed color.
My insistent haste, my desire to make up in a few hours
for all their past deprivations seemed at the moment
to have been a mistake.

460

The Homestead in the Valley

Seeing this, knowing that all the splendors of the
Orient could not compensate them for another sleepless
night, I decided to cut their visit short and hurry them
back to quietude. Early on the fourth morning we
started for the LaCrosse Valley by way of Madison —
they with a sense of relief, I with a feeling of disappoint
ment. " The feast was too rich, too highly-spiced for their
simple tastes," I now admitted.

However, a certain amount of comfort came to me as I
observed that the farther they got from the Fair the
keener their enjoyment of it became! — With bodies at
ease and minds untroubled, they now relived in pleasant
retrospect all the excitement and bustle of the crowds,
all the bewildering sights and sounds of the Midway.
Scenes which had worried as well as amazed them were
now recalled with growing enthusiasm, as our train, filled
with other returning sight-seers of like condition, rushed
steadily northward into the green abundance of the land
they knew so well, and when at six o'clock of a lovely
afternoon, they stepped down upon the platform of the
weatherbeaten little station at West Salem, both were
restored to their serene and buoyant selves. The leafy
village, so green, so muddy, so lush with grass, seemed
the perfection of restful security. The chuckle of robins
on the lawns, the songs of catbirds in the plum trees and
the whistle of larks in the pasture appealed to them as
parts of a familiar sweet and homely hymn.

Just in the edge of the village, on a four-acre plot of
rich level ground, stood an old two-story frame cottage
on which I had fixed my interest. It was not beautiful,
not in the least like the ideal New England homestead
my brother and I had so long discussed, but it was shel
tered on the south by three enormous maples and its
gate fronted upon a double row of New England elms

461

A Son of the Middle Border

whose branches almost arched the wide street. Its
gardens, rich in grape vines, asparagus beds, plums,
raspberries and other fruiting shrubs, appealed with
especial power to my mother who had lived so long on the
sun-baked plains that the sight of green things growing
was very precious in her eyes. Clumps of lilacs, syringa
and snow-ball, and beds of old-fashioned flowers gave
further evidence of the love and care which the former
owners of the place had lavished upon it.

As for myself, the desire to see my aging parents
safely sheltered beneath the benignant branches of those
sturdy trees would have made me content even with a
log cabin. In imagination I perceived this angular cot
tage growing into something fine and sweet and — our
own!

There was charm also in the fact that its western
windows looked out upon the wooded hills over which I
had wandered as a boy, and whose sky-line had printed
itself deep into the lowest stratum of my subconscious
memory; dnd so it happened that on the following night,
as we stood before the gate looking out upon that sun
set wall of purple bluffs from beneath the double row
of elms stretching like a peristyle to the west, my de
cision came.

" This is my choice," I declared. " Right here we take
root. This shall be the Garland Homestead." I turned
to my father. " When can you move? "

"Not till after my grain is threshed and marketed,"
he replied.

"Very well, let's call it the first of November, and
we'll all meet here for our Thanksgiving dinner."

Thanksgiving with us, as with most New Englanders,
had always been a date-mark, something to count upon
and to count from, and no sooner were we in possession
of a deed, than my mother and I began to plan for a

462 j

The Homestead in the Valley

dinner which should be at once a reunion of the Garlands
and McClintocks, a homecoming and a housewarming.
With this understanding I let them go back for a final
harvest in Dakota.

The purchase of this small lot and commonplace house
may seem very unimportant to the reader but to me and
to my father it was in very truth epoch-marking. To me
it was the ending of one life and the beginning of another.
To him it was decisive and not altogether joyous. To
accept this as his home meant a surrender of his faith in
the Golden West, a tacit admission that all his explora
tions of the open lands with whatsoever they had meant
of opportunity, had ended in a sense of failure on a
barren soil. It was not easy for him to enter into the
spirit of our Thanksgiving plans although he had given
his consent to them. He was still the tiller of broad
acres, the speculator hoping for a boom.

Early in October, as soon as I could displace the renter
of the house, I started in rebuilding and redecorating it
as if for the entrance of a bride. I widened the dining
room, refitted the kitchen and ordered new rugs, curtains
and furniture from Chicago. I engaged a cook and maid,
and bought a horse so that on November first, the date
of my mother's arrival, I was able to meet her at the
station and drive her in a carriage of her own to an almost
completely outfitted home.

It was by no means what I intended it to be, but it
seemed luxurious to her. Tears dimmed her eyes as she
stepped across the threshold, but when I said, " Mother,
hereafter my headquarters are to be in Chicago, and my
home here with you," she put her arms around my neck
and wept. Her wanderings were over, her heart at
peace.

My father arrived a couple of weeks later, and with
his coming, mother sent out the invitations for our dinner.

463

A Son of the Middle Border

So far as we could, we intended to bring together the
scattered units of our family group.

At last the great day came! My brother was unable
to be present and there were other empty chairs, but the
McClintocks were well represented. William, white-
haired, gigantic, looking almost exactly like Grandad
at the same age, came early, bringing his wife, his two
sons, and his daughter-in-law. Frank and Lorette drove
over from Lewis Valley, with both of their sons and a
daughter-in-law. Samantha and Dan could not come,
but Deborah and Susan were present and completed the
family roll . Several of my father's old friends promised to
come in after dinner.

The table, reflecting the abundance of the valley in
those peaceful times, was stretched to its full length and
as we gathered about it William congratulated my father
on getting back where cranberries and turkeys and fat
squashes grew.

My mother smiled at this jest, but my father, still
loyal to Dakota, was quick to defend it. "I like it out
there," he insisted. "I like wheat raising on a big scale.
I don't know how I'm going to come down from operating
a six-horse header to scraping with a hoe in a garden
patch."

Mother, wearing her black silk dress and lace collar,
sat at one end of the table, while I, to relieve my father
of the task of carving the twenty-pound turkey, sat
opposite her. For the first time in my life I took position
as head of the family and the significance of this fact
did not escape the company. The pen had proved itself
to be mightier than the plow. Going east had proved
more profitable than going west!

It was a noble dinner! As I regard it from the stand
point of today, with potatoes six dollars per bushel and
turkeys forty cents per pound, it all seems part of a

464

The Homestead in the Valley

kindlier world, a vanished world — as it is! There were
squashes and turnips and cranberry sauce and pumpkin
pie and mince pie, (made under mother's supervision) and
coffee with real cream, — all the things which are so pre
cious now, and the talk was in praise of the delicious food
and the Exposition which was just closing, and reports
of the crops which were abundant and safely garnered.
The wars of the world were all behind us and the nation
on its way back to prosperity — and we were unafraid.

The gay talk lasted well through the meal, but as
mother's pies came on, Aunt Maria regretfully remarked,
"It's a pity Frank can't help eat this dinner."

"I wish Dave and Mantie were here," put in Deborah.

"And Rachel," added mother.

This brought the note of sadness which is inevitable
in such a gathering, and the shadow deepened as we
gathered about the fire a little later. The dead claimed
their places.

Since leaving the valley thirty years before our group
had suffered many losses. All my grandparents were
gone. My sisters Harriet and Jessie and my uncle
Richard had fallen on the march. David and Rebecca
were stranded in the foot hills of the Cascade mountains.
Rachel, a widow, was in Georgia. The pioneers of '48
were old and their bright world a memory.

My father called on mother for some of the old songs.
"You and Deb sing Nellie Wildwood" he urged, and to
me it was a call to all the absent ones, an invitation to
gather about us in order that the gaps in our hearth-
fire's broken circle might be filled.

Sweet and clear though in diminished volume, my
mother's voice rose on the tender refrain:

Never more to part, Nellie Wildwoo4
Never more to long for the spring.
46*

A Son of the Middle Border

and I thought of Hattie and Jessie and tried to believe
that they too were sharing in the comfort and content
ment of our fire.

George, who resembled his uncle David, and had much
of his skill with the fiddle bow, had brought his violin
with him, but when father asked Frank to play Maggie,
air ye sleeping he shook his head, saying, "That's
Dave's tune," and his loyalty touched us all.

Quick tears sprang to mother's eyes. She knew all too
well that never again would she hear her best-beloved
brother touch the strings or join his voice to hers.

It was a moment of sorrow for us all but only for a
moment, for Deborah struck up one of the lively "darky
pieces" which my father loved so well, and with its
jubilant patter young and old returned to smiling.

It must be now in the Kingdom a-comin'
In the year of Jubilo!

we shouted, and so translated the words of the song into
an expression of our own rejoicing present.

Song after song followed, war chants which renewed
my father's military youth, ballads which deepened the
shadows in my mother's eyes, and then at last, at my
request, she sang The Rolling Stone, and with a smile at
father, we all joined the chorus.

We'll stay on the farm and we'll suffer no loss

For the stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss.

My father was not entirely convinced, but I, sur
rounded by these farmer folk, hearing from their lips
these quaint melodies, responded like some tensely-
strung instrument, whose chords are being played upon
by searching winds. I acknowledged myself at home and
for all time. Beneath my feet lay the rugged country
rock of my nativity. It pleased me to discover my mental

466

The Homestead in the Valley

characteristics striking so deep into this typically Amer
ican soil.

One by one our guests rose and went away, jocularly
saying to my father, "Well, Dick, youVe done the right
thing at last. It's a comfort to have you so handy.
We'll come to dinner often!" To me they said, "We'll
expect to see more of you, now that the old folks are
here."

"This is my home," I repeated.

When we were alone I turned to mother in the spirit
of the builder. " Give me another year and I'll make this
a homestead worth talking about. My head is full of
plans for its improvement."

"It's good enough for me as it is," she protested.

" No, it isn't," I retorted quickly. " Nothing that I can
do is good enough for you, but I intend to make you
entirely happy if I can."

Here I make an end of this story, here at the close of
an epoch of western settlement, here with my father and
mother sitting beside me in the light of a tender Thanks
giving, in our new old home and facing a peaceful future.
I was thirty-three years of age, and in a certain very real
sense this plot of ground, this protecting roof may be
taken as the symbols of my hard-earned first success as
well as the defiant gages of other necessary battles which
I must fight and win.

As I was leaving next day for Chicago, I said, " Mother,
what shall I bring you from the city? "

With a shy smile she answered, "There is only one
thing more you can bring me, — one thing more that I
want."

"What is that?"

"A daughter. I need a daughter — and some grand
children."

467

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