Enter a Friend
One 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 Expression" I went to hear him, more by way of routine than with any
expectation of being enlightened or even interested, 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
compliments 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 tomorrow 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 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 manuscript 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 interview was about to
end he asked, "Where do you live?"
I told him and explained that I was trying to fit myself for teaching
and that I was living as cheaply as possible. "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."
This generous offer sent me away filled with gratitude 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 unexpectedly
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 workshop but to me it was the most important 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
myself 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 deference 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 dramatic art, and to make myself still more valuable in this
work, I read every listed book or article upon expression, 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 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 harmonies. I tried to imagine what
the effect of this tumult 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 insubstantial 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 to 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, basking 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 dinner, probably because of my
rusty 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 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 luscious 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 distinctly 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 all.
"Come again on Sunday," the doctor almost commanded. "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
pleasant 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 Browning 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 your keep. Can't
you borrow a little?"
"Yes, I could get a few dollars from home, but I don't feel justified in
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. Why
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, 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 much are you paying
now?"
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 convenience."
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 Mary, 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 "hector" 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 of English and Oratory from
several states was very impressive 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 notions 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 teachers, and I was assured by Mrs. Payne that we would have the
most distinguished audience that ever graced 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 determined 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 representatives 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 intently while I analyzed the character of _Iago_, and
disclosed 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 seized 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. Hurd 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 comradeship, 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 history 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 successful 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 diamond 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 western audience could have
been more hospitable, more cordial.
The ninety dollars which I gained from this series of 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-supporting 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
proprietary 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. 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 destiny 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 distinction 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
"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
Russian 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
Hurd's little den above Washington Street, for there I felt myself 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 or critical in their treatment of me. My success,
admittedly, came from some sympathy in them rather than from any real
deserving on my part. I cannot understand 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 footloose 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 decided
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 was profoundly
relieved. Father gave no sign either of pleasure 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 experiences.... 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
England, comes to fuse that part of me which is eastern. I 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 feeling 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 imagination, 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.
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
innumerable 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 distinctive 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-falutin' 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 Magazine_, and almost by
return mail the editor, William 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 _Harper'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 literature. 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!