Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
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Transcriber's Note
This book in this edition won the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Literature
in the "Biography or Autobiography" category. As such, every attempt
has been made to reproduce it exactly as it was printed and as it
won the award. In particular, inconsistent hyphenation of compound
words is pervasive in this text and has been retained. Unconventional
punctuation--for example using a comma to splice two sentences--has
also been retained exactly as printed.
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A DAUGHTER OF THE MIDDLE BORDER
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By
HAMLIN GARLAND
A SON OF THE MIDDLE BORDER
A DAUGHTER OF THE MIDDLE BORDER
ULYSSES S. GRANT, HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER
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[Illustration: Isabel McClintock Garland, A Daughter of the Middle
Border.]
[Illustration: Zulime Taft: "The New Daughter."]
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A DAUGHTER OF THE MIDDLE BORDER
BY
HAMLIN GARLAND
Member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
All rights reserved
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Copyright, 1921,
By HAMLIN GARLAND.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1921.
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
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To my wife Zulime Taft, who for more than twenty years has shared
my toil and borne with my shortcomings, I dedicate this story of a
household on the vanishing Middle Border, with an ever-deepening
sense of her fortitude and serenity.
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Acknowledgments are made to Florence Huber Schott, Edward Foley and
Arthur Dudley for the use of the photographs which illustrate this
volume.
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FOREWORD
I
_To My New Readers_
In the summer of 1893, after nine years of hard but happy literary life
in Boston and New York, I decided to surrender my residence in the East
and reestablish my home in the West, a decision which seemed to be--as
it was--a most important event in my career.
This change of headquarters was due not to a diminishing love for New
England, but to a deepening desire to be near my aging parents, whom I
had persuaded, after much argument, to join in the purchase of a family
homestead, in West Salem, Wisconsin, the little village from which we
had all adventured some thirty years before.
My father, a typical pioneer, who had grown gray in opening new farms,
one after another on the wind-swept prairies of Iowa and Dakota, was not
entirely content with my plan but my mother, enfeebled by the hardships
of a farmer's life, and grateful for my care, was glad of the
arrangement I had brought about. In truth, she realized that her days of
pioneering were over and the thought of ending her days among her
friends and relatives was a comfort to her. That I had rescued her from
a premature grave on the barren Dakota plain was certain, and the hope
of being able to provide for her comfort was the strongest element in my
plan.
After ten years of separation we were agreed upon a project which would
enable us as a family to spend our summers together; for my brother,
Franklin, an actor in New York City, had promised to take his vacation
in the home which we had purchased.
As this homestead (which was only eight hours by rail from Chicago) is
to be one of the chief characters in this story, I shall begin by
describing it minutely. It was not the building in which my life
began--I should like to say it was, but it was not. My birthplace was a
cabin--part logs and part lumber--on the opposite side of the town.
Originally a squatter's cabin, it was now empty and forlorn, a dreary
monument of the pioneer days, which I did not take the trouble to enter.
The house which I had selected for the final Garland homestead, was
entirely without any direct associations with my family. It was only an
old frame cottage, such as a rural carpenter might build when left to
his own devices, rude, angular, ugly of line and drab in coloring, but
it stood in the midst of a four-acre field, just on the edge of the
farmland. Sheltered by noble elms and stately maples, its windows
fronted on a low range of wooded hills, whose skyline (deeply woven into
my childish memories) had for me the charm of things remembered, and for
my mother a placid beauty which (after her long stay on the treeless
levels of Dakota) was almost miraculous in effect. Entirely without
architectural dignity, our new home was spacious and suggested the
comfort of the region round about.
My father, a man of sixty-five, though still actively concerned with a
wide wheat farm in South Dakota, had agreed to aid me in maintaining
this common dwelling place in Wisconsin provided he could return to
Dakota during seeding and again at harvest. He was an eagle-eyed,
tireless man of sixty-five years of age, New England by origin, tall,
alert, quick-spoken and resolute, the kind of natural pioneer who
prides himself on never taking the back trail. In truth he had yielded
most reluctantly to my plan, influenced almost wholly by the failing
health of my mother, to whom the work of a farm household had become an
intolerable burden. As I had gained possession of the premises early in
November we were able to eat our Thanksgiving Dinner in our new home,
happy in the companionship of old friends and neighbors. My mother and
my Aunt Susan were entirely content. The Garlands seemed anchored at
last.
II
To the Readers of "A Son of the Middle Border"
In taking up and carrying forward the theme of "A Son of the Middle
Border" I am fully aware of my task's increasing difficulties, realizing
that I must count on the clear understanding and continuing good will of
my readers.
First of all, you must grant that the glamor of childhood, the glories
of the Civil War, the period of prairie conquest which were the chief
claims to interest in the first volume of my chronicle can not be
restated in these pages. The action of this book moves forward into the
light of manhood, into the region of middle age. Furthermore, its theme
is more personal. Its scenes are less epic. It is a study of individuals
and their relationships rather than of settlements and migrations. In
short, "A Daughter of the Middle Border" is the complement of "A Son of
the Middle Border," a continuation, not a repetition, in which I attempt
to answer the many questions which readers of the first volume have
persistently put to me.
"Did your mother get her new daughter?" "How long did she live to enjoy
the peace of her Homestead?" "What became of David and Burton?" "Did
your father live to see his grandchildren?" These and many other
queries, literary as well as personal, are--I trust--satisfactorily
answered in this book. Like the sequel to a novel, it attempts to
account for its leading characters and to satisfy the persistent
interest which my correspondents have so cordially expressed.
It remains to say that the tale is as true as my memory will permit--it
is constructed only by leaving things out. If it reads, as some say,
like fiction, that result is due not to invention but to the actual
lives of the characters involved. Finally this closes my story of the
Garlands and McClintocks and the part they took in a marvelous era in
American settlement.
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CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MY FIRST WINTER IN CHICAGO 1
II. I RETURN TO THE SADDLE 13
III. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GENERAL GRANT 24
IV. RED MEN AND BUFFALO 38
V. THE TELEGRAPH TRAIL 53
VI. THE RETURN OF THE ARTIST 70
VII. LONDON AND EVENING DRESS 86
VIII. THE CHOICE OF THE NEW DAUGHTER 97
IX. A JUDICIAL WEDDING 122
X. THE NEW DAUGHTER AND THANKSGIVING 140
XI. MY FATHER'S INHERITANCE 153
XII. WE TOUR THE OKLAHOMA PRAIRIE 171
XIII. STANDING ROCK AND LAKE MCDONALD 184
XIV. THE EMPTY ROOM 204