One of the places which I wished especially to revisit was the

school-house at Burr Oak, the room which had been our social center in

the early eighties. In it we had listened to church service in summer,

and there in winter our Grange Suppers and Friday Lyceums had been held.

It was there, too, that I had worshiped at the shrine of Hattie's

girlish beauty, when as a shock-haired lad I forgot, for a day, the

loneliness of my prairie home.

Alas! the tall oaks which in those days had given dignity and charm to

the yard had all been cut down, and the building, once glorified by the

waving shadows of the leaves, now stood bare as a bone beside the road.

An alien lived where Betty once reigned, and the white cottage from

which Agnes was wont to issue in her exquisite Sunday frock, was

untenanted and falling into decay.

How lovely those girls had seemed to me as I watched them approach,

walking so daintily the path beside the fence! What rich, alluring color

flamed in Bettie's cheek, what fire flashed in Aggie's dark and roguish

eyes!

To a stranger, Burr Oak--my Burr Oak--even in Seventy-two was only a

pleasant meeting place of prairie lanes on the margin of a forest, but

to me it had been a temple of magic. I had but to shut my eyes to

desolating changes, turning my vision inward, in order to see myself (a

stocky awkward boy in a Sunday suit with a torturing collar) standing on

the porch waiting to see those white-clad maidens pass into the

vestibule.

Too shy in those days to meet their eyes, too worshipful to ever hope

for word or smile, I remained their silent adorer. Here and now I set

down the tribute which I could not then express:

O maids to whom I never spoke, to whom

My dreaming ran in lonely field,

Because of you I saw the bloom

Of Maytime more abundantly revealed.

From you each bud new magic caught.

When you were near, my skies

Were brighter, for your beauty brought

A poet's rapture to my eyes.

Men tell me you are bent and gray,

And worn with toil and pain;

And so I pray the Wheel of Chance

May never set us face to face again.

Better that I should think of you

As you then were, strong and sweet,

Walking your joyous sunlit way

Between the wheat and roses of the lane--

_Pass on, O weary women of today--_

_Remain forever 'mid the roses and the wheat,_

_O girls with laughing lips and dancing feet!_

That ride and the people I met closed a gate for me. I accomplished a

painful relinquishment. That noon-day sun divided my past from my

present as with the stroke of a flaming sword. Up to this moment I had

retained, in formless fashion, a belief that I could some time and

somehow reach out and regain, at least in part, the substance of the

life I had once lived here in this scene. Now I confessed that not only

was my youth gone but that the friends and the place of my youth had

vanished. My heart, wrung with a measureless regret filled my throat

with pain, and as I looked in my father's face I perceived that he, too,

was feeling the force of Time's inexorable decree.

We started homeward in silence, speaking only now and then when some

object made itself recognizable to us.

"I shall never ride this lane again," I said as we were nearing the

town. "It has been a sad experience. The world of my boyhood--the world

we both knew--is utterly gone. It exists only in your memory and mine. I

want to get away--back to Zulime and the present."

"I'm ready to go," replied my father. "I thought I'd enjoy visiting the

old place and seeing old neighbors, but I haven't. It's all too

melancholy. I'm ready to go back to the LaCrosse Valley and stay there

what little time I've got left to me."

That night, at the Seminary, I met the Alumni and spoke to them on some

subject connected with the early history of the school, and in doing so

I obtained once again a perception of the barrier which had risen

between my classmates and myself. They were not only serious, they were

piteously solemn. No one laughed, no one took a light and airy view of

life. Once or twice I tried to jest or ventured a humorous remark, but

these attempts to lighten the gloom were met with chilling silence. No

one whispered or smiled or turned aside. It was like a prayer meeting in

the face of famine.

Part of this was due no doubt to their habit of listening to sermons,

but some of it arose I am sure from a feeling of poignant regret similar

to that which burdened my own heart. As usual in such reunions the

absent ones were named and the faces of the dead recalled. In all our

songs the rustling of withered leaves could be heard. All felt the

pitiless march of time and I respected them for their perception of

life's essential enigma.

After the "Services" were finished, several of the women came up to me

and introduced themselves. One handsome gray-haired woman said: "I am

Rosa Clinton," and it shocked me to be unable to find in her the girl I

once knew. Another matron whom I recognized at once, retained something

inescapably girlish in both face and voice. It hurt me to detect in her

withered lips the quaint twist which had once been so charming to

me--but then she undoubtedly discovered in me equally distressing

reminders of decay.

Not all my philosophy could prevent me from falling into profound

melancholy. I went back to my hotel thinking of these men and women as

they were when, as a youth of twenty, I trod with them the worn plank

walks beneath the magical murmuring maple trees. The bitter facts of

their lives gave rise to question. What was it all about? What was the

value of their efforts or my own? Has the life of man any more

significance than that of an insect?

Just before leaving for the train next day we called on Osmond Button,

who clung to my father with piteous intensity. "Stay another day," he

pleaded, but father would not listen to any postponement.

This old neighbor went to the train with us, knowing full well that he

and my father would never meet again.

Thus it happened--curiously, yet most naturally--that the last man we

saw as we left Osage was our first neighbor on Dry Run prairie in the

autumn of Seventy-one.

From this melancholy review of the bent forms of ancient friends and

neighbors, dreaming of the past, I returned to my wife, who was

concerned entirely with the future. What had she to do with elderly

folk? Life to her was sweet and promiseful. Intently toiling over the

adornment of tiny caps, socks and gowns, joyful as a girl of seven

making dresses for a doll, she insisted on displaying to me all of that

lilliputian wardrobe. A dozen times each day she called on me to admire

this or that garment, and I was greatly relieved to find that the

growing wonder of the experience through which she was about to pass,

prevented her from giving way to fear of it. Over me, at times, an icy

shadow fell. Suppose--suppose----!

One night she dreamed that a babe had come to us, and that the nurse

had carelessly allowed it to chill and die, but I had no such disturbing

premonitions. Contrary to the statements of sentimental novelists and

poets I almost never dreamed of my wife. I more often dreamed of Howells

or Roosevelt or some of my editorial friends, indeed I often had highly

technical literary dreams wherein I prepared manuscripts for the press

or composed speeches or poems, and sometimes my mother or Jessie came

back to me--but Zulime had never up to this time entered my sleep.

One afternoon during this period of waiting and just after I had

finished the writing of _Hesper_ we joined our good friends the Eastons

on an excursion up the Mississippi on their house-boat, a glorious

outing which I mention because it was the farthest removed from my

boyhood life on Dry Run prairie whose scenes had just been vividly

brought to mind.

Here was the flawless poetry of recreation, the perfection of travel. To

sit in a reclining chair on the screened-in forward deck of a beautiful

boat, what time it was being propelled by some invisible silent

machinery, up a shining river, reflecting wooded bluffs, was like taking

flight on the magic carpet of my boyhood's story book. The purple

head-lands projecting majestically into the still flood took on once

more the poetry and the mystery of the prehistoric. One by one those

royal pyramids ordered and adorned themselves for our inspection while

the narrow valleys opening their gates, displayed all their tranquil

pastoral charm.

Our meals, delicately cooked and perfectly served, appeared as if by

conjury, on a table in the dining-room amidships, and as we ate we

watched the glory deepen on the clouds, while the waters, soundless as

oil, rolled past our open doors. It was all a passage to the Land of the

Lotos to me. How had I, whose youth had been so full of penury and toil,

earned a share in such leisure, such luxury? Was it right for me to

give myself up to the enjoyment of it? For Zulime's sake I rejoiced in

it, knowing that her days were long with waiting and suspense.

Without knowing much of the bitter anguish of the ordeal, I held

maternity to be (as the great poets had taught me to hold it) a noble

heroism. "If mankind is worth continuing on this earth," I had written,

"then the mother is entitled to the highest honor, the tenderest care.

Science should do its best to lessen her pain, to make her birth-bed

honorable."

In spite of my wife's brave smile I sensed in her a subconscious dread

of what was coming, and this anxiety I shared so fully that I ceased to

write and gave all my time to her. Together we walked the garden or

drove about the country in the low-hung, easy-riding old surrey, tracing

the wooded ways we loved the best, or climbing to where a wide view of

the valley offered. I understood her laughing stoicism much better now,

and it no longer deceived me. She made light of her own fears in order

that I might not worry. The fact that she was past her first youth was

my torment, for I had read that the danger increased with every year

beyond twenty-five and the thought that we might never ride these lanes

again came into my mind and would not be exorcised. At such moments as I

could snatch I worked on a series of lectures which I was scheduled to

deliver at the University of Chicago--lectures on Edwin Booth which

brought back my Boston days.

At last the dreaded day came!--I shall not dwell upon the long hours of

the mother's pain, or on the sleepless anxiety of my household, for I

have no desire to relive them. I would rather make statement of my

relief and gratitude when after many, many hours of suffering, Edward

Evans of LaCrosse, a scientific, deft and powerful surgeon, came to the

mother's rescue. He was a master--the man who knew!

[Illustration: At last the time came when I was permitted to take my

wife--lovely as a Madonna--out into the sunshine, and, as she sat

holding Mary Isabel in her arms, she gathered to herself an ecstasy

of relief, a joy of life which atoned, in part, for the inescapable

sufferings of maternity.]

He saved both mother and child, and when the nurse laid in my arms a

little babe, who looked up at me with grave, accusing blue eyes,--the

eyes of her mother,--I wondered whether society had a right to put any

woman to this cruel test--whether the race was worth maintaining at such

a price.

Our loyal friend, Mary Easton (mother of five children), who was present

to help us through our stern trial, assured me that maternity had its

joys as well as its agonies, and after she had peered into the face of

my small daughter she remarked to me with a delightful note of

admiration, "Why, she is already a _person_!"

So indeed she was. Her head, large and shapely and her eyes wide, dark

and curiously reflective, were like her mother's. True, she hadn't much

nose, but her hair was abundant and her fingers exquisite. She lay in my

big paws with what seemed to me to be tranquil confidence, and though

her legs were comically rudimentary, her glance manifested an

unassailable dignity. My father insisted she resembled her grandmother.

* * * * *

At last came the blessed day when the nurse permitted me to wheel the

convalescent out upon the porch. The morning was lovely, with just a

hint of autumn in its coolness, and to Zulime it was heavenly sweet, for

it seemed that she had emerged from a long dark night of agony and

doubt.

As she sat with the babe in her lap looking over the familiar hills, she

was more beautiful than she had ever been before. She was a being

glorified.

Later in the day, as the sun was going down in a welter of gold and

crimson, she came out again and in its splendor I chose to read the

promise of a noble future for Mary Isabel. It gave me joy to know that

she had taken up her life beneath the same roof and almost in the same

room in which Isabel Garland had laid her burden down.

Yes, the Homestead had a new claimant. In the midst of my father's

decaying world a new and vigorous life had miraculously appeared.

Beneath the moldering leaves of the leaning oaks a tender yet tenacious

shoot was springing from the soil.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Mary Isabel's Chimney

No one who reads the lives of writers attentively can fail of perceiving

the periods of depression--almost of despair--into which we are all

liable to fall--days when nothing that we have done seems worth

while--moods of groping indecision during which we groan and most

unworthily complain. I am no exception. For several months after the

publication of _Hesper_ I experienced a despairing emptiness, a sense of

unworthiness, a feeling of weakness which I am certain made me a burden

to my long-suffering wife.

"What shall I do now?" I asked myself.

From my standpoint as a novelist of The Great Northwest, there remained

another subject of study, the red man--The Sioux and the Algonquin

loomed large in the prairie landscape. They were, in fact, quite as

significant in the history of the border as the pioneer himself, for

they were his antagonists. Not content with using the Indian as an actor

in stories like _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, I had done

something more direct and worthy through a manuscript which I called

_The Silent Eaters_, a story in which I tried to put the Sitting Bull's

case as one of his partisans might have depicted it. I had failed for

lack of detailed knowledge, and the manuscript lay in my desk untouched.

It was in this period of doubt and disheartenment that I turned to my

little daughter with gratitude and a deep sense of the mystery of her

coming. The never-ending surprise of her presence filled me with

delight. Like billions of other Daddies I forgot my worries as I looked

into her tranquil eyes. To protect and educate her seemed at the moment

my chiefest care.

During the mother's period of convalescence I acted--in my hours of

leisure--as nurse-maid quite indifferent to the smiles of spectators,

who made question of my method. I became an expert in holding the babe

so that her spine should not be over-taxed, and I think she liked to

feel the grip of my big fingers. That she appreciated the lullabies I

sang to her I am certain, for even my Aunt Deborah was forced to admit

that my control of my daughter's slumber period was remarkably

efficient.

The coming of this child changed the universe for me. She brought into

my life a new element, a new consideration. The insoluble mystery of

sex, the heroism of maternity, the measureless wrongs of womankind and

the selfish cruelty of man rose into my thinking with such power that I

began to write of them, although they had held but academic interest

hitherto. With that tiny woman in my arms I looked into the faces of my

fellow men with a sudden realization that the world as it stands to-day

is essentially a male world--a world in which the female is but a

subservient partner. "It is changing, but it will still be a man's world

when you are grown," I said to Mary Isabel.

My devotion, my slavery to this ten-pound daughter greatly amused my

friends and neighbors. To see "the grim Klondiker," in meek attendance

on a midget sovereign was highly diverting--so I was told by Mary

Easton, and I rather think she was right. However, I was undisturbed so

long as Mary Isabel did not complain.

She was happy with me. She rode unnumbered joyous miles upon my left

elbow and cantered away into dreamland by way of the ancient walnut

rocker in which her grandmother had been wont to sit and dream. Deep in

her baby brain-cells I planted vague memories of "Down the River," "Over

the Hills in Legions," and "Nellie Wildwood," for I sang to her almost

every evening of her infant life.

"Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green.

Papa's a nobleman--mother's a queen,"

was one of her most admired lullabys. It was a marvelous time for

me--the happiest I had known since boyhood. Not even my days of

courtship have greater charm to me now.

The old soldier was almost as completely subordinated as I. Several

times each day he came into the house to say, "Well, how is my

granddaughter getting on?" and upon seeing her, invariably remarked,

"She's the very image of Belle,"--and indeed she did resemble my mother.

He expressed the wish which was alive in my own heart, when he said, "If

only Belle could have lived to see her granddaughter."

My new daughter was all important, but the new book could not be

neglected. _Hesper_ was scheduled for publication in October and copy

must go to the printer in August, therefore I was forced to leave my

wife and babe and go East to attend to the proof-reading and other

matters incidental to the birth of another novel. Some lectures in

Chicago and Chautauqua took up nearly two weeks of my time and when I

arrived in New York, huge bundles of galley-proof were awaiting me.

My publishers were confident that the new book would equal _The Captain

of the Gray Horse Troop_ in popularity, but I was less sanguine. For

several weeks I toiled on this job, and at last on the eleventh of

September, a day of sweltering heat, I got away on the evening train for

the West. In spite of my poverty and notwithstanding the tender age of

my daughter, I had decided to fetch my family to New York.

On November tenth, we found ourselves settled in a small apartment

overlooking Morningside Park, which seemed a very desirable playground

for Mary Isabel.

Relying on my books (which were selling with gratifying persistency) we

permitted ourselves a seven-room apartment with a full-sized kitchen and

a maid--whom we had brought on from West Salem. We even went so far as

to give dinner parties to such of our friends as could be trusted to

overlook our lack of plate, and to remain kindly unobservant of the fact

that Dora, the baby's nurse, doubled as waitress after cooking the

steak.

In this unassuming fashion we fed the Hernes, the Severances, and other

of our most valued friends who devoured the puddings which Zulime

"tossed up," with a gusto highly flattering to her skill, while the

sight of me as baby-tender proved singularly amusing--to some of our

guests. It will be seen that we were not cutting entirely loose from the

principles of economy in which we had been so carefully schooled--our

hospitalities had very distinct (enforced) limits.

Our wedding anniversary came while we were getting settled and my

present to Zulime that year was a set of silver which I had purchased

with the check for an article called "A Pioneer Wife"--the paper which I

had written as a memorial to my mother. In explanation of the fact that

all these silver pieces bore the initials I. G., I said, "You are to

think of them as a gift from my mother. Imagine that I gave them to her

long ago, and that they now come to you, from her, as heirlooms. Let us

call them 'The family silver' and hand them down to Mary Isabel in her

turn."

Zulime, who always rose to a sentiment of this kind, gratefully accepted

this vicarious inheritance and thereafter I was pleased to observe that

whenever Mary Isabel wished to break a plate she invariably reached for

one of her grandmother's solid silver spoons--they were so much more

effective than the plated ones!

Christmas came to us this year with new and tender significance, for

"Santy Claus" (who found us at home in New York, rejoicing in our first

baby) brought to us our first tree, and the conjunction of these happy

events produced in my wife almost perfect happiness. Furthermore, Mary

Isabel achieved her first laugh. I am sure of this fact, for I put it

down in my notebook, with these words, "She has a lovely smile and a

chuckle like her grandmother's. She robs us of solitude, and system, and

order, but our world would now be desolate without her." Only when I

thought of what her grandfather was missing did I have a sense of

regret.

At our feast our daughter sat in the high chair which Katherine Herne

had given her, and looked upon the tiny, decorated tree with eyes of

rapture, deep, dark-blue eyes in which a seraphic light shone. Her life

was beginning far, very far, from the bleak prairie lands in which her

Daddy's winter holidays had been spent, and while the silver spoon in

her mouth was not of my giving, the one with which she bruised her

chair-arm, was veritably one of my rewards.

In order to continue my practice as an Author, I managed to sandwich the

writing of an occasional article between spells of minding the baby--and

working on club committees. I recall going to Princeton to tell Henry

Van Dyke's Club about "The Joys of the Trail," and it pleased me to be

introduced as a "Representative of the West." West Point received me in

this capacity, and I also read at one of Lounsbury's "Smokers" at Yale,

but I was kept from any undue self-congratulation by recognition of the

fact that my income was still considerably below the standard of a

railway engineer--as perhaps it should be. My "arriving" was always in

an accommodation train fifty minutes late.

Evidence of my literary success, if you look at it that way, may have

lain in an invitation to dine at Andrew Carnegie's, but a suspicion that

I was being patronized made me hesitate. It was only after I learned

that Burroughs and Gilder were going that I decided to accept, although

I could not see why the ironmaster should include me in his list. I had

never met him and was not eager for his recognition.

The guests (nearly all known to me) were most distinguished and it was

pleasant to meet with them, even in this palace. We marched into the

dining-room keeping step to the music of a bagpipe. The speaking which

followed the dinner was admirable. Hamilton Wright Mabie and John Finley

were especially adroit and graceful, and Carnegie, who had been

furnished with elaborate notes by his secretary, introduced his speakers

with tact and humor, although it was evident that in some cases he would

have been helpless without his literary furnishing--to which in my case

he referred with especial care.

He was an amazement to me. I could not imagine him in the role of "Iron

King," on the contrary he appeared more like a genial Scotch

school-master, one genuinely interested in learning. Had it not been for

his air of labored appreciation, and the glamour of his enormous wealth,

the dinner would have been wholly enjoyable.

One charming human touch saved the situation. The tablecloth (a

magnificent piece of linen) was worked here and there with silken

reproductions of the signatures of former distinguished guests. "Mrs.

Carnegie," our host explained, "works these signatures into the cloth

with her own hands." Each of us was given a soft pencil and requested to

add his name.

It happened that Gilder, Seton, Burroughs and myself went away together,

and the doorman showed a mild surprise in the fact that no carriage

awaited us. Gilder with comic intonation said, "Some of you fellows

ought to have saved this situation by ordering a cab."

"As the only man with a stovepipe hat the job was yours," I retorted.

This struck the rest of the party as funny. In truth, each of us except

Gilder wore some sort of soft hat, and all together we formed a sinister

group. "I don't care what _Andrew_ thinks of us," Gilder explained, "but

I hate to have his butler get such a low conception of American

authorship." On this point we all agreed--and took the Madison Avenue

street car.

Meanwhile, I was secretly dreaming of getting rich myself.

Every American, with a dollar to spare, at some time in his life takes a

shot at a gold mine. It comes early in some lives and late in others,

but it comes! In my case it came after the publication of _Hesper_ just

as I was verging on forty-five, and was the result of my brother's

connections in Mexico. Impatient of getting money by growing trees he

had resigned his position on a rubber farm and was digging gold in

Northern Mexico.

Our mine, situated about twenty miles from Camacho, was at the usual

critical stage where more capital is needed, therefore in April I

persuaded Irving Bacheller and Archer Brown to go down with me and take

a look at the property. Of course I had a lump of ore to show them--and

it was beautiful!

I recall that when this sample came to me by express, I had my first and

only conviction that my financial worries were over. Even Zulime was

impressed with my brother's smelter reports which gave the proportion of

gold to the ton, precisely set down in bold black figures. All we had to

do was to ship a sufficient number of car lots for the year and our

income would rival that of Carnegie's.

We decided to break up our little home, and while I went to Mexico,

Zulime planned to visit Chicago and await my return. I was loth to

dismantle our apartment, and when at the station I said good-by to my

little daughter and her mother, I was almost persuaded that nothing was

worth the pain of parting from that small shining face and those

seeking, clinging hands. She had grown deep into my heart during those

winter months.

I felt very poor and lonely as I went to my bed at the club that first

night after our separation, and when next day Bacheller invited me out

to his new home at Sound Beach, I gratefully accepted, although I was in

the middle of getting a new book through the press--a job which my

publishers had urged upon me against my better judgment. I felt that I

was being hurried.

Bacheller, highly prosperous, was living at this time in a handsome

waterside bungalow, with a big sitting-room in which a generous fire

glowed. It happened that he was entertaining General Henderson of Iowa,

and when in some way it developed that we were all famous singers, a

spirited contest arose as to which of us could beat the others.

Henderson sang Scotch lyrics very well, and Bacheller was full of tunes

from his North Country, whilst I--well if I didn't keep my whiffletree

off the wheel, it was not for lack of effort. I sang "Maggie" and "Lily

Dale" and "Rosalie the Prairie Flower," all of which made a powerful

impression on Henderson; but it was not till I sang "The Rolling Stone,"

that I fully countered. Irving asked me to repeat this song, but I

refused. "You might catch the tune," I explained.

The general's face shone with pleasure but a wistful cadence was in his

voice. "Your tunes carry me back to my boyhood," he said, "I heard my

mother sing some of them."

He was near the end of his life, although none of us realized it that

night, and we all went our ways in the glow of a tender friendship--a

friendship deepened by this reminiscent song. Three days later Bacheller

and I were entering Mexico on our way to my mine.

Although Bacheller declined to go into partnership with me we had a

gorgeous trip, and that was the main object so far as the other fellows

were concerned, and as I wrote an article on the caverns of Cacawamilpa

which paid my expenses I was content.

In returning to the North by way of El Paso and the Rock Island road, I

encountered a sandstorm, whose ferocity dimmed the memory of the one in

which my father's wheat was uprooted. It was frightful. From this I

passed almost at once to the bloom, the green serenity, and the

abundance of my native valley. It was a kind of paradise by contrast to

the South-west and to take my little daughter to my bosom, to look into

her eyes, to feel her little palms patting my cheeks, was a pleasure

such as I had never expected to own. Every father who reads this line

will understand me when I declare that she had "developed wonderfully"

in the month of my absence. To me every change in my first born was

thrilling--and a little sad--for the fairy of to-day was continually

displacing the fairy of yesterday.

Believing that this had ended my travels for the summer, I began to work

on a novel which should depict the life of a girl, condemned against her

will to be a spiritualistic medium,--forced by her parents to serve as a

"connecting wire between the world of matter and the world of spirit."

This theme, which lay outside my plan to depict the West, had long

demanded to be written, and I now set about it with vigor. As a matter

of fact, I knew a great deal about mediums, for at one time I had been a

member of the Council of the American Psychical Society, and as a

special committee on slate writing and other psychical phenomena had

conducted many experiments. I had in my mind (and in my notebooks) a

mass of material which formed the background of my story, _The Tyranny

of the Dark_. It made a creditable serial and a fairly successful book,

but it will probably not count as largely in my record as "Martha's

Fireplace," a short story which I wrote at about the same time. I do not

regret having done this novel, because at the moment it seemed very much

worth while, but I was fully aware, even then, that it had a much

narrower appeal than either _Hesper_ or _The Captain of the Gray Horse

Troop_.

In the midst of my work on this book our good friends, Mary and Fred

Easton, invited us to go with them, in their houseboat, on a trip to the

World's Fair in St. Louis. Mrs. Easton offered to take Mary Isabel and

her nurse into her own lovely home during our absence, and as Zulime

needed the outing we joined the party.

It was a beautiful experience, a kind of dream journey, luxurious,

effortless, silent and suggestive,--suggestive of the great river as it

was in the time of Dubuque. Sometimes for an hour or more we lost sight

of the railway, and the primitive loneliness of the stream awed and

humbled us.

For ten days we sailed in such luxury as I had never known before; and

when we reached home again it was the splendor of the stream and not the

marvels of the Fair which had permanently enriched me. I have forgotten

almost every feature of the exhibition, but the sunset light falling

athwart the valleys and lighting the sand-bars into burning gold fills

my memory to this day.

Here I must make another confession. Up to this time our big living-room

had no fireplace. I had thrown out bay-windows, tacked on porches, and

constructed bathrooms; but the most vital of all the requisites of a

homestead was still lacking. We had no hearth and no outside chimney.

A fireplace was one of the possessions which I really envied my friends.

I had never said, "I wish I had Bacheller's house," but I longed to

duplicate his fireplace.

Like most of my generation in the West I had been raised beside a stove,

with only one early memory of a fireplace, that in my Uncle David's

home, in the glow of which, nearly forty years before, I had lain one

Thanksgiving night to hear him play the violin--a memory of sweetest

quality to me even now. Zulime's childhood had been almost equally bare.

She had hung her Christmas stockings before a radiator, as I had strung

mine on the wall, behind the kitchen stove. Now suddenly with a small

daughter to think of, we both began to long for a fireplace with a

desire which led at last toward action--on my part, Zulime was hesitant.

"As our stay in the Old Homestead comes always during the summer, it

seems a wilful extravagance to put our hard-earned dollars into an

improvement which a renter would consider a nuisance," she argued.

"Nevertheless I'm going to build a fireplace," I replied.

"You mustn't think of it," she protested.

"Consider what a comfort it would be on a rainy day in June," I

rejoined. "Think what it would do for the baby on dark mornings."

This had its effect, but even then she would not agree to have it built.

Another deterrent lay in the inexperience of our carpenters and masons,

not one of whom had even built a chimney. Everybody had fireplaces in

pioneer days, in the days of the Kentucky rifle, the broad-axe and the

tallow-dip; but as the era of frame houses came on, the arches had been

walled up, and iron stoves of varying ugliness had taken their places.

In all the country-side (outside of LaCrosse) there was not a

hearthstone of the old-fashioned kind, and though some of the workmen

remembered them, not one of them could tell how they were constructed,

and the idea of an outside chimney was comically absurd.

All these forces working against me had, thus far, prevented me from

experimenting, and perhaps even now the towering base-burner would have

remained our family shrine had not Mary Isabel put in a wordless plea.

Less than four hundred days old, she was, nevertheless wise in

fireplaces. She had begun to burble in the light of the Severances'

hearth in Minnesota, and her eyes had reflected the flame and shadow of

a noble open fire in Katharine Herne's homestead on Peconic Bay. Her

cheeks had reddened like apples in the glory of that hickory flame, and

when she came to our small apartment in New York City she had seemed

surprised and sadly disappointed by the gas pipes and asbestos mat,

which made up a hollow show under a gimcrack mantel. Now here, in her

own home, was she to remain without the witchery of crackling flame?

As the cold winds of September began to blow my resolution was taken.

"That fireplace must be built. My daughter shall not be cheated of

beamed ceilings and the glory of the blazing log."

Zulime, in alarm, again cried out as mother used to do: "Consider the

expense!"

"Hang the expense! Consider the comfort, the beauty of the embers. Think

of Mary Isabel with her eyes reflecting their light. Imagine the old

soldier sitting on the hearth holding his granddaughter----"

She smiled in timorous surrender. "I can see you are bound to do it,"

she said, "but where can it be built?"

Alas! there was only one available space, a narrow wall between the two

west windows. "We'll cut the windows down, or move them," I said, with

calm resolution.

"I hate a _little_ fireplace," protested Zulime.

"It can't be huge," I admitted, "but it can be real. It can be as _deep_

as we want it."

Having decided upon the enterprise I hurried forth to engage the hands

to do the work. I could not endure a day's delay.

The first carpenter with whom I spoke knew nothing about such things.

The next one had helped to put in one small "hard-coal, wall pocket,"

and the third man had seen fireplaces in Norway, but remembered little

about their construction. After studying Zulime's sketch of what we

wanted, he gloomily remarked, "I don't believe I can make that thing

_gee_."

Zulime was disheartened by all this, but Mary Isabel climbed to my knee

as if to say, "Boppa, where is my fireplace?"

My courage returned. "It shall be built if I have to import a mason from

Chicago," I declared, and returned to the campaign.

"Can't you build a thing like this?" I asked a plasterer, showing him a

magazine picture of a fireplace.

He studied it with care, turning it from side to side. "A rough pile o'

brick like that?"

"Just like that."

"Common red brick?"

"Yes, just the kind you use for outside walls."

"If you'll get a carpenter to lay it out maybe I can do it," he

answered, but would fix no date for beginning the work.

Three days later when I met him on the street he looked a little

shame-faced. "I hoped you'd forgot about that fireplace," he said. "I

don't know about that job. I don't just see my way to it. However, if

you'll stand by and take all the responsibility, I'll try it."

"When can you come?"

"To-morrow," he said.

"I'll expect you."

I hastened home. I climbed to the top of the old chimney, hammer in

hand, and began the work of demolition.

The whole household became involved in the campaign. While the gardener

and my father chipped the mortar from the bricks which I threw down,

Zulime drew another plan for the arch and the hearth, and Mary Isabel

sat on the lawn, and shouted at her busy father, high in the sky.

A most distressing clutter developed. The carpenters attacked the house

like savage animals, chipping and chiseling till they opened a huge gap

from window to window, filling the room with mortar, dust and flies.

Zulime was especially appalled by the flies.

"I didn't know you had to slash into the house like that," she said.

"It's like murder."

Our neighbors hitherto vastly entertained by our urban eccentricities

expressed an intense interest in our plan for an open fire. "Do you

expect it to heat the house?" asked Mrs. Dutcher, and Aunt Maria said:

"An open fire is nice to look at, but expensive to keep going."

Sam McKinley heartily applauded. "I'm glad to hear you're going back to

the old-fashioned fireplace. They were good things to sit by. I'd like

one myself, but I never'd get my wife to consent. She says they are too

much trouble to keep in order."

At last the mason came, and together he and I laid out the ground plan

of the structure. By means of bricks disposed on the lawn I indicated

the size of the box, and then, while the carpenter crawled out through

the crevasse in the side of the house, we laid a deep foundation of

stone. We had just brought the base to the level of the sill when--the

annual County Fair broke out!

All work ceased. The workmen went to the ball game and to the cattle

show and to the races, leaving our living-room open to the elements, and

our lawn desolate with plaster.

For three days we suffered this mutilation. At last the master mason

returned, but without his tender. "No matter," I said to him. "I can mix

mortar and sand," and I did. I also carried brick, splashing myself

with lime and skinning my hands,--but the chimney grew!

Painfully, with some doubt and hesitancy, but with assuring skill, Otto

laid the actual firebox, and when the dark-red, delightfully rude piers

of the arch began to rise from the floor within the room, the entire

family gathered to admire the structure and to cheer the workmen on

their way.

The little inequalities which came into the brickwork delighted us.

These "accidentals" as the painters say were quite as we wished them to

be. Privately, our bricklayer considered us--"Crazy." The idea of

putting common rough brick on the _inside_ of a house!

The library floor was splotched with mortar, the dining-room was cold

and buzzing with impertinent flies, but what of that--the tower of brick

was climbing.

The mason called insatiably for more brick, more mortar, and the chimney

(the only outside chimney in Hamilton township) rose grandly, alarmingly

above the roof--whilst I gained a reputation for princely expenditure

which it will take me a long time to live down.

Suddenly discovering that we had no fire-clay for the lining of the

firebox, I ordered it by express (another ruinous extravagance), and the

work went on. It was almost done when a cold rain began, driving the

workmen indoors.

Zulime fairly ached with eagerness to have an end of the mess, and the

mason catching the spirit of our unrest worked on in the rain. One by

one the bricks slipped into place.

"Oh, how beautiful the fire would be on a day like this!" exclaimed

Zulime. "Do you think it will ever be finished? I can't believe it. It's

all a dream. It won't draw--or something. It's too good to be true."

"It will be done to-night--and it will draw," I stoutly replied.

At noon, the inside being done, Otto went outside to complete the top,

toiling heroically in the drizzle.

At last, for the fourth time we cleaned the room of all but a few chips

of the sill, which I intended to use for our first blaze. Then, at my

command, Zulime took one end of the thick, rough mantel and together we

swung it into place above the arch. Our fireplace was complete!

Breathlessly we waited the signal to apply the match.

At five o'clock the mason from the chimney top cheerily called, "_Let

'er go!_"

Striking a match I handed it to Zulime. She touched it to the shavings.

Our chimney took life. It drew! It roared!!

Pulling the curtains close, to shut out the waning daylight, we drew our

chairs about our hearth whereon the golden firelight was playing. We

forgot our troubles, and Mary Isabel pointing her pink, inch-long

forefinger at it, laughed with glee. Never again would she sit above a

black hole in the floor to warm her toes.

Out of the corners of the room the mystic ancestral shadows leapt, to

play for her sake upon the walls. "She will now acquire the poet's fund

of sweet subconscious memories," I declared. "The color of all New

England home-life is in that fire. Centuries of history are involved in

its flickering shadows. We have put ourselves in touch with our

Anglo-Saxon ancestors at last."

"It already looks as ancient as the house," Zulime remarked, and so

indeed it did, for its rude inner walls had blackened almost instantly,

and its rough, broad, brick hearth fitted harmoniously into the brown

floor. The thick plank mantle (stained a smoky-green) seemed already

clouded with age. Its expression was perfect--to us, and when father

"happened in" and drawing his armchair forward took Mary Isabel in his

arms, the firelight playing over his gray hair and on the chubby cheeks

of the child, he made a picture immemorial in its suggestion, typifying

all the hearths and all the grandsires and fair-skinned babes of New

England history.

[Illustration: The old soldier and pioneer loved to take the children

on his knees and bask in the light of the fire. At such times he made

a picture which typed forth to me all the chimney corners and all the

Anglo-Saxon grandsires for a thousand years. In him I saw the past.

In them I forecast the future. In him an era was dying, in them Life

renewed her swiftly passing web.]

The grim old house had a soul. It was now in the fullest sense a hearth

and a home. Oh, Mother and David, were you with us at that moment? Did

you look upon us from the dusky corners, adding your faint voices to the

chorus of our songs? I hope so. I try to believe so.

* * * * *

That night when Mary Isabel was asleep and I sat alone beside the

hearth, another and widely different magic came from those embers. Their

tongues of flame, subtly interfused with smoke, called back to memory

the many camp-fires I had builded beside the streams, beneath the pines

of the mountain west.

Each of my tenting places drew near. At one moment, far in the Skeena

Valley, I sat watching the brave fire beat back the darkness and the

rain--hearing a glacial river roaring from the night. At another I was

encamped in the shelter of a mighty cliff, listening in awe while along

its lofty shelves the lions prowled and in the cedars, amid the ruins of

prehistoric cities, the wind chanted a solemn rune filled with the

voices of those whose bones had long since been mingled with the dust.

Oh, the good days on the trail!

I cannot lose you--I will not!

Here in the amber of my song

I hold you.

Here where neither time nor change

Can do you wrong.

I sweep you together,

The harvest of a continent. The gold

Of a thousand days of quest.

So, when I am old,

Like a chained eagle I can sit

And dream and dream

Of splendid spaces,

The gleam of rivers,

And the smell of prairie flowers.

So, when I have quite forgot

The heritage of books, I still shall know

The splendor of the mountains, and the glow

Of sunset on the vanished plain.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Fairy World of Childhood

One night just before leaving for the city, I invited a few of my

father's old cronies to come in and criticize my new chimney. They all

came,--Lottridge, Stevens, Shane, Johnson, McKinley, all the men who

meant the most to my sire, and as they took seats about the glowing

hearth, the most matter-of-fact of them warmed to its poetic

associations, and the sternest of them softened in face and tone beneath

its magic light.

Each began by saying, "An open fire is nice to sit by, but not much good

as a means of heating the house," and having made this concession to the

practical, they each and all passed to minute and loving descriptions of

just the kind of fireplaces their people used to have back in

Connecticut or Maine or Vermont. Stevens described the ancestral oven,

Lottridge told of the family hob and crane, and throughout all this talk

a note of wistful tenderness ran. They were stirred to their depths and

yet concealed it. Not one had the courage to build such a chimney but

every man of them covertly longed for it, dimly perceiving its value as

an altar of memory, unconsciously acknowledging its poignant youthful

associations. The beauty of vanished faces, the forms of the buried past

drew near, and in the golden light of reminiscent dream, each grizzled

head took on a softer, nobler outline. The prosaic was forgot. The

poetry of their lives was restored.

Father was at his best, hospitable, reminiscent, jocund. His pride in

me was expressed in his faith in my ability to keep this fire going.

"Hamlin don't mind a little expense like this chimney," he said. "He put

it in just to amuse the baby,--so he says and I believe him. He can

afford it--so I'm not saying a word, in fact I like an open fire so well

I'm thinking of putting one into my own house."

To this several replied by saying, "We'd have a riot in our house if we

put in such an extravagance." Others declared, "It's all a question of

dirt. Our wives would never stand the ashes."

We had provided apples and nuts, doughnuts, cider and other

characteristic refreshments of the older day, but alas! most of our

guests no longer took coffee at night, and only one or two had teeth for

popcorn or stomach for doughnuts. As a feast our evening was a failure.

"I used to eat anything at any time," Lottridge explained, "probably

that is the reason why I can't do it now. In those days we didn't know

anything about 'calories' or 'balanced rations.' We et what was set

before us and darn glad to get it."

Shane with quiet humor recalled the days when buckwheat cakes and

sausages swimming in pork fat and covered with maple syrup, formed his

notion of a good breakfast. "Just one such meal would finish me now," he

added with a rueful smile.

These were the men who had been the tireless reapers, the skilled

wood-choppers, the husky threshers of the olden time, and as they

talked, each of them reverting to significant events in those heroic

days, I sobered with a sense of irreparable loss. Pathos and humor

mingled in their talk of those far days!

Shane said, "Remember the time I 'bushed' you over in Dunlap's meadow?"

To this my father scornfully replied, "You bushed me! I can see you,

now, sitting there under that oak tree mopping your red face. I had you

'petered' before ten o'clock."

It all came back as they talked,--that buoyant world of the reaper and

the binder, when harvesting was a kind of Homeric game in which, with

rake and scythe, these lusty young sons of the East contended for

supremacy in the field. "None of us had an extra dollar," explained

Stevens, "but each of us had what was better, good health and a faith in

the future. Not one of us had any intention of growing old."

"Old! There _weren't_ any old people in those days," asserted Lottridge.

Along about the middle of the evening they all turned in on a game of

"Rummy," finding in cards a welcome relief from the unexpressed torment

of the contrast between their decrepit, hopeless present and the

glowing, glorious past.

My departure on a lecture trip at ten o'clock disturbed their game only

for a moment, and as I rode away I contrasted the noble sanity and the

high courage of those white-haired veterans of the Border, with the

attitude of certain types of city men I knew. Facing death at something

less than arm's length, my father and his fellows nevertheless remained

wholesomely interested in life. None of them were pious, some of them

were not even religious, but they all had a sturdy faith in the

essential justice of the universe. They were still playing the game as

best they knew.

Like Eugene Ware they could say--

"Standing by life's river, deep and broad,

I take my chances, ignorant but unawed."

As I sat among my fellow members at the Club, three days later, I again

recalled my father and his group. Here, too, I was in the Zone of Age.

A. M. Palmer, a feeble and melancholy old man, came in and wandered

about with none to do him reverence, and St. Gaudens, who was in the

city for medical treatment, shared his dry toast and his cereal coffee

with me of a morning. George Warner, who kept a cheerful countenance,

admitted that he did so by effort. "I don't like the thought of leaving

this good old earth," he confessed one afternoon. "It gives me a pang

every time I consider it." None of these men faced death with finer

courage than my sire.

As I had a good deal of free time in the afternoon, and as I also had a

room at the Club, I saw much of St. Gaudens. We really became

acquainted. One morning as we met at breakfast he replied to my question

with a groan and a mild cuss word: "Worse, thank you! I've just been to

Washington, and on the train last night I ate ice-cream for dinner. I

knew I'd regret it, but ice-cream is my weakness." He was at once

humorous and savage for, as he explained, "the doctor will not let me

work and there is nothing for me to do but sit around the Club library

and read or write letters."

He wrote almost as many letters as I did, and so we often faced each

other across a desk in the writing room. Sometimes he spoke of President

Roosevelt who was employing him on the new designs for our coins,

sometimes he alluded to the work awaiting him in his studio. Oh! how

homesick we both were! Perhaps he felt the near approach of the hour

when his cunning hand must drop its tool. I know the thought came to me,

creating a tenderer feeling toward him. I saw him in a sorrowful light.

He drew nearer to me, seeming more like a friend and neighbor.

I have said that I had a good deal of time on my hands, and so it seemed

to me then and yet during this trip I visited many of my friends,

prepared _The Tyranny of the Dark_ for serial publication, attended a

dinner to Henry James, was one of the Guests of Honor at the Camp Fire

Club and acted as teller (with Hopkinson Smith) in the election which

founded the American Academy of Arts and Letters--a fairly full program

as I look back upon it, but I had a great many hours to spend in writing

to Zulime and in dreaming about Mary Isabel. In spite of all my noble

companions, my dinners, speeches and honors I was longing for my little

daughter and her fireplace, and at last I put aside all invitations and

took the westward trail, counting the hours which intervened between my

laggard coach and home.

At times I realized the danger which lay in building so much of my

content on the life of one small creature, but for the most part I

rejoiced in the fact that she was in my world, even though I had a

growing sense of its illusory and generally unsatisfactory character. I

found comfort in the knowledge that billions of other men had preceded

me and billions more would follow me, and that the only real things in

my world were the human relationships. To make my wife and child happy,

to leave the world a little better than I found it, these formed my

creed.

It was cold, crisp, clear winter when I returned to West Salem and the

village again suggested a Christmas card illustration as I walked up the

street. The snow cried out under my shoe soles with shrill familiar

squeal, carrying me back to the radiant mornings in Iowa when I trod the

boardwalks of Osage on my way to the Seminary Chapel, my books under my

arm and the courage of youth in my heart. Now a wife and daughter

awaited me.

A fire was crackling in the new chimney, and in the light of it, at her

mother's feet, sat Mary Isabel. In a moment New York and Chicago were

remote, almost mythic places. With my child in my arms, listening to

Zulime's gossip of the town wherein the simple old-fashioned joys of

life still persisted with wholesome effect, I asked myself, "Why

struggle? Why travel, when your wife, your babe, and your hearthstone

are here?"

"Once I threatened the world with fire,

And thrust my fist in the face of wrong,

Making my heart a sounding lyre--

Accusing the rulers of earth in song.

Now, counting the world of creeds well lost

And recking the greatest book no prize--

Withdrawn from the press and free from the cost

Of fame and war--in my baby's eyes--

In the touch of her tiny, slender palm,

I find the ease of a warrior's calm."

Calm! Did I say calm? It was the calm of abject slavery. At command of

that minute despot I began to toil frenziedly. At her word I read over

and over, and over once again, the Rhymes of _Mother Goose_ and the

Tales of _Peter Wabbitt_. The _Tin Tan Book_ was her litany, and _Red

Riding Hood_ her sweet terror. Her interest in books was insatiate. She

loved all verses, all melodies, even those whose words were wholly

beyond her understanding, and her rapt eyes, deep and dark, as my

mother's had been, gave me such happiness that to write of it fills me

with a pang of regret--for that baby is now a woman.

It will not avail my reader to say, "You were but re-enacting the

experiences of innumerable other daddies," for this was _my_ child,

these were _my_ home and _my_ fire. Without a shred of shame I rejoiced

in my subjection then, as I long to recover its contentment now. Life

for me was fulfilled. I was doing that which nature and the world

required.

Here enters an incongruous fact,--something which I must record with the

particularity it deserves. My wife who was accounted a genius, was in

truth amazingly "clever" with brush and pencil. Not only had she spent

five years in Paris, she had enjoyed several other years of study with

her sculptor brother. She could model, she could paint and she could

draw,--but--to whom did Mary Isabel turn when she wanted a picture? To

her artist mother? Not at all! To me,--to her corn-husker daddy--of

course. I was her artist as well as her reader.

To her my hand was a wonder-worker. She was always pleased with what I

did. Hour after hour I drew (in amazing outlines) dogs and cows and pigs

(pictographs as primitive as those which line the walls of cave

dwellings in Arizona) on which she gazed in ecstasy, silent till she

suddenly discovered that this effigy meant a cow, then she cried out,

"tee dee moomo!" with a joy which afforded me more satisfaction than any

acceptance of a story on the part of an editor had ever conveyed. Each

scrawl was to her a fresh revelation of the omniscience, the magic of

her father--therefore I drew and drew while her recreant mother sat on

the other side of the fire and watched us, a wicked smile of

amusement--and relief--on her lips.

My daughter was preternaturally interested in magazines,--that is to say

she was (at a very early age) vitally concerned with the advertising

columns, and forced me to spend a great deal of time turning the pages

while she discovered and admired the images of shoes, chairs, tables and

babies,--especially babies. It rejoiced her to discover in a book the

portrait of a desk which was actually standing in the room, and in

matching the fact with the artistic reproduction of the fact, she was,

no doubt, laying the foundation of an esthetic appreciation of the

universe, but I suffered. Only when she was hungry or sleepy did she

permit me, her art instructor, to take a vacation.

In the peaceful intervals when she was in her bed, her mother and I

discussed the question, "Where shall we make our winter home?"

My plan to take another apartment in New York seemed of a reckless

extravagance to Zulime, who argued for Chicago, and in the end we

compromised--on Chicago--where her father and brother and sister lived.

November found us settled in a furnished apartment on Jackson Park

Avenue, and our Christmas tree was set up there instead of in the

Homestead, which was the natural place for it.

Another phase of being Daddy now set in. To me, as a father, the City by

the Lake assumed a new and terrifying aspect. Its dirt, its chill winds,

its smoke appeared a pitiless league of forces assaulting the tender

form of my daughter. My interest in civic reforms augmented. The

problems of street cleaning and sanitary milk delivery approached me

from an entirely different angle. My sense of social justice was

quickened.

In other ways I admitted a change. Something had gone out of my world,

or rather something unexpected had come into it. I was no longer

whole-hearted in my enjoyment of my Club. My study hours were no longer

sacred. My cherub daughter allured. Sometimes as I was dozing in my

sleeping car, I heard her chirping voice, "Bappa, come here. I need

you." The memory of her small soft body, her trusting eyes, the arch of

her brows, made me impatient of my lecture tours. She was my incentive,

my chief reason for living and working, and from each of my predatory

sorties, I returned to her with a thankfulness which was almost

maudlin--in Fuller's eyes. To have her joyous face lifted to mine, to

hear her clear voice repeating my mother's songs, restored my faith in

the logic of human life. True she interrupted my work and divided my

interest, but she also defended me from bitterness and kept me from a

darkening outlook on the future. My right to have her could be

questioned but my care of her, now that I had her, was a joyous task.

It would not be quite honest in me if I did not admit that this

intensity of interest in my daughter took away something from my

attitude as a husband, just as Zulime's mother love affected her

relationship to me. A new law was at work in both our cases, and I do

not question its necessity or its direction. Three is a larger number

than two, and if the third number brings something unforeseen into the

problem it must be accepted. Mary Isabel strengthened the bond between

Zulime and myself, but it altered its character. Whatever it lost in one

way it gained in another.

Dear little daughter, how she possessed me! Each day she presented some

new trait, some new accomplishment. She had begun to understand that

Daddy was a writer and that he must not be disturbed during the morning,

but in spite of her best resolutions she often tip-toed to my door to

inquire brightly, "Poppie, can I come in? Don't you want me?" Of course

I wanted her, and so frequently my work gave place to a romp with her.

In the afternoons I often took her for a walk or to coast on her new

sled rejoicing in the picture she made in her red cloak and hood.

In her presence my somber conceptions of life were forgotten. Joyous and

vital, knowing nothing of my worries, she comforted me. She was no

longer the "baby" she was "Wenona," my first born, and in spirit we were

comrades. More and more she absorbed my thought. "Poppie, I love you

better than anything," she often said, and the music of her voice misted

my eyes and put a lump into my throat.

When summer came and we went back to the Homestead, I taught her to

drive Old Smoker, Uncle William's horse. Under my direction she studied

the birds and animals. In city and country alike we came together at

nightfall, to read or sing or "play circus." I sang to her all the songs

my mother had taught me, I danced with her as she grew older, with

Zulime playing the tunes for us, "Money Musk" and "The Campbells are

Coming." As we walked the streets the trusting cling of her tiny fingers

was inexpressibly sweet.

"Poppie, I'm so happy!" she often said to me after she was three, and

the ecstasy which showed in her big blue eyes scared me with its

intensity for I knew all too well that it could not last. This was her

magical time. She was enraptured of the wind and sky and the grass.

Every fact in nature was a revelation to her.

"Why, Poppie? What does it? What was that noise?" The dandelions, the

dead bird, a snake--these were miracles to her--as they once were to me.

She believed in fairies with devotional fervor and I did nothing to

shake her faith, on the contrary I would gladly have shared her credence

if I could.

Once as we were entering a deep, dark wood, she cautioned me to walk

very softly and to speak in a whisper in order that we might catch the

Forest Folk at play, and as we trod a specially beautiful forest aisle

she cried out, "I _saw_ one, Poppie! Didn't you see that little shining

thing?"

I could only say, "Yes, it _must_ have been a fairy." I would not

destroy her illusion.

She inhabited a world of ineffable beauty, a universe in which minute

exquisite winged creatures flashed like flakes of fire, through dusky

places. She heard their small faint voices in the whisper of the leaves,

and every broad toadstool was to her a resting place for weary elfin

messengers hurrying on some mission for their queen. Her own imaginings,

like her favorite books, were all of magic wands, golden garments and

crystal palaces. Sceptered kings, and jeweled princesses trailing robes

of satin were the chief actors in her dreams.

I am aware that many educators consider such reading foolish and

harmful, but I care nothing for wire-drawn pedagogic theories. That I

did nothing to mar the mystical beauty of the world in which my daughter

then dwelt, is my present satisfaction, and I shamelessly acknowledge

that I experienced keen pangs of regret as her tender illusions, one

after another faded into the chill white light of later day. Without

actually deceiving her, I permitted her to believe that I too, heard the

wondrous voices of Titania and her elves in convention behind the rose

bush, or the whispers of gnomes hiding among the cornrows.

Good republican that I was, I listened without reproof to her adoring

fealty to Kings and Queens. Her love of Knights and tournaments was

openly fostered at my hand. "If she should die out of this, her glorious

imaginary world, she shall die happy," was my thought, "and if she lives

to look back upon it with a woman's eyes, she shall remember it as a

shining world in which her Daddy was a rough but kindly councillor, a

mortal of whom no fairy need have fear."

The circus was my daughter's royal tournament, an assemblage of all the

kings and queens, knights and fairies of her story books. She hated the

clowns but the parade of the warriors and their sovereign exalted her.

The helmeted spearmen, the lithe charioteers, the hooded drivers sitting

astride the heads of vast elephants were characters of the Arabian

Nights, passing veritably before her eyes. The winged dancers of the

spectacle came straight from the castle of Queen Mab, the pale acrobats

were brothers to Hector and Achilles.

As she watched them pass she gripped my hand as if to keep touch with

reality, her little heart swollen with almost intolerable delight. "It

makes me shiver," she whispered, and I understood.

As the last horseman of the procession was passing, she asked

faintly--"Will it come again, Poppie?"

"Yes, it will come once more," I replied, recalling my own sense of loss

when the Grand Entry was over.

As the queen, haughty of glance, superb in her robe of silver once more

neared us, indolently swaying to the movement of the elephant, who bore

his housings of purple and gold with stately solemnity, my daughter's

tiny body quivered with ecstasy and her beautiful eyes dilated with an

intensity of admiration, of worship which made me sad as well as happy,

and then just as the resplendent princess was passing for the last time,

Mary Isabel rose in her place and waving a kiss to her liege lady cried

out in tones of poignant love and despair, "Good-by, dear Queen!" and I,

holding her tender palpitant figure in my arms, heard in that slender

silver-sweet cry the lament of childhood, childhood whose dreams were

passing never to return.

* * * * *

Chicago did not offer much by way of magnificence but Mary Isabel made

the most of what we took her to see. The gold room of the hotel was a

part of her imaginary kingdom, conceivably the home of royalty. Standing

timidly at the door, she surveyed the golden chairs, the gorgeous

ceiling and the deep-toned pictures with a gaze which absorbed every

detail. At last she whispered, "Is this the Queen's room?"

"Yes," I replied. "If the Queen should come to Chicago she would live

here," and I comforted myself by saying, "You shall have your hour of

wonder and romance, even at the expense of a prevarication."

With a sigh she turned away, or rather permitted me to lead her away.

"I'm glad I saw it," she said. "Will the Queen ever come to Chicago

again?"

"Yes, next spring she will come again," I answered, thus feeding her

illusion without a moment's hesitation or a particle of remorse.

Her love of royal robes, gold chariots and Queens' houses did not

prevent her from listening with deep delight while I read _Jock

Johnstone, the Tinkler Lad_, or sang _O'er the Hills In Legions, Boys_.

She loved most of the songs I was accustomed to sing but certain of the

lines vaguely distressed her. She could not endure the pathos of Nellie

Gray.

"Oh, my poor Nellie Gray

They have taken you away

And I'll never see my darling any more"

put her into deepest anguish.

"_Why_ did they take her away?" she sobbed. "Didn't they _ever_ see her

any more?"

Only after I explained that they met "down the river" and were very

happy ever afterward, would she permit me to finish the ballad. She was

similarly troubled by the words,

"I can hear the children calling

I can see their sad tears falling."

"_Why_ are the children calling?" she demanded.

She had a curious horror of anything abnormal. Once I took her to see

"Alice in Wonderland" thinking that this would be an enchanting

experience for her. Not only was it intolerably repellent to her, it was

terrifying, and when the bodies of the characters suddenly lengthened,

she sought refuge under the seat. All deformities, grotesqueries were to

her horrible, appalling. She refused to look at the actors and at last I

took her away.

One afternoon as we were in the garden together she called to me.

"Poppie, see the dead birdie!"

On looking I saw a little dead song sparrow. "It's been here all the

night and all the day, Poppie. It fell out of the tree when Eddie

shooted it. Put it up in the tree again, Poppie."

She seemed to think that if it were put back into its home it would go

on living and singing. I don't know why this should have moved me as it

did, but it blurred my eyes for a moment. My little daughter was face to

face with the great mystery.

O those magical days! Knowing all too well that they could not last and

that to lose any part of them was to be forever cheated, I gave my time

to her. Over and over again as I met her deep serene glance, I asked (as

other parents have done), "Whence came you? From what dusky night rose

your starry eyes? Out of what unillumined void flowered your fairy face?

Can it be, as some have said, that you are only an automaton, a physical

reaction?"

She was the future, my father the past. Birth and death, equally

inexplicable, were expressed to me in these two beings, so vital to me,

so dependent upon me, and beside me, suffering, joying with me, walked

the mother with unfaltering steps.

I was in the midst of a novel at this time, another story of Colorado,

which I called _Money Magic_, and without doubt all this distraction and

travel weakened it, although Howells spoke well of it. "It is one of

your best books," he said, when we next met.

[Mary Isabel reads the book at intervals and places it next to _Hesper_

and _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_.]

Marriage, paternity, householding, during these years unquestionably put

the brakes on my work as a writer, but I had no desire to return to

bachelorhood. Undoubtedly I had lost something, but I had gained more.

As a human being I was enriched beyond my deserving by a wife and a

child.

Perhaps I would have gone farther and mounted higher as a selfish

solitary bachelor, but that did not trouble me then, and does not now.

Concerned with the problem of providing a comfortable winter home for my

family, and happy in maintaining the old house in West Salem as a

monument to the memory of my mother, I wrote, committed carpentry and

lectured.

My frequent absences from home soon made a deep impression on my

daughter's mind, and whenever she was naughty I had but to say, "If you

do that again Papa will go away to New York," and she would instantly

say, "I'm doodie now papa, I'm doodie----" and yet my mention of going

to New York could not have been altogether a punishment for I always

brought to her some toy or book. Nothing afforded me keener joy than the

moment when I showed her the presents I had brought.

The fact that she loved to have her heavy-handed old Daddy near her, was

a kind of miracle, a concession for which I could not be too grateful.

"You shall have a happy childhood," I vowed, "no matter what comes

later, you shall remember these days with unalloyed delight. They shall

be your heaven, your fairyland."

Each month I set down in my diary some new phrase, some development,

some significant event in her life, and when she found this out she

loved to have me read what she had said, "When I was a little baby." She

listened gravely, contrasting her ignorance at two with her wisdom at

five. "Was I cute, Daddy? Did you like me then?" she would ask.

She early learned the meaning of Decoration Day, which she called "Flag

Day," and took pride in the fact that her grand-sire was a soldier. Each

year she called for her flag and asked to be taken to the cemetery to

see the decorations and to hear the bugles blow above the graves, and I

always complied; although to me, each year, a more poignant pathos

quavered in the wailing cadence of "Lights out," and the passing of the

veterans, thinning so rapidly--was like the march of men toward their

open graves.

Happily my daughter did not realize any part of this tragic concept. For

her it was natural that a soldier should be old and bent. Waving her

little flag and shouting with silver-sweet voice she saluted with vague

admiration those who were about to die--an age about to die--and in her

eyes flamed the spirit of her grand-sire, the love of country which

will carry the Republic through every storm no matter from which quarter

the wind may spring.

So far as I could, I taught her to take up the traditions which were

about to slip from the hands of Richard Garland and his sons, "She shall

be our representative, the custodian of our faith."

For four years she remained our only child, and yet I can not say that

she was either spoiled or exacting, on the contrary she was a constant,

joyous pupil and a lovely appealing teacher. Through her I rediscovered

the wonder of the sunrise and the stars. In the study of her face the

lost beauty of the rainbow returned to me, in her presence I felt once

more the mystic charm of dusk. I reaccepted the universe, putting aside

the measureless horror of its recorded wars. I grew strangely selfish.

My interests narrowed to my own country, my own home, to my fireside.

Counting upon the world well lost, I built upon my daughter's love.

That my wife was equally happy in her parentage was obvious for at times

she treated Mary Isabel as if she were a doll, spending many hours of

many days designing dainty gowns and hoods for her delight. She could

hardly be separated from the child, even for a night and it was in her

battles with croup and other nocturnal enemies that her maternal love

was tested to the full. I do not assume to know what she felt as a wife,

but of her devotion as a mother I am able to write with certainty. On

her fell the burden of those hours of sickness in the city, and when the

time came for us to go back to the birds and trees of our beloved valley

she rejoiced as openly as her daughter. "Now we shall be free of colds

and fever," she said.

[Illustration: Entirely subject to my daughter, who regarded me as a

wonder-working giant, I paid tribute to her in song, in story, and in

frankincense and myrrh. Led by her trusting little hand I re-

discovered the haunts of fairies and explored once more the land

beneath the rainbow.]

For the most part this was true. For several summers our daughter lived

and throve at her birthplace, free of pain and in idyllic security--and

then suddenly, one September day, like the chill shadow from an Autumn

stormcloud, misfortune fell upon us. Our daughter became sick, how sick

I did not realize until on the eighth day as I took her in my arms I

discovered in her a horrifying weakness. Her little body, thinned with

fever, hung so laxly, so lightly on my knee that my blood chilled with

sudden terror.

With a conviction that I dared not even admit to myself, I put her back

into her mother's keeping and hurried to the telephone. In ten minutes I

had called to her aid the best medical men of the region. Especially did

I appeal to Doctor Evans, who had helped to bring her into the world.

"You must come," I said to him. "It is life or death."

He came, swiftly, but in a few moments after his arrival he gravely

announced the dreadful truth. "Your child is in the last stages of

diphtheria. I will do what I can for her but she should have had the

antitoxin five days ago."

For forty-eight hours our baby's life was despaired of, yet fought for

by a heroic nurse who refused to leave her for a single hour.

Oh, the suspense, the agony of those days and nights, when her mother

and I, helpless to serve, were shut away from her, not even permitted to

look at her. We could do nothing--nothing but wait through the

interminable hours, tortured by the thought that she might be calling

for us. During one entire dreadful night we writhed under one doctor's

sentence, "The child can not live," and in these hours I discovered that

it is the sweetest love that casts the blackest shadow. My joy in my

daughter was an agony of fear and remorse--why had I not acted sooner?

As I imagined my world without that radiant face, that bird-like voice,

I fell into black despair. My only hope was in the nurse, who refused to

give her up. I could not talk or write or think of any other thing. The

child's sufferings filled my mind with an intolerable ache of

apprehension. I had possessed her only a few years and yet she was

already woven into the innermost fibers of my heart.

That night, which I dare not dwell upon, put my youth definitely behind

me. When the blessed word came that she would live, and I was permitted

to look upon her small wasted face, I was a care-worn middle-aged

man--willing to give up any part of my life to win that tiny sufferer

back to health and happiness.

Pitiful little Mary Isabel, pale wraith of my sturdy comrade! When she

lifted her beseeching eyes to me and faintly, fleetingly smiled--unable

to even whisper my name, I, forbidden to speak, could only touch her

cheek with my lips and leave her alone with her devoted nurse--for, so

weak was she that a breath might have blown her away, back into the

endless shadow and silence of the grave.

At that moment I asked myself, "What right have men and women to bring

exquisite souls like this into a world of disease and death? Why

maintain the race? What purpose is subserved by keeping the endless

chain of human misery lengthening on?"

In times like these I was weaker than my wife. I grant her marvelous

fortitude, sustained by something which I did not possess and could not

acquire. She met every crisis. I leaned upon her serenity, her courage,

her faith in the future which was in no sense a religious creed. It was

only a womanly inheritance, something which came down the long line of

her maternal Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

At last the day came when the nurse permitted me to take my daughter

again in my arms and carry her out to the easy chair before the fire.

The moment was perfect. The veil of snow falling without, the leaping

firelight on the hearth, and the presence of my wife and father, united

to fill me with happiness. I became the fond optimist again--the world

was not so black--our year was worthy of Thanksgiving after all.

Nevertheless I was aware that a bitter ineradicable dusk had gathered in

the corners and crannies of the old house. Something depressing,

repellent, was in the air. My sense of joy, my feeling of comfort in its

seclusion were gone.

"Never again will this be a restful home for you or for me," I declared

to my daughter. "Its shadow is now an enemy, its isolation a menace." To

my wife I said, "Let us go back to the city where the highest type of

medical science is at the end of the telephone wire."

She consented, and taking the child in my arms, I left the village with

no intention of ever returning to it. The fire on my family altar seemed

dead, never again to be rekindled.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Old Soldier Gains a New Granddaughter

For nearly two years I did not even see the Homestead. My aversion to it

remained almost a hatred. The memory of those desolate weeks of

quarantine when my little daughter suffered all the agonies of death,

still lingered over its walls, a poisonous shadow which time alone could

remove. "I shall never live in it again," I repeated to my friends, and

when some one wanted to rent it for the summer I consented--with a

twinge of pain I must confess, for to open it to strangers even for a

few weeks seemed an act of disloyalty to the memory of my mother.

Meanwhile I remained a moderately happy and very busy citizen of

Chicago. Not content with esthetic conditions and in the belief that my

home for years to come must be somewhere in the city's confines, I had

resolved to establish a Club which should be (like the Players in New

York) a meeting place for artists and writers, a rallying point for

Midland Arts. Feeling very keenly the lack of such a rendezvous I said

to Lorado, "I believe the time has come when a successful literary and

artistic club can be established and maintained."

The more I pondered on the situation, the greater the discrepancy

between the Chicago of my day and the Boston of my father's day became.

"Why was it that the Boston of 1860, a city of three hundred thousand

people, should have been so productive of great writers, while this

vast inland metropolis of over two million of people remains almost

negligible in the world of Art and Letters?"

Fuller, who refused, characteristically, to endorse my plan, was openly

discouraging. To him the town was a pestilential slough in which he, at

any rate, was inextricably mired, and though he was not quite so

definite with me, he said to others, "Garland's idea is sure to fail."

Clarkson, Browne and Taft, however, heartily joined my committee, and

the "Cliff Dwellers," a union of workers in the fine arts, resulted. As

president of the organization, I set to work on plans for housing the

club, and for months I was absorbed in this work.

On the eighteenth of June, 1908, in the midst of my work on the club

affairs, another daughter was born to us, a vigorous and shapely babe,

with delicate limbs, gray eyes, and a lively disposition, and while my

wife, who came through this ordeal much better than before, was debating

a choice of names for her, Mary Isabel gravely announced that she had

decided to call her sister "Marjorie Christmas," for the reason, as she

explained, that these were the nicest names she knew. Trusting first

born!--she did not realize the difference which this new-found playmate

was about to make in her life, and her joy in being permitted to hold

the tiny stranger in her arms was pathetic.

My own attitude toward "Marjorie Christmas" was not indifferent but I

did not receive her with the same intensity of interest with which I had

welcomed my first child. Her place was not waiting for her as was the

case of Mary Isabel. She was a lovely infant and perhaps I would have

taken her to my arms with keen paternal pride had it not been for the

realization that in doing so I was neglecting her sister whose

comradeship with me had been so close (so full of exquisite moments)

that it could not be transferred to another daughter, no matter how

alluring. A second child is--a second child.

To further complicate our problem, Constance (as we finally called her),

passed under the care of a nursemaid, and for two years I had very

little to do with her. I seldom sang this child to sleep as I had done

countless times with Mary Isabel. She did not ride on the crook of my

elbow, or climb on my back, or look at picture books with me, until she

was nearly three years old. We regained her, but we could not regain the

hours of companionship we had sacrificed. This experience enables me to

understand the unhappiness which comes to so many homes, in which the

children are only boarders, foundlings in the care of nurses and

governesses. My poverty, my small dwelling have given me the most

precious memories of my daughters in their childish innocence.

[Connie, who is now as tall as her mother and signs her drawings

"Constance Hamlin Garland" is looking over my shoulder at this moment

with a sly smile. It has long been known to her that she was, for

several years, very much "in the discard" but she does not hold it

against me. She knows that it would be hard for me to make a choice

between my two jewels to-day--I allude to them as mine because I am

writing this book. My wife has a different angle of vision concerning

them.]

My father came down from West Salem to see this second granddaughter,

and on the whole, approved of her, although his tenderest interest, like

mine, remained with Mary Isabel, who was now old enough to walk and talk

with him. To watch her trotting along the street with that white-haired

warrior, her small hand linked with his, was to gain a deeply moving

sense of the continuity of life. How slender the link between the

generations appears in such a case!

Nothing, not even the birth of a new grandchild, could divert my father

from his accustomed round of city sight-seeing. As in other times, so

now he again demanded to be shown the Stockyards, the Wheat Pit, the

Masonic Temple and Lincoln Park. I groaned but I consented.

It happened that Ira Morris, one of the owners of the Stockyards, was an

acquaintance, and the courtesy and attentions which were shown us gave

the old farmer immense satisfaction--and when he found that Frank Logan,

of "Logan & Bryan," (a Commission firm to which he had been wont to send

his wheat) was also my friend, he began to find in my Chicago life

certain compensating particulars, especially as in his presence I

assumed a prosperity I did not possess.

On paper I sounded fairly well. I was one of the vice-presidents of the

National Institute of Arts and Letters. I had a "Town house" as well as

a "country place," and under cover of the fact that very few of my

friends had ever inspected both properties, I was able in some degree to

camouflage my situation. In the city I alluded casually to "my Wisconsin

Homestead," and when in West Salem I referred with quiet affluence to

"my residence in Woodlawn." Explaining that it was a three story house I

passed lightly over the fact that it was only eighteen feet wide!

Similarly, in speaking of "our country home" I did not explain to all my

friends that it was merely an ugly old farmhouse on the edge of a

commonplace village. I stated the truth in each case but not the whole

truth.

If my city friend, Charles Hutchinson, imagined me spending my summers

in a noble mansion on the bank of a shining river it was not my duty to

shock him by declaring that there was no water in sight and that my

garden was only a truck patch. On the other hand, if my neighbors in

West Salem thought of me as living in a handsome brick mansion in

Chicago, and writing my stories in a spacious study walled with books, I

was not obliged to undeceive them.

Fuller, alas! knew all the facts in both cases, and so did Ernest

Seton, who had visited us in the country as well as in our city home.

Fuller not only knew the ins and outs of my houses; he was also aware

that my royalties were dwindling and that my wife was forced to get

along with one servant and that we used the street cars habitually.

Being president of the Cliff Dwellers was an honor, but the distinction

carried with it something of the responsibility of a hotel-keeper as

well as the duties of a lecture agent, for one of our methods in

building up attendance at the Club, was to announce special luncheons in

honor of distinguished visitors from abroad, and the task of arranging

these meetings fell usually to me. In truth, the activities of the club

took a large part of my time and carried a serious distraction from my

work, but I welcomed the diversion, and was more content in my Chicago

residence than I had been for several years.

Whenever I spoke to Zulime of my failure as a money-getter she loyally

declared herself rich in what I had given her, although she still rode

to grand dinners in the elevated trains, carrying her slippers in a bag.

It was her patient industry, her cheerful acceptance of endless

household drudgery which kept me clear of self-conceit. I began to

suspect that I would never be able to furnish her with a better home

than that which we already owned, and this suspicion sometimes robbed me

of rest.

This may seem to some of my readers an unworthy admission on the part of

a man of letters but it is a perfectly natural and in a sense, logical

result of my close associations with several of the most successful

writers and artists of my day. It was inevitable that while contrasting

my home with theirs, I should occasionally fall into moods of

self-disparagement, almost of despair.

To see my wife (whom everybody admired) wearing thread-bare cloaks and

home-made gowns, to watch her making the best of our crowded little

dining-room with its pitiful furniture and its sparse silver, were

constant humiliations, an accusation which embittered me especially as I

saw no prospect of ever providing anything more worthy of her care.

For a woman of taste, wearing made-over gowns is a very real hardship,

but Zulime bore her deprivations with heroic cheerfulness, taking a

never-failing delight in our narrow home. She made our table a notable

meeting place, for, if we had few dollars we owned many friends who

found their way to us, and often from our commonplace little portal we

plodded away in the rain or snow to dine in the stately palaces of the

rich,--kings of commerce and finance.

Apparently we were everywhere welcome, and that this was due almost

entirely to the winning personality of my wife, I freely acknowledge.

That she had scores of devoted admirers was only too evident, for the

telephone bell rang almost continuously of a morning. Always ready to

give her time, her skill and her abounding sympathy to those who made

piteous demands upon her, she permitted these incessant telephone

interruptions, although I charged her with being foolishly prodigal in

this regard. If she felt resentful of the narrow walls in which I had

confined her, she did not complain.

Whatever my wife's state of mind may have been these were restless years

for me. As an officer of several organizations and as lecturer, I was

traveling much of the time, mostly on the trail between New York City

and Chicago. Even when at home I had only three morning hours for

writing--but that was not the worst of it. My convictions concerning my

literary mission were in process of disintegration.

My children, my manifold duties as theatrical up-lifter and club

promoter, together with a swift letting down of my mental and physical

powers, caused me to question the value of all my writing. I went so

far as to say, "As a writer I have failed. Perhaps I can be of service

as a citizen," with my Oklahoma farms bringing in a small annual income,

the scrape of my pen became a weariness.

That I was passing from robust manhood to middle age was also evident to

me and I didn't like that. I resented deepening wrinkles, whitening

hairs and the sense of weariness which came over me at the end of my

morning's work. My power of concentration was lessening. Noises

irritated me and little things distracted me. I could no longer bend to

my desk for five hours in complete absorption. How my wife endured me

during those years I can not explain. The chirp of my babies' voices,

the ring of the telephone, the rattle of the garbage cart, the whistle

of the postman--each annoyance chopped into my composition, and as my

afternoons and evenings had no value in a literary way, I was often

completely defeated for the day. Altogether and inevitably my work as a

fictionist sank into an unimportant place. I was on the down-grade, that

was evident. Writing was a tiresome habit. I was in a rut and longing to

get out--to be forced out.

The annual dinner of the Institute of Arts and Letters that year was not

cheering. With the loss of four members, Stedman, Aldrich, MacDowell and

St. Gaudens, I realized as never before the swift changes at work in

American letters. It was my duty and my privilege to speak that night in

memory of MacDowell who had so often been my seat-mate, and as I looked

around that small circle of familiar faces, a scene of loss, a

perception of decay came over me like a keen wind from out a desolate

landscape. On every head the snows had thickened, on every face a shadow

rested. All--all were hastening to be history.

* * * * *

From that circle of my elders in the East, I returned to my children in

the West with a sense of returning to the future. The radiant joy of

Mary Isabel's face as I displayed her presents, a ring and a story book,

restored me to something like a normal faith in the world. "Wead to me,

wead to me!" was now her insistent plea, and putting aside all other

concerns I turned the pages of her new book, realizing that to her the

universe was still a great and never-ending fairy tale, and her Daddy a

wonder-working magician, an amiable ogre. Her eager voice, her raptured

attention enabled me to recover, for a moment, a wholesome faith and joy

in my world--a world which was growing gray and wan and cold with

terrifying swiftness.

"Your childhood shall be as happy as my powers will permit," I vowed

once again as I looked into her uplifted face. "You shall have only

pleasant memories of me," and in this spirit I gave her the best of

myself. I taught her to read, I told her stories which linked her mind

with that of her pioneer grandmother, filling her brain with traditions

of the middle border. Dear little daughter, her daddy was veritably a

nobleman, her mother a queen--in those days!

My wife says that for ten years I was always either on the point of

going somewhere, or just returning, and as I turn the pages of my

diaries, I find this to be true, but also I find frequent mention of

meetings with John Burroughs, Bacheller, Gilder, Alexander, Madame

Modjeska, William Vaughn Moody and many others of my friends

distinguished in the arts.

All my publishing interests and most of my literary friends were in New

York (my support came from there), hence my frequent coming and going.

Whether this constant change, these sudden and violent contrasts in my

way of life strengthened my fictional faculty or weakened it, I can not

say, but I do know that as the head of a family I found concentrated

effort increasingly difficult and at times very nearly impossible.

Constance was ailing for a year, and was a source of care, of pain to

me, as to her mother. At times, many times, her sufferings filled me

with a passionate pity, a sense of rage, of helplessness. Indeed both

children were subject to throat and lung disorders, especially when in

the city.

Oh, those cruel coughing spells, those nights of burning fever, those

alarming hours of stupor or of terrifying delirium! "Can science find no

check upon these recurrent forms of disease?" I demanded of our doctor.

"Must humanity forever suffer the agonies of diphtheria and pneumonia?

If so why bring children into the world?"

We always knew when these disorders had set in, we knew all the signs

but no medicine availed to stop their progress. Each attack ran its

course in spite of nurse and drug whilst I raged helplessly and Zulime

grew hollow-eyed with anxious midnight vigil. Death was a never-absent

hovering shadow when those bitter winter winds were blowing, and

realizing this I came to hate the great desolate city in which we lived,

and to long with the most passionate ardor for the coming of April's

sun.

One of the first signs of spring (so far as Mary Isabel was concerned)

was the opening of the "White City," a pleasure park near us, and the

second event quite as conclusive and much more exciting was the coming

of the circus. These were the red letter days in her vernal calendar,

and were inescapable outings, for her memory was tenacious. Each May she

demanded to be taken to the "Fite City" and later "the Kings and Queens"

and "the fairies" of the circus claimed her worship. Together we saw

these glorious sights, which filled her little soul with rapture.

For two years my estrangement from the old Homestead was complete, but

when one April day I found myself passing it on my way to St. Paul, I

was constrained to stop off just to see how my father and the garden

were coming on.

This was late April, and the day warm, windless and musical with sounds

of spring. The maples and the elms had adorned themselves with most

bewitching greens, the dandelions beckoned from sunny banks, and through

the radiant mist, the nesting birds were calling. In a flood, all the

ancient witchery of the valley, all of the Homestead's loveliest

associations came back to soften my mood, to regain my love. Wrought

upon by the ever-returning youth of the world--a world to which my

daughters were akin, I relented, "We will come back. Cruel as some of

its memories are, this is home, I belong here, and so does Mary Isabel."

The sunlight streaming into my mother's chamber lay like a fairy carpet

on the floor, waiting for the dancing feet of her grandchildren. Her

spirit filled the room, calling to me, consoling me, convincing me.

All day I worked at trimming vines, and planting flowers while the

robins chuckled from the lawn, and the maples expanded overhead. How

spacious and wide and safe the yard appeared, a natural playground for

the use of children.

And so it came about that on June seventeenth, just before Constance's

second birthday, Mary Isabel and I took the night train for West Salem,

leaving Zulime and the nurse to follow next morning. Greatly excited at

the prospect of going to sleep on the cars my daughter went to her bed.

"I kick for joy," she said, her eyes shining with elfin delight.

She loved the "little house" as she called her berth, and for an hour

she lay peering out at the moon. "It follows us!" she cried out in

pleased surprise.

"Yes, it is a kindly moon. It will keep right along overhead all the way

to West Salem. But you must go to sleep now. I shall call you early in

the morning to meet Grandfather."

She was a reasonable soul, entirely confident of my care, and so,

putting her head on my arm, she went away to dreamland. At such times

my literary ambitions and failures were of no account. [To wish myself

back there with that tiny form beside me is folly--but I do--I do!]

In the cool lusciousness of the June morning we met Grandpa, and as we

entered the gate of the Homestead (which Mary Isabel only dimly

remembered), I said, "This is your home, daughter, you belong here."

"Can I pick the flowers? Can I walk on the grass?" she asked quickly.

"Yes, pick all you want. You can _roll_ on the grass if you wish."

Too excited to eat any breakfast, she ran from posy bed to posy bed, and

from tree to tree, indefatigable as a bee or humming-bird. At five in

the afternoon Zulime and Constance came.

In the weeks which followed I renewed my childhood. To Mary Isabel as to

me at her age, the cornfield was a vast mysterious forest, and the

rainbow an overpowering miracle.

"Don't they have rainbows in the city?" she asked one evening as we were

watching a glorious arch fade out of the sky above the hills.

"Not such big beautiful double ones," I replied. "They haven't room for

them in the city."

She took the same delight in the flame and flare of the Fourth of July

which I once owned. She loved to walk in the fields. Snakes, bugs, worms

and spiders enthralled her. Each hour brought its vivid message, its

wonder and its delight, and when now and again she was allowed to

explore the garden with me at night, the murk and the stars, and the

stealthily moving winds in the corn, scared, awed her. At such moments

the universe was a delicious mystery. Keeping close hold upon my hand

she whispered with excitement, "What was that, Poppie? What was that

noise? Was it a gnome?"

For her I built a "House" high in the big maple, and there she often

climbed, spending many happy hours singing to her dollies or conning

over her picture books. Her face shone down upon me radiant with life's

ecstasy. Baby Constance was to her a toy, a doll, I was her companion,

her playmate. The garden seemed fashioned for her uses, and whenever I

saw her among the flowers or sitting on the lawn, I forgot my writing,

realizing that these were golden days for me as well as for her,--days

that would pass like waves of light across the wheat.

Together with Zulime I received the house back into my affection. Once

more I thought of it as something permanent, a sure refuge in time of

trouble. It gave us both a comforting sense of security to know that we

could, at need, come back to it and live in comfort. With no hope of

attaining a larger income, saving money was earning money for us both.

In this spirit I put in another bathroom, and enlarged the

dining-room--doing much of the work with my own hands.

Nothing could be more idyllic than our daily routine that summer. Our

diversions, dependent on a love of odorous fields, colorful hills and

fruitful vines, were of arcadian content. Our wealth expressed in nuts

and apples and berries was ample. With Mary Isabel I assumed that wild

grapes were enormously important articles of food. "Without them we

might grow hungry this winter," I warned her. In this spirit we

harvested, intent as chipmunks.

After the nurse left us the two children slept together on an upstairs

screened-in porch, and every night, just before they went to sleep, it

was my habit to visit them. Lying down between them with a small head on

each arm, I told them stories or answered the questions which were

suggested by the trees and the sky. "What are stars? What makes the moon

spotted? What does iron come from? How do people make wall paper?" and

many others equally elemental. It was a tender hour for me and a

delicious one for them.

Gradually as they grew older, they fell into the habit of saying, "Now

tell us about when you were a little boy," and so I was led to freshen

up on _A Son of the Middle Border_, which I had begun to rewrite. They

could never get enough of these reminiscences and when, at nine o'clock,

I said, "Daughties, you must go to sleep," they pleaded for "Just one

more," and from this interest I derived a foolish hope that the book, if

it should ever get published, would be successful.

It was sweet to hear those soft voices demanding an explanation of the

universe whose wonders they were rediscovering in their turn. Every

changing season, every expanding leaf was magical to them. A bat

skittering about the chimney, the rustle of a breeze in the maples, were

of sinister significance requiring explanation, and when at last I went

away and they began to softly sing their wistful little evening prayer,

one which Mary Isabel had composed, life seemed worthwhile even to me. I

forgot the irrevocable past and confronted old age with composure.

Meanwhile my father's mind was becoming more and more reminiscent. His

stories once so vivid and so full of detail had narrowed down to a few

familiar phrases. "Just then Sherman and his staff came riding along,"

or "When I was camped on the upper waters of the Wisconsin." His memory

was failing and so was his sense of hearing. He seldom quoted from a

book, but he still cited Blaine's speeches or referred to Lincoln's

anecdotes, and certain of Grant's phrases were often on his lips. In all

his interests he remained objective, concerned with the world of action

not with the library, and while he made no effort to talk down to Mary

Isabel, he contrived to win her adoration, perhaps because she detected

in his voice his adoring love for her. In the mist of his glance was

the tender worship of youth on the part of age.

Always of a Sunday we sang for him and sometimes Uncle Frank, the last

of the McClintocks, gray haired and lean and bent, came in with his

fiddle and played while the children danced in the light of our fire, so

lithe, so happy, so fairy-like in their loveliness that he and Lorette

sat in silence, a silence which was at once tender and tragic. There was

something alien as well as marvelous in the dramatic movements of those

small forms.

Witnessing such scenes, moved by something elemental in their decay, I

continued to brood over the manuscript which was to be a kind of

autobiography, the blended story of the vicissitudes of the Garlands and

the McClintocks. At times I worked upon it to the exclusion of all else,

and when I read a part of the tale to Mary Isabel and found that she

understood it and liked it, I was heartened.

Consider this! I now had a daughter to whom I could read my manuscript!

Where did that personality come from? Was her soul merely the automatic

reaction of a material organism against a material environment? Was her

spirit dependent on the life of its little body or could it live on

independent of the flesh? Acknowledging the benumbing, hopeless mystery

of it all, I continued to live for my children, finding in them my

comfort and my justification.

I have never known anything more perfect than some of those mid-August

days when on some woodland slope, we gathered the luscious musky fruit

of wild blackberry vines and at our camp fire broiled our steak and made

our coffee for our evening, open-air meal.

There were no flies, no mosquitoes, no snakes, and the hillsides were

abloom with luscious shining berries, berries so ripe they fell into our

hands with the slightest touch, and so tender that they melted in our

mouths. The wind filled with the odor of yellowing corn, and the smell

of nuts and leaves, carried our songs to the mist-filled valley below

us, and the children playing on the smooth sward found our world a

paradise.

As the cool dusk began to cover the farms below us, we sang "Juanita"

and "Kentucky Home" and told our last stories while the children lay at

our feet, silent with rapture as I used to be, in similar circumstances,

forty years before.

And then when the fire had died down and sleepy babies were ready to

turn their faces bedward, we drove slowly down the winding lane to the

dust-covered bridge, past the small cemetery where mother was sleeping,

back to where the broad-roofed old house was waiting for us like some

huge, faithful creature yearning to receive us once again beneath its

wings. It was commonplace to our neighbors and without special

significance to the world, but to my children it was noble and beautiful

and poetic--it was home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"Cavanagh" and the "Winds of Destiny"

No doubt the reader has come to the conclusion, at this point, that my

habits as an author were not in the least like those of Burroughs or

Howells. There has never been anything cloistered about my life, on the

contrary my study has always been a point of departure rather than a

cell of meditation. From Elm Street, from the Homestead, I frequently

darted away to the plains or the Rocky Mountains, keenly aware of the

fact that the miner and cattleman, the trapper and the trailer were

being pushed into ever remoter valleys by the men of the hoe and the

spade, and that the customs and habits which the mountaineer had

established were about to pass, precisely as the blossoming prairies had

long since been broken and fenced and made commonplace by the plow.