That the destruction of the eagle and the mountain lion marked another

stage of that remorseless march which is called civilization I fully

recognized and--in a certain sense--approved, although the raising of

billions of hens and pigs admittedly useful, was not to me an inspiring

employment of human energy. The long-horn white-faced steer was more

picturesque than a "Mooly" cow.

Doubtless a dairyman is a more valuable citizen in the long run than a

prospector or miner, but he does not so easily appeal to the

imagination. To wade irrigating ditches, hoe in hand, is not

incompatible with the noblest manhood, but it is none the less true that

men riding the trail or exploring ledges of quartz are more alluring

characters to the novelist--at least that was the way I felt in 1909

when I began to shape another book concerning the great drama which was

going on in the forests of the High Country.

For more than fifteen years, while trailing among the mountains of

Colorado, Montana and Wyoming, I had seen the Forest Service, under

Gifford Pinchot's leadership, gradually getting into effect. I had seen

the silver miner disappear and the army of forest rangers grow from a

handful of hardy cowboys and "lonesome men" into a disciplined force of

over two thousand young foresters who represented in some degree the

science and the patriotism of their chief.

As in _Hesper_ and _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_ I had attempted

to depict certain types of the red men, miners and ranchers. I now began

to study the mountain vedettes from the point of view of the Forest

Ranger, a federal officer who represented our newly acquired ideals of

Conservation, and whose duty it was to act as custodian of the National

Forests. I decided to write a novel which should, in some degree,

delineate the heroic side of this warden's solitary life as I had seen

it and shared it in a half-dozen forests in Colorado, Wyoming and

Montana.

In this writing I put myself at the opposite pole from the scenes of

_The Shadow World_, a study of psychic phenomena with which I had been

deeply involved for a year or more. From dark cabinets in murky seance

chambers, from contact with morbid, death-fearing, light-avoiding

residents of crowded apartments, I now found myself riding once again

ten thousand feet above sea level with men who "took chances" almost

every hour of their lives--not from any reckless defiance of death but

merely by way of duty, men who lived alone and rode alone, men in whose

ears the mountain streams as they fell from the white silences of the

snows, uttered songs of exultation. In the presence of these hardy

trailers the doings of darkened seance rooms seemed morbid, if not

actually insane.

The stark heroism of these forest guards, their loyalty to a far-off

chieftain (whom they knew only by name) appealed to me with increasing

power. Their problem became my problem. More than this they kindled my

admiration, for many of them possessed the cowboy's masterful skill with

bronchos, his deft handling of rope and gun and the grace which had

made him the most admired figure in our literature,--but in addition to

all this, they had something finer, something which the cowboy often

lacked. At their best they manifested the loyalty of soldiers. Heedful

of the Federal Government, they strove to dispense justice over the

lands which had been allotted to their care, and their flags--the Stars

and Stripes--as I came upon them fluttering from the peaks of their

cabins were to me the guidons of a new and valiant skirmish line. They

were of the Border in a new and noble sense. In short the Federal Ranger

was a hero made to my hand.

Not all the soldiers in the service were of this large mold, I admit,

but many of those I had met did possess precisely the qualities I have

outlined. Ready, cheerful, undaunted in the face of danger, some of them

had the capacity for lonely action which rendered them as admirable in

their way as any of the long line of frontiersmen who had made the

winning of the West an epic of singular hardihood. To fight cold and

snow and loneliness during long months, with no one looking on, calls

for stern resolution. Such work is directly antithetic to that of the

city fireman who goes to his duties with a crowd looking on. The ranger

has only his own conscience as spectator. For many weeks he does not

even see his supervisor.

To the writing of _Cavanagh_ I came, therefore, in the spirit of one who

had discovered not only a new hero but the reverse side of the

squatter's shield. Just as in my studies for _The Captain of the Gray

Horse Troop_, I had come upon the seamy side of the cattleman's

activity, so now I perceived that many of the men who had settled on the

national forests were merely adventurers trying to get something for

nothing. To filch Uncle Sam's gold, to pasture on his grass, to dig his

coal and seize his water-power--these were the real designs of the

claim-holders, while the ranger was in effect a federal policeman, the

guardian of a domain whose wealth was the heritage of us all. He was the

prophet of a new order, the evangel of a new faith.

The actual composition of _Cavanagh_ began as I was riding the glorious

trails around Cloud Peak in the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming

in the summer of 1908, one of the most beautiful of all my outings, for

while the Big Horns are low and tame compared to the Wind River Range,

yet the play of their lights and shadows, their clouds, and their mist

was as romantic as anything I had ever encountered.

I recall riding alone down the eastern slope one afternoon, while

prodigious rivers of cloud--white as wool and soundless as

light--descended the canon on my right and spread above the foothills,

forming a level sea out of which the high dark peaks rose like rocky

islands. This flood came so swiftly, flowed so marvelously and enveloped

my world so silently that the granite ledges appeared to melt beneath my

horse's feet.

At times the vapor closed densely round me, shutting out even the rocks

of the trail and as I cautiously descended, I almost bumped astonished

steers whose heads burst from the mist as if through a covered hoop. The

high granite crags on the opposite side of the ravine took on the shapes

of ruined castles seated on sloping shores by foaming seas, their smooth

lawns reaching to the foam.

At one point, as I came out upon a ledge which overlooked the valley, I

perceived my horse's shadow floating on the phantom ocean far below me,

a dark equestrian statue encircled with a triple-ringed halo of fire. In

all my mountain experiences I had never seen anything so marvelous.

At another time while riding up the trail, I perceived above my head a

far-stretching roof of seamless cloud. As I rose, coming closer and

closer to it, it seemed a ceiling just above my reach, then my head

merged in it. A kind of dry mist surrounded me--and for ten or fifteen

minutes I mounted through this luminous, strangely shrouding, all

pervasive, mountain cloud. My horse, feeling his way with cautious care,

steadily mounted and soon we burst out into the clear sunlight above.

While still the mist curled about my horse's hoofs, I looked across a

shoreless ocean with only Cloud Peak and its granite crags looming above

its surface.

I describe these two spectacular effects out of many others merely to

suggest the splendors which inspired me, and which, as I imagined,

enriched the daily walk of the forest guard. "To get into my story some

part of this glory, my hero must be something of a nature lover--as many

rangers are," I argued, and this was true. Before a man will consent to

ride the lonely road which leads to his cabin high in the forest, he

must not only have a heart which thrills to the wonder of the lonely

places, he must be self-sufficing and fearless. I rode with several such

men and out of my experiences with them I composed the character of

_Ross Cavanagh_.

The actual writing of this novel was begun on my forty-ninth birthday at

my desk in the old Homestead, and I started off with enthusiasm

notwithstanding the fact that Fuller, who was visiting me at the time,

expressed only a tepid interest in my "theme." "Why concern yourself

with forestry?" he asked. "No one wants to read about the ranger and

his problems. Grapple with Chicago--or New York. That's the only way to

do a 'best seller.'"

Henry always amused me but never so much as when tolerating rural joys.

He was the exact opposite of my _Cavanagh_. Everything pastoral wearied

him or irritated him. The "yelping" of the robins, the "drone" of the

katydids, the "eternal twitter" of the sparrows infuriated him. The

"accursed roosters" unseasonably wakened him in the morning, the "silly

cackle" of the chickens prevented him from writing. Flowers bored him

and the weather was always too cold or too hot, too damp or too dusty.

Butterflies filled him with pessimistic forebodings of generations of

cabbage worms. Moths suggested ruined coat collars--only at night,

before our fire, with nature safely and firmly shut out, did he regain

his customary and charming humor.

He belonged to the brick pavement, the electric-car line. He did not

mind being awakened by the "twitter" of a milk cart. The "yelp" of the

ice man, the snort of a six o'clock switch engine and the "cackle" of a

laundry wagon formed for him a pleasant morning symphony. The clatter of

an elevated train was with him the normal accompaniment of dawn, but the

poetry of the pastoral--well, it didn't exist, that's all--except in

"maudlin verses of lying sentimentalists." "I'm like George Ade's clerk:

I never enjoy my vacation till I get back to the city."

To all such diatribes Zulime and I gave delighted ear. We rejoiced in

his comment, for we did not believe a word of it, it was all a part of

Henry's delightful perversity.

For six consecutive weeks I bent to the work of writing my novel

undisturbed. A peaceful season which I shall long remember, for almost

every afternoon, when the weather permitted, we joined the Dudleys and

McKees and drove to some lovely spot on the river bank or sought out

some half-hidden spring at the far end of a coulee and there, while the

children picked nuts or apples and the women read magazines or stitched,

George Dudley and I lighted our fire and broiled our steak. Nothing

could be simpler, homelier, more wholesome, than this life, and I was

able to do nearly half my story before a return to Chicago became

necessary.

Practically all of the spring months of 1910 were given to revising and

proof-reading _Cavanagh, Forest Ranger_, which had genuinely interested

me and which should have been as important in my scheme of delineating

the West as _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, but it wasn't. It was

too controversial, and besides I did not give it time enough. I should

have taken another year to it--but I didn't. I permitted myself to be

hurried by Duneka, who was (like most publishers) enslaved to a program.

By April it was off my hands.

After the last page of this proof was returned to the printer a sense of

weakness, of age, a feeling altogether new to me, led me to say to

Fuller, "I shall never do another book. I have finished what I started

out to do, I have pictured certain broad phases of the West as I know

it, and I'm done. I am out of commission."

Fuller, who had been of this mood for several years, was not content to

have me assume a despairing attitude. "You're just tired, that's all,"

he insisted. "You'll come to a new theme soon."

* * * * *

Movement is swift on the Border. Nothing endures for more than a

generation. No family really takes root. Every man is on his way. Cities

come and builders go. Unfinished edifices are left behind in order that

something new and grander may be started. Some other field is better

than the one we are reaping. I do not condemn this, I believe in it. It

is America's genius. We are all experimenters, pioneers, progressives.

For years I had in mind to write a book to be called _The Winds of

Destiny_, in which I should take up one by one the differing careers of

my classmates and friends who had found our little prairie town too

narrow and too poor to afford them fullest action. I never got to it,

but from time to time I found some new material for it--material which,

alas! I can not now find imagination enough to vitalize.

For example: One morning during a stay in New York, I found among my

letters a note from an almost forgotten school-fellow, inviting me to

dine with himself and wife at the Ritzdorf. The name on this note-head

developed on the negative plate of my memory, the picture of two

shock-headed, slender-legged schoolboys pacing solemnly, regularly,

morning after morning, into the campus of the Seminary in Osage, Iowa.

Their arms were always laden with books, their big brows bulging with

thought. Invariably marching side by side like a faithful team of

horses, turning aside neither to fight nor to play, they provoked

laughter.

They were the sons of a farmer (a man of small means, who lived a mile

or two from the village), and although they were familiar figures in the

school they could hardly be said to be a part of it. Their poverty,

their homespun trousers which were usually too short and too tight, and

their poverty together with a natural shyness, kept them out of school

affairs, although they were always at the top of their classes. To me

they were worthy--though a bit grotesque.

My letter of invitation was from the younger of these boys, and having

accepted his invitation, I was a bit in doubt as to what I should wear,

for he had written, "with Mrs. Roberts and myself," and something in the

tone of the letter had decided me to play safe. I put on evening dress,

and it was well I did, for Ben met me in irreproachable dinner coat and

presented his wife, a handsome and beautifully gowned woman, quite in

the manner of a city-bred host. No one looking at us as we sat at our

flower-decked table would have imagined that he or I had ever been

plow-boys of the Middle Border.

As the dinner went on I lost all my conviction that the preternaturally

solemn, heavy-footed lad of 1880 was in any way connected with this rich

middle-aged inventor, but then he was probably having the same

difficulty relating me with the beardless senior of 1881.

On the surface our dinner was a pleasant and rather conventional

meeting, and yet the more it is dwelt upon the more significant it

becomes. Starting from almost the same point, with somewhat similar

handicaps, we two had "arrived," though at widely separated goals. Each

of our courses was characteristically American, and each was in

demonstration--for the millionth time--of the magic power of the open

lands.

In the free air of the Middle Border, this man's genius for inventing

had full power of expansion, and in result he was in possession of a

fortune, whilst I, in my literary way, had won what my kindest critics

called success--by another kind of service. My position though less

secure and far less remunerative, was none the less honorable--that I

shall insist on saying even though I must admit that in the eyes of my

Seminary classmates the inventor made the handsomer showing. As the

owner of a patent bringing in many thousands of dollars per year in

royalty he had certain very definite claims to respect which I lacked.

My home in contrast with his would have seemed very humble. Measured by

material things, his imagination had proved enormously more potent than

mine.

This meeting not only led me to re-value my own achievement, it brought

up to me with peculiar pathos the career of another classmate, my

comrade Burton Babcock, whom I (in 1898) had left standing on the bank

of the Stickeen River in Alaska. He, too, was characteristically

American. He had carried out his plan. After leading his pack train

across the divide to the upper waters of the Yukon, he had built a raft

and floated down the Hotalinqua. He had been frozen in, and had spent

the winter in a windowless hut in the deep snow of an arctic

landscape--and when, after incredible hardships, he had reached the

Klondike, he had found himself almost as far from a gold claim as ever.

All the mines were monopolized.

For the next four years he had alternately worked for wages and

prospected for himself. One year he had "mushed" in the Copper River

Country and later in the Tanana. In these explorations he went alone,

and once he sledged far within the Arctic circle with only two dogs to

keep him company. He became one of the most daring and persistent

prospectors and yet he had always been just a little too late. He had

never shared in any of the big strikes.

At last, after five years of this disheartening life, he had succeeded

in breaking away from the fatal lure of the North. Returning to

Anacortes on Puget Sound, he had taken up the threads of his life at the

point where he had dropped them, to meet me, at Ashcroft, in '98, and on

my little daughter's wrist was a bracelet, a string of nuggets, which

represented all that he had been able to win from the desolate North.

He left his youth in Alaska. He was an old and broken man when he landed

in Seattle, a silent, gray and introspective philosopher. Seeking out

the cabin he had built on the Skagit River, he resumed his residence

there, solitary and somber. In winter he cooked for a nearby lumber

camp, in summer he served as watchman for an electric power company,

patient, faithful, brooding over his books, austere, taciturn, mystical.

He read much on occult subjects, and corresponded ceaselessly with a

certain school of esoteric philosophy, reaching at last a lofty

serenity which approached content. He wrote me that the men of the

lumber camp spoke of him as a "queer old cuss," but that disturbed him

not at all. To me, however, he uttered his mind freely, and as I

followed him thus, in imagination, remembering him as he once was, my

graceful companion on the bright Iowa prairie, my sense of something

futile in his whole life was deepened into pain.

His letters contained no complaint. He dwelt mainly upon his trips into

the forest (occasional vacations from repulsive labor), but I was able

to infer from a word here and there, his detestation of the coarse jests

and senseless arguments of his "Siwash" companions. His philosophy

prevented repining; but he could not entirely conceal his moods of

loneliness, of defeat.

My heart ached as I thought of him, wearing his life away in the

solitude of the forest, or in waiting on a crowd of unthinking lumber

jacks, but I could do little to aid him. I had sent him books and loaned

him money whenever he would accept it (which was seldom), and I had

offered each year to bring him back to the Middle West and put him on a

farm; but to all these suggestions he continued to repeat, "I can't

bring myself to it. I can't return, a defeated explorer."

Like my uncle David, he preferred to walk the path he had chosen, no

matter to what depth it might descend.

Not long after this meeting with Ben and while I was still absorbed in

youthful memories, dreaming of my prairie comrades, a letter came to me

from Blanche Babcock, telling me that her brother Burton, my boyhood

chum, my companion on The Long Trail to the Yukon, had crossed the Wide

Dark River, and with this news, a sense of heavy loss darkened my day.

It was as if a part, and no small part, of my life had slipped away from

me, irrecoverably, into a soundless abyss.

For more than forty years this singular soul had been a subject of my

care (at times he had been closer to me than my own brother), and now he

had vanished from the tangible realities of his mountain home into the

unmapped region whose blind trails we had so often manfully discussed.

By all the laws which his family recognized, his life was a failure. To

Ben Roberts he was a derelict--and yet to me a kind of elemental dignity

lay in the attitude he had maintained when surrounded by coarse and

ignorant workmen. He remained unmoved, uncontaminated. His mind

inhabited a calm inner region beyond the reach of any coarse word or

mocking phrase. Growing ever more mystical as he grew older he had gone

his lonely way bent and gray and silent, a student of the forest and the

stream. So far as I know he never uttered a bitter or despairing word,

and when the final great boundary river confronted him he entered it

with the same courage with which he ferried the Yukon or crossed the ice

fields of Iskoot.

It happened that on the day this news came to me one of my Chicago

friends sent their beautiful motor car to fetch Zulime and me to the

opera, and as the children saw us in our evening dress, they cried out,

"Oh papa, mama is a queen and you look like a king!" Thus it happened

that I rode away in a luxury which I had not earned at the very moment

when my faithful trail-mate, after toiling all his life, was passing to

his grave wifeless, childless and unknown.

"I wish I could have shared just a little of my good fortune with him,"

I said to Zulime, who really was as stately as a queen. But the best of

all my possessions I would not, could not, share with any one--I mean

the adoration of my little daughters to whom I possessed the majesty of

an emperor.

"Here his trail ends. Here by the landing I wait the

same oar--the slow, silent one.

We each go alone--no man with another,

Each into the gloom of the swift, black flood.

Burt, it is hard, but here we must sever.

The gray boatman waits, and you--you go first.

All is dark over there where the dim boat is rocking,

But that is no matter--no trailer need fear,

For clearly we're told, the powers which lead us,

Will govern the game till the end of the day.

Good-by!--Here the trail ends!"

* * * * *

Christmas came this year with special significance. Two pairs of eager

eyes now peered at all bundles which came into the house. The faith and

love and eager hope of my daughters made amends for the world's lack of

interest in my writings. They and their mother were my wealth, their

love compensated me for the slender dribble of my royalties.

"Our Christmas shall be as happy as that of any millionaire," was the

thought which actuated me in the purchase and decoration of our tree.

Wealth was highly desirable, but absurd as it may seem I had no desire

to change places with any merchant or banker. The foolish notion that

something historical in my work made it worth while, supported me in my

toil. It was a hazy kind of comfort, I will concede, but I wrapped

myself in it, and stole away out into the street to buy and sneak a

Christmas tree up the back stairs. It was a noble tree, warranted to

reach the ceiling of our library.

Father came down from Wisconsin and Franklin came up from Oklahoma to

help me decorate it, and when, on Christmas morning, they both rose with

me, and went down to light the candles, they were almost as gleeful as

I. Mary Isabel was awake and piping from the top of the stairs, "Is it

time, papa? Can we come now, papa?" and at last when the tower of glory

was alight I called back, "Yes, now you may all come."

Slowly she descended step by step, clinging to her mother, who was

carrying Constance. Very slowly the procession approached, for the

little voluptuary in front was loath as well as eager--avid to enjoy yet

hesitating to devour. Suddenly she saw, and into her face flamed an

expression of wonder, of awe, of adoration, a look such as a cherub

angel might wear while confronting The Great White Throne, a kind of

rapture, humble yet exultant.

Silently she crept toward the center of the room, turning her eyes from

this and to that unearthly splendor, yet always bringing them back to

rest upon the faces of the dollies, sitting so still and so radiant

beneath the glittering boughs. At last with a little gasping cry of joy

she seized the largest and most splendid of these wondrous beings and

clasped it to her breast, while Constance sat silent with her awe.

Their Christmas was complete. Another shining mark had been set in the

upward slope of their happy march! Nothing, not even Death himself, can

rob me of that precious memory.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Old Homestead Suffers Disaster

The summer of 1912, so stormy in a political sense was singularly serene

and happy for us. The old house had been received back into favor. It

was beloved by us all but especially was it dear to my children. To Mary

Isabel it possessed a value which it could not have to any of us, for it

was her birth-place and she knew every stick and stone of it. To her it

had all the glamor of a childhood home in summer time.

On Sunday, October 6, we began to plan our return to the city, and as we

sat about our fire that night the big room never looked so warm, so

homelike, so permanent. The deep fireplace was ablaze with light, and

the walls packed with books and hung with pictures spoke of a realized

ideal. On the tall settee (which I had built myself), lay a

richly-colored balletta Navajo blanket, one that I had bought of a

Flathead Indian in St. Ignatius. Others from Zuni and Ganado covered the

floor. Over the piano "Apple Blossom Time," a wedding present from John

Ennecking glowed like a jewel in the light of the quaint electric

candles which had been set in the sockets of hammered brass sconces. In

short, the place had the mellow charm of a completed home, and I said to

Zulime "There isn't much more to do to it. It is rude and queer, a

mixture of Paris, Boston, and the Wild West; but it belongs to us." It

was in truth a union of what we both represented, including our

poverty, for it was all cheap and humble.

My father, white-haired, eighty-two years of age was living with us

again, basking in the light of our fire and smiling at his

grandchildren, who with lithe limbs and sweet young voices were singing

and circling before him. I was glad to have him back in mother's room,

and to him and to those who were to be his care-takers for the winter I

gravely repeated, "I want everything kept just as it is. I want to feel

that we can come back to it at any time and find every object in place,

including the fire."

To which father replied, "I don't want to change it. It suits me."

The children, darting out of the music-room (which was the

"dressing-room" of their stage), swung their Japanese lanterns, enacting

once again their pretty little play, and then our guests rose two by two

and went away. Zulime led the march to bed, the lights were turned out

and the clear, crisp, odorous October night closed over our scene.

As I was about to leave the low-ceiled library, I took another look at

it saying to myself, "It seems absurd to abandon this roomy, human

habitation for a cramped little dwelling on a city lot." But with a

sense of what the city offered by way of compensation, I climbed the

old-fashioned, crooked, narrow stairway to my bed in the chamber over

the music-room, content to say good-by for the winter....

It was dusky dawn when I awoke, with a sense of alarm, unable to tell

what had awakened me. For several seconds I lay in confusion and vague

suspense. Then a cry, a strange cry--a woman's scream--arose, followed

by a rush of feet. Other cries, and the shrieks of children succeeded

close, one upon the other.

My first thought was, "Constance has fallen." I sprang from my bed and

was standing in the middle of the room when I heard Zulime cross the

floor beneath me, and a moment later she called up the stairway,

"Hamlin, _Fan has set the house on fire_!"

My heart was gripped as if by an icy hand for I knew how inflammable the

whole building was, and without stopping to put on coat or slippers, I

ran swiftly down the stairs. As I entered the sitting-room so silent, so

peaceful, so undisturbed, it seemed that my alarm was only a part of a

dream till the sobbing of my daughters and my wife's voice at the

telephone calling for help, convinced me of the frightful reality. I

heard, too, the ominous crackling of flames in the kitchen.

Pushing open the swinging door I confronted a wall of smoke. One-half of

the floor was already consumed, and along the linoleum a sharply-defined

line of fire told that it rose from burning oil--and yet I could not

quite believe it, even then. It was like a scene in a motion picture

play.

My first thought was to check, to hold back the flames, till help came.

The garden hose was lying out under a tree (I had put it there the day

before) and with desperate haste I hurried to attach it to the water

pipes. I saw father in the yard, but he uttered no word. We were each

thinking the same thought--"_The old homestead is doomed. Our life here

is ended._"

The hose was heavy and sanely perverse, and it seemed an age before I

had the water turned on. Catching up the nozzle I approached the kitchen

door. The thin stream had no effect, and the heat was so intense I could

not face it. Throwing down the hose I reentered the house.

The children, hysterical with fright, were just leaving by the east door

and Zulime was upstairs. Opening the front door I stepped out upon the

porch to call for help. The beauty of the morning, its stillness, its

serenity, its odorous opulence, struck upon my senses with a kind of

ironic benignancy, as if to say, "Why agonize over so small a thing?"

I shouted "Fire!" and my voice went ringing far up the street. I cried

out again, a third time, a fourth, but no one answered, no one appeared,

and behind me the crackling roar of the flames increased. In despair I

turned back into the sitting-room.

It had been arranged between Zulime and myself that in case of fire

(once the children were safe), she was to secure the silverware and her

jewelry whilst I flew to collect my manuscripts.

With this thought in my mind, and believing that I had but a few minutes

in which to work, I ran up the stairs to my study and began gathering

such of my manuscripts as had no duplicates. As I thought of the

hundreds of letters from my literary friends, of the many family

records, of the innumerable notes, pictures, keepsakes, souvenirs and

mementoes which had been assembling there for a quarter of a century, I

became confused, indecisive. It was so hard to choose. At last I caught

up a sheaf of unpublished stories which filled one drawer, and beating

off the screen of the north window threw the manuscripts out upon the

grass.

A neighbor's wife, quick to understand the meaning of my anxiety about

these sheets, ran to her home across the way and bringing a valise,

began to stuff them into it. Having cleared my desk of its most valuable

papers I hurried to my dressing-room to secure shoes and trousers; but

by this time the hall was full of the most nauseating smoke. The fire

having swept entirely through the library, was burning the front porch.

My escape by way of the stairway was cut off. Blinded and gasping I gave

up the search for clothes and turned back into my study.

I was not in the least scared; on the contrary, I was filled with a

kind of fatalistic rage. In imagination I saw the old house, with all

that it meant to me, in ruins. I saw the great elms and maples scorched,

dead, the tall black locust burned to a ship's mast. As I peered from

the window, a neighbor called earnestly, "You'd better get off there;

the whole house is going."

From the window I could see the villagers rapidly assembling, and not

knowing how far advanced the flames might be I yielded to the advice of

my friend, and swinging myself from the window dropped to the ground.

My next care was for the children. I could hear them crying frantically

for "papa!" and I hurried to where they stood cowering in the door of

the barn. "O, papa, put it out. I don't want it to burn. _Put it out!_"

moaned Mary Isabel with passionate intensity.

Her faith in her father had an infinite pathos at the moment. She loved

the house. It was a part of her very brain and blood. To have it burn

was a kind of outrage. Little Connie, five years old, with chattering

teeth, joined her pleading cry, "_Can't_ you put it out, papa?" she

asked piteously.

"No," I answered sadly. "Papa can not put it out. Nobody can. You must

say good-by to our dear old home."

Wrapping a quilt about her I started across the road toward my

neighbor's porch. The yard was full of my fellow-citizens, and young men

were heroically dragging out smoking furniture from the lower floor,

while over in the Sander's yard piles of books, bedding and furniture

were accumulating. It was all curiously familiar and typical.

In the full belief that the homestead would soon be a heap of charcoal,

we took the children back into our friend's dining-room. "Pull down the

curtain," entreated Zulime, "we don't want to see the old place go."

Helpless for lack of street clothing, with my children on my knees, I

sat in silence, noting the flickering glare of the light on the walls,

and hearing the shouts of the firemen and the sound of their axes.

Huldah, our neighbor's daughter, entered. "They're checking it!" she

exclaimed. "It is under control."

This seemed incredible, but it was confirmed by George Dudley, who came

in bringing my shoes and a suit of my clothing.

When at last I was fully clothed and could go out into the street I was

amazed to find a part of the house standing. Most of the east wing

seemed quite untouched, except of smoke and water. The west wing and

front porch were in black disarray, but the roof held its place and the

trees seemed scarcely scorched. A few firemen, among them the village

plumber, the young banker, and a dentist, were on guard, watchfully

intent that the flames should not break out again. The sun was rising

gloriously over the hills. The fire, my fire, was over.

No doubt this event appeared most trivial to the travelers in a passing

train. From the car windows it was only a column of smoke in the edge of

a small village. Our disaster offered, indeed, only a mild sensation to

the occupants of an early automobile party, but to my father, to Zulime

and to the children, it was a desolate and appalling ruin. They had

grown to love this old house foolishly, illogically, for it was neither

beautiful nor historic, nor spacious. It was only a commonplace frame

cottage, inwrought with memories and associations, but it was home--all

we had.

The yard was piled with furniture, half-burned, soaked and malodorous,

but none of my manuscripts were in sight. I had expected to find them

scattered like feathers across the garden or trampled into the muddy

sward. In reply to my question my friend Dudley replied, "They're all

safe. I had the boys carry them down in blankets. You'll find them in

the barn."

As I moved about silently, studying the ruins, the kindliest of my

neighbors said, "You'll have to entirely rebuild." And to this a

carpenter, a skilled and honest workman, agreed. "The cheapest thing to

do is to tear it all down and start from the foundation."

Slowly, minutely, I studied the ruin. Surely here was gruesome change!

Black, ill-smelling, smoking debris lay where our pretty dining-room had

been. The library with all my best books (many of them autographed) was

equally desolate, heaped with steaming, charred masses of tables,

chairs, rugs and fallen plaster. I thought of it as it had been the

night before, with the soft lights of the candles falling upon my

children dancing with swinging lanterns. I recalled Ennecking's radiant

spring painting, and Steele's "Bloom of the Grape," which glowed above

the mantle, and my heart almost failed me--"Is this the end of my life

in Wisconsin?"

For twenty years this little village had been the place of my family

altar, not because it was remarkable in any way, but because since 1850

it had been the habitat of my mother's people and because it was filled

with my father's pioneer friends. "Is it worth while to rebuild?" I

asked myself. For the time I lost direction. I had no plan.

The sight of my white-haired father wandering about the yard, dazed,

bewildered, his eyes filled with a look of despair at last decided me.

Realizing that this was his true home; that no other roof could have the

same appeal, and he could not be transplanted, I resolved to cover his

head; to make it possible for him to live out his few remaining years

under this roof with his granddaughters. "For his sake and the

children's sake," I announced to Zulime, "I shall begin at once to clear

away and restore. Before the winter comes you shall all be back in the

old House. Perhaps we can eat our Thanksgiving dinner in the restored

dining-room."

Whether she fully shared my desire to rebuild or whether she believed in

my ability to carry out my plan so quickly I can not say. In such

matters she was not decisive--she rested on my stubborn will.

The day came on--glorious, odorous, golden--but we saw little of its

beauty. Engaged in digging the family silver out of the embers, and

collecting my scattered books and papers I had no time to look at the

sky. Occasionally, as I looked up from my work I saw my little daughters

playing with childish intentness among the fallen leaves in my

neighbor's yard, and in mistaken confidence I remarked what a blessing

it is that childhood can so easily forget disaster.

I did not realize then, nor till many months after, how profound the

shock had been to them. For years after the event they started at every

unusual sound and woke at night screaming of fire.

All that day and all the days of the week which followed they played

with the same singular insect-like absorption and at last I began to get

some notion of their horror. They refused to enter the yard. "I don't

want to see it," Mary Isabel wailed. Then she asked, "Will it ever be

home for us again?"

"Yes," I answered with final determination. "I'll put it back just as it

was before the fire came. It shall be nicer than ever when I am done."

Before night I had engaged a crew of men to clear away. Thereafter I

lived like a man in a tunnel. I saw almost nothing of the opulent,

golden sunshine, nothing of the exquisite foliage, nothing of the far

hills, purple with Indian summer haze. Busily sorting my burned books

or spreading out my treasured rugs, I toiled as long as light lasted.

There were a few pleasant surprises. From one charred frame the face of

Frank Norris, miraculously fresh and handsome and smiling, looked out

through smoked and broken glass. In one corner of the sideboard

(decorated by Thompson-Seton), a part of the silver bearing my mother's

initials lay quite unharmed, though all of the pieces on the top were

melted into a flat mass of bullion. Autographed books from Howells,

Riley, Gilbert Parker, Conan Doyle, Arnold Bennett, fell to pieces in my

hand, or showed so deep a stain of smoke as to make their rebinding

impossible. My best Navajo rug, a fine example of the ancient weaving,

was a frail cinder on the back of the charred settee, and a Hopi

ceremonial dress which hung upon the wall was a blackened shred.

All these things had small money value, and to many men, would have

represented no interest whatsoever, but to me they were precious. They

were a part of my life. To burn them was to char a section of my brain.

Pitiful possessions! Worthless rags! And yet they were the best I could

show after thirty years of labor with the pen!

My father's condition troubled me most. To have him rendered homeless at

eighty-two with winter coming on seemed to me an intolerable cruelty,

and so with a driving haste I set to work with my own hands to clear

away and restore. Wielding the wrecking bar and the spade each day, I

toiled like a hired man--even after the carpenters were gone at night I

scraped paint and shoveled rubbish.

Let no one pity me! A curious pleasure came with all this, for it seemed

to advance the reconstruction with double swiftness.

At the end of the week I sent my wife and the children back to their

city home, and thereafter I had but one interest, one diversion--to plan

and execute my rebuilding. To close the walls, to make the rooms secure

against wind and rain was imperative.

The insurance inspector came pleasantly to the rescue, and with a small

balance in the bank I hired roofers, plumbers, carpenters, masons, till

the street resounded with their clamor. In a week I had the rooms

cleared, the doors and windows closed, and my father living in one

corner of the house, whilst I camped down in my study. Water-soaked,

ill-smelling, but inhabitable, the old house again possessed a light and

a hearth.

"The children and their grandsire shall eat Thanksgiving dinner in the

rebuilt dining-room," was my secret sentimental resolution. "To do that

will turn a wail into a song--a disaster into a poem."

All very foolish, you say. No doubt, but it interested me and I was of

an age when very few things interested me vitally. With clothing black

as soot, with hands brown with stain and skinned and swollen and

feverish, I kept to my job without regard to Sundays or the ordinary

hours of labor. I was not seeking sympathy,--I was renewing my youth. I

was both artist and workman. My muscles hardened, my palms broadened, my

appetite became prodigious. I lost all fear of indigestion and ate

anything which my friend Dudley was good enough to provide. I even drank

coffee at every opportunity, and went so far as to eat doughnuts and

pancakes at breakfast! To be deliciously hungry as of old was

heartening.

The weather continued merciful. Each day the sun rose red and genial,

and at noon the warm haze of Indian summer trailed along the

hills--though I had little time in which to enjoy it. Each sunset marked

a new stanza in my poem, a completed phrase, a recovered figure. "Our

small affairs have shut out the light of the sun," I said to father,

"the political situation has lost all interest for me."

Bare, clean and sweet, the library and music-room at last were ready for

furniture. All these must be replaced. A hurried trip to the city, three

days of determined shopping with Zulime, and a stream of new goods

(necessary to refurnish), began to set toward the threshold. The draymen

plied busily between the station and the gate.

By November first my father and I were camping in the library and

cooking our own food in the dining-room. We rose each day before dawn

and ate our bacon and coffee while yet the stars twinkled in the west,

and both of us were reminded of the frosty mornings on our Iowa farm,

when we used to eat by candle-light in order to husk corn by starlight.

My hands felt as they used to feel when, worn by the rasping husks, they

burned with fever. Heavy as hams, they refused to hold a pen, and my

mind refused to compose even letters--but the pen was not needed. "My

poem is composed of wood and steel," I remarked to Dudley.

At last the yard was cleared of its charred rubbish, the porch restored

to its old foundation, and the new metal roof, broad-spreading and

hospitable, gleamed like snow in dusk and dawn, and from the uncurtained

windows our relighted lamps called to the world that the Garland

household was about to reassemble and the author permitted himself to

straighten up. Changing to my city garments I took the train for

Chicago, promising to bring the children with me when our Thanksgiving

turkey was fatted for the fire.

My daughters listened eagerly to my tale of the new house, but expressed

a fear of sleeping in it. This fear I determined to expel.

On the Saturday before Thanksgiving I rejoined my workmen, finding the

house in a worse state of disarray than when I had last seen it. The

floors were littered with dust and shavings, and in the dining-room my

father, deeply discouraged, was gloomily cooking his breakfast on an

oil stove set in the middle of the floor. "It'll take another month to

finish the job," he said.

"Oh, no it won't," I replied. "It won't take a week."

Fortunately the stain on the floor was dry and with the aid of two good

men I finished the woodwork and beat the rugs. In a couple of days the

lower house was livable.

On Wednesday at five o'clock I went to the train, leaving the electric

lights all ablaze and the fire snapping in the chimney. It looked

amazingly comfortable, restored, settled, and I was confident the

children would respond to its cheer.

"Is it all made new?" they asked wistfully.

"Wait and see!" I confidently replied.

The night was cold and dark but as they neared the old house its windows

winked a cheery welcome. "Why, it looks just as it used to!" exclaimed

Mary Isabel.

"There are lights in our room!" exclaimed Constance.

"Run ahead, and knock," I urged.

She hung back. "I'm afraid," she said.

"So am I," echoed Connie.

The new metal roof gleaming like frost interested them as they entered

the gate.

"Why, the porch is all here!" shouted Constance.

"But the screens are off," commented Mary Isabel.

"Knock!" I commanded.

Reaching up to the shining old brass knocker she banged it sharply.

The house awoke! White-haired old father came to the door and, first of

all, the children sprang to his arms.

Then as they looked around they shouted with joy. "Why, it's just as it

was--only nicer," was their verdict.

While Zulime looked keenly and smilingly around, Connie ran from settee

to bookcase. "Everything is here--our books, the fireplace."

"Isn't it wonderful!" Mary Isabel exclaimed.

After greeting father Zulime surveyed the result of my six weeks' toil

with critical but approving eyes. "I like it. It's much better than I

expected. It _is_ wonderful. But we must have new curtains for the

windows," she added, with the housewife's attention to details.

The children danced through the brilliantly lighted rooms, but declined

to go into the dining-room or to open the door to the kitchen which they

remembered only as a mass of black embers and steaming ashes. I did not

urge them to do so. On the contrary, I gathered them round me on the

restored hearth and talked of the Thanksgiving dinner of the morrow.

As the hour for bedtime came Connie's eyes grew big and dark, and every

small unusual sound startled her. Daddy's presence at last reassured

them both and they went to sleep and, with only one or two restless

intervals, slumbered till daylight.

Two of our neighbors--two capable women, came in next morning to help,

and in a few hours the windows were curtained, the linen laid out and

the turkey in the oven. Under Zulime's hands the rooms bloomed into

homeliness. The kitchen things fell into orderly array. Pictures took

their places on the walls, little knick-knacks which had been brought

from the city were set on the mantels and bookcases, and when our guests

arrived they each and all exclaimed, "No one would ever know you'd _had_

a fire!"

At one o'clock the cooks, the children and Zulime all agreed that the

fowl was ready for the carver and so we all assembled in the new and

larger dining-room. No formal Thanksgiving was spoken, but vaguely

forming in my mind was a poem which should express our joy and

gratitude. My brother's seat was empty and so were those of other loved

ones, but we did not dwell upon these sad things. I was living, working

and planning now for the vivid souls of my daughters whose glowing

cheeks and laughing eyes repaid me for all my toil. For them I had

rebuilt this house--for them and their grandsire--whose trail was almost

at its end. How happy he was in their presence! They, too, were happy

because they were young, the sun was shining and their home was

magically restored.

The happiest time of all was at night, when the evening shadows closed

round the friendly walls, and the trees sighed in the chill wind--for

beside the fire we gathered, the Garlands and McClintocks, in the good

old fashion, while our neighbors came in to congratulate and rejoice.

All the black terror of the dismantled house, all the toil and worry of

the months which lay between, were forgotten as the children, without a

care, sang and danced in the light of our new and broadened hearth.

[Illustration: That night as my daughters, "dressed up" as princesses,

danced like fairies in the light of our restored and broadened hearth, I

forgot all the toil, all the disheartenment which the burning of the

house had brought upon me. To them the re-built homestead was only

another evidence of their Daddy's magic power. His lamp was not less

potent than Aladdin's.]

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Darkness Just Before the Dawn

In going back over the records of the years 1912 and 1913, I can see

that my life was lacking in "drive." It is true I wrote two fairly

successful novels which were well spoken of by my reviewers and in

addition I continued to conduct the Cliff Dwellers' Club and to act as

one of the Vice Presidents of the National Institute of Arts and

Letters, but I was very far from a feeling of satisfaction with my

position. My life seemed dwindling into futility. I was in physical pain

much of the time and tortured by a fear of the future.

Naturally and inevitably the burden of my increasing discontent, worse

health, fell with sad reiteration upon my wife, who was not only called

upon to endure poverty, but to bear with a sick and disheartened

husband. The bravery of her smile served to increase my sense of

unworthiness. Her very sweetness, her cheerful acceptance of

never-ending household drudgery, was an accusation.

She no longer touched brush or clay, although I strongly urged her to

sketch or model the children. She had no time, even if she had retained

the will, to continue her work as an artist. With a faculty for

entertaining handsomely and largely, with hosts of friends who would

have clustered about her with loyal admiration, she remained the

mistress of a narrow home and one more or less incompetent housemaid.

All these considerations added to my sense of weakness and made the

particular manuscript upon which I was spending most of my time, a piece

of selfish folly.

For ten years I had been working, from time to time, on an

autobiographical manuscript which I had called by various names, but

which had finally solidified into _A Son of the Middle Border_. Even in

my days of deepest discouragement I turned most of my energy to its

revision. In the belief that it was my final story and with small hope

of its finding favor in any form, I toiled away, year after year,

finding in the aroused memories of my youthful world a respite from the

dull grind of my present.

My duties as head of the Cliff Dwellers and as Secretary of The Theater

Society tended to keep me in Chicago. My lecture engagements became

fewer and I dropped out or Eastern Club life, retaining only long

distance connection with the world of Arts and Letters. In losing touch

with my fellows something vital had gone out of me.

In spite of all my former protestations, the city began to take on the

color of Henry Fuller's pessimism. My youthful faith in Chicago's future

as a great literary center had faded into middle-aged doubt. One by one

its writers were slipping away to Manhattan. The Midland seemed farther

away from publishers than ever, "The current is all against us,"

declared Fuller.

As a man of fifty-two I found myself more and more discordant with my

surroundings. With sadness I conceded that not in my time would any

marked change for the better take place. "Such as Chicago now is, so it

will remain during my life," I admitted to Fuller.

"Yes, if it doesn't get worse," was his sad reply.

I would have put my Woodlawn house on sale in 1912 had it not been for

my father's instant protest. "Don't take Zulime and the children so far

away," he pleaded. "If you move to New York I shall never see any of you

again. Stay where you are. Wait till I am 'mustered out'--it won't be

long now."

There was no resisting this appeal. With a profound sense of what Zulime

and the children meant to him, I gave up all thought of going East and

settled back into my groove. "We will remain where we are so long as

father lives," I declared to my friends.

My wife, who had perceived with alarm my growing discontent with

Chicago, was greatly relieved by this decision. To her the thought of

migration even to the North Side was disturbing, for it would break her

close connection with the circle whose center was in her brother's

studio. I am not seeking to excuse my recreancy to The Middle West; I am

merely stating it as a phase of literary history, for my case is

undoubtedly typical of many other writers who turned their faces

eastward.

The plain truth is I had reached an age where I no longer cared to

pioneer even in a literary sense. Desirous of the acceptances proper to

a writer with gray hair and a string of creditable books, I wished to go

where honor waited. I craved a place as a man of letters. That my powers

were deteriorating in the well-worn rut of my life in Woodlawn I knew

too well, and my need of contact with my fellow craftsmen in the East

sharpened. The support and inspiration which come naturally to authors

in contact with their kind were being denied me. Age was bringing me no

"harvest home." In short, at the very time when I should have been most

honored, most recompensed, in my work, I found myself living meanly in a

mean street and going about like a man of mean concerns, having little

influence on my art or among my fellows.

That Chicago was still on the border in a literary sense was sharply

emphasized when the National Institute of Arts and Letters decided

(after much debate), to hold its Annual Meeting for 1913 in the midland

metropolis. "It is a long way out to Chicago," its Secretary wrote,

"and I don't know how many members we can assemble, but I think we shall

be able to bring twenty-five at least. You have been appointed chairman

of the Committee of Arrangements, with full powers to go ahead."

The honor and responsibility of this appointment spurred me to action. I

decided to accept and make the meeting a literary milestone in western

history. My first thought was to make the Cliff Dwellers' Club the host

of the occasion, but on further consideration, I reckoned that the

City's welcome would have greater weight if all its literary and

artistic forces could be in some way combined. To bring this about I

directed letters to the heads of seventeen clubs and educational

organizations, asking them to meet with me and form a joint Reception

Committee.

This they did, and in a most harmonious session elected Hobart

Chatfield-Taylor chairman. To this Committee I then said, "If we are to

have any considerable number of our distinguished eastern authors and

artists at this dinner we must make it very easy for them to travel. We

should have a special train for them or at least special sleeping cars

so that they can come as if in a moving club."

In this plan I had instant support. The sturdy group of men who had been

so ready to aid me in building up the Cliff Dwellers (men like

Hutchinson, Logan, Glessner, Ryerson, Aldis, and Heckmen), all took

vital interest in the arrangements for the reception and dinner. The

necessary funds were immediately subscribed, and my report to the

Institute Council created a fine feeling of enthusiasm in the ranks of

both organizations. The success of the meeting was assured. Some of the

oldest members wrote, "It is a long way out there but we are coming."

The press of the city responded generously and some of its editors

perceived and stated the historical significance of this pilgrimage of

poets, artists, and historians to "the sparsely settled Border of

Esthetic Culture." A trainload of men who painted, sculptured and

composed, men who were entirely concerned with the critical or esthetic

side of life, an academy of arts and letters rolling westward, was a new

and wondrous phase of national exploration. The invasion was also

capable of comic interpretation and a few graceless wags did allude to

it as "a missionary expedition to Darkest Illinois."

To Fuller, to Chatfield-Taylor and to me, this joke was not altogether

pleasant. We knew all too well the feeling of some of the writers who

were coming. Several of them were seeing "the West" for the first time

in their lives, others had not been in Chicago since the World's Fair in

'93. All were conscious of the effort involved in reaching the arid and

unknown frontier.

The entire Middle West had only ten resident members of the Institute

although a large proportion of its membership was drawn from the

Southern and Central Western States, "All trails lead to New York and

there are no returning footsteps," commented Fuller. "Once a writer or

painter or illustrator pulls his stakes and sets out for Manhattan,

Chicago sees him no more."

All this was disheartening to those of us who, twenty years before, had

visioned Chicago as a shining center of American art, but we went

forward with our preparations, hoping that a fairly representative

delegation could be induced to come.

Some thirty-five arrived safely, and the Dinner of Welcome in Sculpture

Hall not only set a milestone in the progress of the city, but was in

itself a beautiful and distinctive event.

The whole panorama of western settlement and its city building unrolled

before me, as Charles L. Hutchinson, President of the Art Institute,

rose in his place, and in the name of the most aspiring of Chicago's men

and women, welcomed the members of the American Academy and the National

Institute as representatives of American Art and American Literature.

Once again and for the moment our city became a capital in something

like the character of Boston a generation before. This conception was

illusory, of course, but we permitted ourselves the illusion and

accepted the praise which our visitors showered upon us with a belief

that we had gained, at last, a recognized place in the Nation's esthetic

history.

During the weeks of preparation for this event I had been happy and

content, but a few days later, after the clubs had fallen back to their

normal humdrum level I acknowledged with a sense of hopeless weariness

that our huge city had a long way to go before it could equal the small

Boston of Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, and Howells. My desire to rejoin my

fellows in New York was intensified. "As there is only one London for

England so there is only one New York for America."

All through the autumn of 1913 I ground away at my story of the Middle

Border, conscious of the fact that--in a commercial sense--I was wasting

my time, for several of my editorial friends had assured me of that

fact--but each morning as I climbed to my study I forgot my drab

surroundings. Closing the door of the bitter present and turning my back

on the stormy future I relived my audacious youth and dreamed of the

brave days of old.

Thanksgiving Day in West Salem was misty, dark and still, but the

children--bless their shining faces--regarded it as just the right kind

of weather for our festival. They were up early and running of errands

for their mother who was chief cook. Our only guests were three lonely

old women, and it gave me a pang of pity for the children who were

forced thus to tolerate a group of gray-heads to whom life was a

closing, mournful dirge. Happily, my daughters had the flame of

invincible youth in their blood and danced and sang as if the world were

new and wholly beautiful, which it was, to them.

Dear little daughters! They didn't know that Daddy was worried about his

future and theirs, and no sooner were we back in our Chicago home than

they began to look away toward Christmas. "Poppie!"--Mary Isabel would

repeat--"only three weeks till--you know what! Remember!"

I remembered. Once again their stockings were stuffed to the hem, and

their tree, a marvel of light, touched the ceiling with its pliant tip

on which sparkled a golden star. To them I was still a wonder-worker.

For a week I put aside my dark musings and rejoiced with them in their

fairy world.

Now it chanced that the University Club of Pittsburg had booked me for a

lecture early in January and in taking account of this, I planned to

invade Manhattan once again, in a desperate attempt to dispose of my

rewritten _Son of the Middle Border_, and to offer, also, one or two

short stories which I had lately put into clean copy. Humbly, sadly,

unwillingly I left my home that cold, bleak, dirty day, staggering under

the weight of my valises, for I was not in good health and my mood was

irresolute.

Change was in my world and change of an ominous kind was in my brain.

Subjects which once interested me had lost their savor, and several

tales in which I had put my best effort had failed to meet my own

approval and had been thrown aside. No mechanic, no clerk, would have

envied me as I boarded a filthy street car on my way to the Englewood

station. That I had reached a fork in my trail was all too evident. The

things for which I had labored all my days were as ashes in my hand. I

walked with a stoop and the bag containing my manuscript dragged at my

shoulder like a fifty-pound weight as I painfully climbed the steps

leading to the waiting-room of the grimy, noisy, train station. I was a

million miles from being a "distinguished man of letters" at that

moment, and with a sense of my poverty and declining health, took a seat

in the crowded day coach and rode all day in gloomy silence. At noon I

dined on a sandwich. Dollars looked as large as dinner plates that day.

"Your only way to earn money is to save it," I accused myself.

At the University Club in Pittsburg I recovered slightly. The lecture

having been announced to take place in the dining-room could not be

staged till nine o'clock--a fact which worried me for I had arranged to

take the night train for the East--and this alarm, this fear of losing

my train led me to begin by address while my audience was assembling,

and my hurried utterance led to weariness on the part of my hearers. My

performance was a failure, and to complete my disheartenment I reached

the station about five minutes after the last eastern train had pulled

out.

Dismayed by this mishap, I took a seat in a corner and darkly ruminated.

"What shall I do now? Shall I go back to Chicago? Or shall I go on?"

Decision was in reality taken out of my hands by the baggageman who said

in response to inquiry, "I put your trunk on the 8:40 train. It is well

on its way to New York."

Accepting this as a mandate to go on, I returned to my room in the

University Club and went to bed, but not to sleep. For hours I tossed

and turned in self-questioning, self-accusing fury.

"What a fool you have been to waste years of labor on a book which

nobody wants and which has put you--temporarily at least--out of conceit

with fiction. Why go on? Why spend more time and money on a vain attempt

to dispose of this manuscript?"

Falling asleep at last, I regained a part of my courage, and at

breakfast a faint glow of hope crept into my thinking. At nine o'clock I

took the day train and in silence rode for nearly twelve hours,

retracing the thirty years which lay between my first view of Manhattan

and this my hundredth reentrance. With no thrill of excitement I crossed

the ferry and having registered at a small hotel on Thirty-fourth

Street, went to bed at nine o'clock completely worn out with my journey.

A long night's sleep and a pot of delicious coffee for breakfast put so

much sunshine into my world that I set out for Franklin Square with a

gambler's countenance, resolute to conceal my dismay from my friends and

especially from my publisher. There was something in the very air of

Broadway which generated confidence.

Harpers' editors were genial, respectful, but by no means enthusiastic

concerning my autobiographic manuscript, although I assured Duneka that

I had vastly improved it since he had read it a year before.

"That may be," he granted, "but it is not fiction and nothing serializes

but fiction. We'll be glad to schedule it as a book, but I don't see any

place for it in our magazine." And then--more to get rid of me than for

any other reason, he added, "You might see _Collier's_. Mark Sullivan is

the editor up there now; it might be that he could use something of

yours."

Duneka's indifference even more than his shunting my precious manuscript

into the street brought back my cloud of doubt, for it indicated a loss

of faith in me. To him I was a squeezed lemon. Nevertheless I took his

hint. Sullivan, I knew and liked, and while I had small hope of

interesting him in _The Middle Border_, I did think he might buy one or

two of my short stories.

The _Collier's_ plant humming with speed, prosperous and commercial, was

not reassuring to me, but I kept on through the maze until I reached

Sullivan's handsome room, where I was given an easy chair and told to

wait, "the editor will see you in a few minutes."

Alert, kindly, cordial, Mark greeted me and taking a seat, fixed his

keen blue, kindly eyes upon me. "I'm glad to see you," he said, and I

believed he meant it. He went on, "This is the psychological moment for

us both. I am looking for American material and I want something of

yours. What have you to show me?"

Thus encouraged I told him of _A Son of the Middle Border_.

He was interested. "Where is the manuscript? Is it complete?"

"It is. I have it with me at the hotel."

"Send it down to me," he said quickly, "I'll read it and give you a

verdict at once."

In an illogical glow of hope I hastened to fetch the manuscript, and in

less than two hours it was in his hands.

I speak of my hope as "illogical" for if the literary monthly of my own

publishers could not find a place for it, how could I reasonably expect

a hustling, bustling popular weekly like _Collier's_ to use it?

Nevertheless something in Sullivan's voice and manner restored my

confidence, and when I called on the editor of the _Century_ I was able

to assume the tone of successful authorship. The closer I got to my

market the more assured I became. I counted for something in New York.

My thirty years of effort were remembered in my favor.

On Tuesday Sullivan, who had been called to the West, wired me from

Chicago that _A Son of the Middle Border_ would make an admirable serial

and that his assistants would take the matter up with me. "I predict a

great success for it."

That night I sent a message to my wife in which I exultantly said,

"Rejoice! I've sold _The Middle Border_ to _Collier's Weekly_. Our

troubles are over for a year at least."

Two days later _Collier's_ took a short story at four hundred dollars

and the _Century_ gave me three hundred for an article on James A.

Herne, and when I boarded the train for Chicago the following week I was

not only four thousand dollars better off than when I came--I had

regained my faith in the future. My task was clearly outlined. For the

seventh time I set to work revising _A Son of the Middle Border_,

preparing it for serial publication.

* * * * *

My father, who knew that I had been writing upon this story for years,

stared at me in silent amazement when I told him of its sale. That the

editor of a great periodical should be interested in a record of the

migrations and failures of the McClintocks and Garlands was incredible.

Nevertheless he was eager to see it in print--and when in March the

first installment appeared, he read it with absorbed attention and mixed

emotions. "Aren't you a little hard on me?" he asked with a light in his

eyes which was half-humorous, half-resentful.

"I don't think so, Father," I replied. "You must admit you were a stern

disciplinarian in those days."

"Well maybe I was--but I didn't realize it."

My first understanding of the depths this serial sounded came to me in

the letters which were written to the editor by those who could not find

words in which to express their longing for the bright world gone--the

world when they were young and glad. "You have written my life," each

one said--and by this they meant that the facts of my family history,

and my own emotional experiences were so nearly theirs that my lines

awoke an almost intolerable regret in their hearts--an ache which is in

my own heart to-day--the world-old hunger of the gray-haired man

dwelling upon the hope and illusions of youth.

These responses which indicated a wider and more lasting effect than I

had hoped to produce, led me to plan for the publication of the book

close on the heels of the concluding installment of the serial but in

this I was disappointed. The Mexican war suddenly thrust new and

tremendously exciting news articles into the magazine, separating and

delaying the printing of my story. Had it not been for the loyalty of

Mark Sullivan it would have been completely side-tracked, but he would

not have it so; on the contrary he began to talk with me about printing

six more installments, and this necessarily put off the question of

finding a publisher for the book.

Nevertheless I returned to my desk in the expectation that the Mexican

excitement was only a flurry and that the magazine would be able to

complete the publication of the manuscript within the year. My harvest

was not destroyed; it was only delayed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A Spray of Wild Roses

Although for several years my wife and children had spent four months of

each year in West Salem, and notwithstanding the fact that my father was

free to come down to visit us at any time, I suffered a feeling of

uneasiness (almost of guilt), whenever I thought of him camping alone

for the larger part of the year in that big, silent house. His love for

the children and for Zulime made every day of his lonely life a reproach

to me, and yet there seemed no way in which I could justly grant him

more of our time. The welfare of my wife and the education of the

children must be considered.

He was nearing his eighty-fourth birthday, and a realization that every

week in which he did not see his granddaughters was an irreparable loss,

gave me uneasiness. It was a comfort to think of him sitting in an easy

chair in the blaze of a fireplace which he loved and found a solace and

yet he was a lonely old man--that could not be denied. He made no

complaint in his short infrequent letters although as spring came on he

once or twice asked, "Why don't you come up? The best place for the

children is on the lawn under the maples."

In one note to me he said, "My old legs are giving out. I don't enjoy

walking any more. I don't stand the work of the garden as well as I did

last year. You'd better come up and help me put in the seed."

This confession produced in me a keen pang. He who had marched so

tirelessly under the lead of Grant and Thomas; he who had fearlessly

cruised the pine forests of Wisconsin, and joyously explored the

prairies of Iowa and Minnesota, was now uncertain of his footing.

Alarmed more than I cared to confess, I hurried up to help him, and to

tell him of the success of _The Middle Border_, which was in truth as

much his story as mine.

The air was thick with bird songs as I walked up the street, for it was

late April, and I came upon him at work in the garden, bareheaded as

usual, his white hair gleaming in the sunlight like a silver crown.

Outwardly serene, without a trace of bitterness in his voice, he spoke

of his growing weakness. "Oh, the old machine is wearing out, that's

all." Aware of his decline he accepted it as something in the natural

course of human life and was content.

Several of his comrades had dropped away during the winter and he was

aware that all of his generation were nearing their end. "There's only

one more migration left for us," he said composedly, yet with a note of

regret. Not on the strength of any particular religious creed but by

reason of a manly faith in the universe he faced death. He was a kind of

primitive warrior, who, having lived honorably, was prepared to meet

what was to come. "I've no complaint to make," he said, "I've had a long

life and on the whole a happy life. I'm ready for the bugle."

This was the faith of a pathfinder, a philosophy born of the open

spaces, courage generated by the sun and the wind. "I find it hard to

keep warm on dark days," he explained. "I guess my old heart is getting

tired," and as he spoke I thought of the strain which that brave heart

had undergone in its eighty years of action, on the battlefield, along

the river, in the logging camps, and throughout all the stern,

unceasing years of labor on the farm. His tireless energy and his

indomitable spirit came back, filling my mind with pictures of his swift

and graceful use of axe and scythe, and when I spoke of the early days,

he found it difficult to reply--they were so beautiful in retrospect.

The next day was Sunday, and Sunday afternoon was for him a period of

musing, an hour of dream, and as night began to fall he turned to me and

with familiar accent called out, "Come, Hamlin, sing some of the songs

your mother used to love," and I complied, although I could play but a

crude accompaniment to my voice. First of all I sang "Rise and Shine"

and "The Sweet Story of Old" in acknowledgment of the Sabbath, then

passed to "The Old Musician and His Harp," ending with "When You and I

Were Young, Maggie," in which I discerned a darker significance--a

deeper pathos than ever before. It had now a personal, poignant

application.

Tears misted his eyes as I uttered the line, "But now we are aged and

gray, Maggie, the trials of life are nearly done," and at the close he

was silent with emotion. He, too, was aged and gray, his trials of life

nearly done, and the one who had been his solace and his stay had passed

beyond recall.

To me, came the insistent thought, "Soon he must go to join Mother in

the little plot under the pines beyond Neshonoc." In spite of my

philosophy, I imagined their reunion somehow, somewhere.

Tender and sweet were the scenes which the words of my songs

evoked--pictures which had nothing to do with the music except by

association, forms and faces of far-off days, of Dry Run Prairie and its

neighbors, and of the still farther and dimmer and more magical

experiences of Green's Coulee, before the call to war.

I sang the song my uncle Bailey loved. A song which took him back to his

boyhood's home in Maine.

"The river's running just the same,

The willows on its side

Are larger than they were, dear Tom,

The stream appears less wide,

And stooping down to take a drink,

Dear Heart, I started so,

To see how sadly I was changed

Since forty years ago!"

His songs, his friends, his thoughts were all of the past except when

they dwelt on his grandchildren--and they, after six months' absence,

were shadowy, fairy-like forms in his memory. He found it difficult to

recall them precisely. He longed for them but his longing was for

something vaguely bright and cheerful and tender. David and William and

Susan and Belle were much more vividly real to him than Constance or

Mary Isabel.

* * * * *

On Monday morning he was up early. "Now let's get to work," he said. "I

can't hoe as I used to do, and the weeds are getting the start of me."

To him the garden was a battlefield, a contest with purslane and he

hated to be worsted.

"Don't worry about the garden," I said. "It is not very important. What

does it matter if the 'pussley' does cover the ground?"

He would not have this. "It matters a good deal," he replied with hot

resentment, "and it won't happen so long as I can stand up and shove a

hoe."

To relieve his anxiety and to be sure that he did not overwork, I hired

Uncle Frank McClintock to come down for two or three days a week to help

kill the weeds. "The crop is not important to me," I said to him

privately, "but it _is_ important that you should keep a close watch on

Father while I am away. He is getting feeble and forgetful. See him

every day, and wire me if he is in need of anything. I must go back to

the city for a few weeks. If you need me send word and I'll come at

once."

He understood, and I went away feeling more at ease. I relied on Uncle

Frank's interest in him.

Now, it chanced that just before the date of our return to the

Homestead, Lily Morris, wife of the newly-appointed ambassador to

Sweden, invited my wife and children to accompany her on a trip to the

Big Horn Mountains and we were all torn between opposing duties and

desires.

Eager to see "Papa's Mountains," yet loath to lose anything of dear old

West Salem, Mary Isabel was pathetically perplexed. Connie was all for

West Salem but Zulime who knew the charm of the West decided to go, and

again I visited Father to tell him the news and to explain that we would

all be with him in August. The fear of disappointing him was the only

cloud on the happy prospect.

With a feeling of guilt I met him with the news of our change of plan,

softening the blow as best I could. He bore it composedly, though sadly,

while I explained that I could not possibly have shown the children the

mountains of my own accord. "I have some lectures in Colorado," I

explained, "but I shall not be gone long."

"I had counted on seeing Zulime and the children next week," was all he

said.

Just before my return to the city, he sent for a team, and together we

drove down to the little Neshonoc burying ground. "I want to inspect

your mother's grave," he explained.

On the way, as we were passing a clump of wild roses, he asked me to

stop and cut some of them. "Your mother was fond of wild roses," he

said, "I'd like to put a handful on her grave."

The penetrating odor of those exquisite blooms brought to my mind vistas

of the glorious sunlit, odorous prairies of Iowa, and to gather and put

into his hand a spray of them, was like taking part in a poem--a

poignant threnody of age, for he received them in silence, and held them

with tender care, his mind far away in the past.

Silently we entered the gate of the burial ground, and slowly approached

the mound under which my mother's body rested, and as I studied the thin

form and bending head of my intrepid sire, I realized that he was in

very truth treading the edge of his own grave. My eyes grew dim with

tears and my throat ached with a sense of impending loss, and a pity for

him which I could conceal only by looking away at the hills.

Nevertheless, he was calmer than I. "Here is where I want to lie," he

said quietly and stooping, softly spread his sprays of roses above the

mound. "She loved all the prairie flowers," he said, "but she specially

liked wild roses. I always used to bring them to her from the fields. We

had oceans of them in Dakota in those days."

It was a commonplace little burial ground with a few trees and here and

there a bed of lilies or phlox, yet it had charm. It was a sunny and

friendly place, a silent acre whose name and history went back to the

beginning of the first white settlement in the valley. On its monuments

were chiseled the familiar names of pioneers, and it was characteristic

of the time and deeply characteristic of the McClintocks, to be told, by

my father, that in some way the exact location of my grandmother's grave

had been lost and that no stone marked the spot where my grandfather was

buried.

We wandered around among the graves for half an hour while Father spoke

of the men and women whose names were on the low and leaning stones.

"They were American," he said. "These German neighbors of ours are all

right in their way, but it isn't our way. They are good citizens as far

as they know how to be, but they don't think in our words. Soon there

won't be any of the old families left. My world is just about gone, and

so I don't mind going myself, only I want to go quick. I don't want to

be bedridden for months as Vance McKinley was. If I could have my wish,

I'd go out like a candle in a puff of wind,--and I believe that's the

way I shall go."

It was a radiant June afternoon and as we drove back along the familiar

lane toward the hills softened by the mist, we looked away over a valley

throbbing with life and rich with the shining abundance of growing

grain--a rich and peaceful and lovely valley to me--but how much more it

all meant to my father! Every hill had its memories, every turn in the

road opened a vista into the past. The mill, the covered bridge, the

lonely pine by the river's bank,--all, all spoke to him of those he had

loved and lost.

With guilty reluctance I confessed that the return of the children had

again been postponed. "Mrs. Morris cannot tell just when she will

return--I fear not before the first of September. It is a wonderful

opportunity for the children to see the mountains. I could not afford to

take them on such a trip--much as I should like to do so--and there is

no telling when such another opportunity will offer. Mary Isabel is just

at the right age to remember all she sees and a summer in the mountains

will mean much to her in after life. Even Constance will be profoundly

changed by it. Zulime is sorry to disappoint you but she feels that it

would be wrong to refuse such an opportunity."

He made no complaint, offered no further opposition, he only said gently

and sadly, "Don't let them stay away too long. I want them here part of

the summer. I miss them terribly--and you must remember my time on earth

is nearly ended."

"We shall all be here in August," I assured him, "and I may return late

in July."

This was the twelfth of June and as I left the house for the train the

picture of that lonely, white-haired man, sitting at the window, took

away all the anticipation of pleasure with which our expedition had

filled my mind. I was minded to decline the wondrous opportunity and

send the children to the old Homestead and their grandsire.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A Soldier of the Union Mustered Out

On my return to Chicago, I made good report of Father's condition and

said nothing of his forebodings, for I wanted Zulime to start on her

vacation in entire freedom from care. Had it not been for my lecture

engagements I might not have gone with them, but as certain dates were

fixed, I bought tickets for myself on the same train which Mrs. Morris

had taken, and announced my intention to travel with the party at least

as far as Sheridan. "I want to watch the children's faces and hear their

words of delight when they see the mountains," I explained to Mrs.

Morris. "My lectures at the Colorado Normal School do not begin till the

second week in July--so that I can be with you part of the time."

My decision gave the final touch to the children's happiness. They liked

their shaggy father--I don't know why, but they did--and during the days

of preparation their voices were filled with bird-like music. They were

palpitant with joy.

On the day appointed the Morris automobile called for us and took us to

the train, and when the children found that they were to travel in a

private pullman and that the stateroom was to be their own little house

they were transported with pride. Thereafter they knew nothing of heat

or dust or weariness. Their meals came regularly, and they went to bed

in their berths with warbles of satisfaction.

The plains of the second day's travel absorbed them. The prairie dogs,

the herds of cattle, the cactus blooms all came in for joyous

recognition. They had read about them: now here they were in actuality.

"Are those the mountains?" asked Mary Isabel as we came in sight of the

buttes of Eastern Wyoming. "No, only hills," I replied.

Then, at last, came the Big Horns deep blue and lined with snow. Mary

Isabel's eyes expanded with awe. "Oh, they are so much finer than I

expected them to be," she said, and from that moment, she gave them her

adoration. They were papa's mountains and hence not to be feared. "Are

we really going up there?" she asked. "Yes," I replied pointing out

Cloud Peak, "we shall go up almost directly toward that highest mountain

of all."

At a camp just above Big Horn City we spent a month of just the sort of

riding, trailing and camping which I was eager to have my children know,

and in a few days under my instruction, they both learned to sit a horse

in fearless confidence. Mary Isabel, who was eleven, accompanied me on a

ride to Cloud Peak Lake, a matter of twenty miles over a rough trail,

and came into camp almost unwearied. She was a chip of the old block in

this regard, and as I listened to her cheery voice and looked down into

her shining face I was a picture of shameless parental pride. For

several weeks I was able to remain with them and then at last set forth

for Colorado on my lecture tour.

Meanwhile, unsuspected by Americans, colossal armies were secretly

mobilizing in Europe, and on August first, whilst we were on our way

home, the sound of cannon proclaimed to the world the end of one era and

the beginning of another. Germany announced to the rulers of the Eastern

Hemisphere that she intended to dominate not merely the land but the

seas, and in my quiet hotel in a Colorado college town this proclamation

found amazed readers. I, for one, could not believe it--even after my

return to Chicago in August, while the papers were shouting "War! War!"

I remained unconvinced. Germany's program seemed monstrous, impossible.

The children and their mother arrived two days later and to Zulime I

said "Father is patiently waiting for us and in the present state of

things West Salem seems a haven, of rest. We must go to him at once."

She was willing and on August six, two days after England declared war,

the old soldier met us, looking thin and white but so happy in our

coming that his health seemed miraculously restored.

With joyous outcry the children sprang to his embrace and Zulime kissed

him with such sincerity of regard that he gave her a convulsive hug.

"Oh, but I'm glad to see you!" he exclaimed while tears of joy glistened

on his cheeks.

"Well, Father, what do you think about the European situation?" I asked.

"I don't know what to think," he gravely answered. "It starts in like a

big war, the biggest the world has ever seen. If you can believe what

the papers say, the Germans have decided to eat up France."

Although physically weaker, he was mentally alert and read his _Tribune_

with a kind of religious zeal. The vastness of the German armies, the

enormous weight and power of their cannons, and especially the

tremendous problem of their commissariat staggered his imagination. "I

don't see how they are going to maintain all those troops," he repeated.

"How can they shelter and clothe and feed three million men?"

To him, one of Sherman's soldiers, who had lived for days on parched

corn stolen from the feedboxes of the mules, the description of wheeled

ovens, and hot soup wagons appeared mere fiction. Although appalled by

the rush of the Prussian line, he was confident that the Allies would

check the invasion. Sharply resenting the half-veiled pro-Germanism of

some of his neighbors, he declared hotly: "They claim to be loyal to

America, but they are hoping the Kaiser will win. I will not trade with

such men."

How far away it all seemed on those lovely nights when with my daughters

beside me I lay on their broad bed out on the upper porch and heard the

crickets sleepily chirping and the wind playing with the leaves in the

maples. To Connie's sensitive ears the rustle suggested stealthy feet

and passing wings--but to me came visions of endless rivers of helmeted

soldiers flowing steadily remorselessly through Belgium, and Mary Isabel

said, "Papa, don't you think of going to war. I won't let you."

"They wouldn't take me anyway," I replied, "I'm too old. You needn't

worry."

I could not conceal from myself the fact that my father's work was

almost done. That he was failing was sorrowfully evident. He weeded the

garden no more. Content to sit in a chair on the back porch or to lie in

a hammock under the maples, he spent long hours with me or with Zulime,

recalling the battles of the Civil War, or relating incidents of the

early history of the valley.

He still went to his club each night after supper, but the walk was

getting to be more and more of a task, and he rejoiced when we found

time to organize a game of cinch at home. This we very often did, and

sometimes, even in the middle of the afternoon I called him in to play

with me; for with a great deal of time on his hands he was restless. "I

can't read all the time," he said, "and most of the fellows are busy

during the middle of the day."

Each morning regular as the clock he went to the post-office to get his

paper, and at lunch he was ready to discuss the news of the battles

which had taken place. After his meal he went for a little work in the

garden, for his hatred of weeds was bitter. He could not endure to have

them overrun his crops. They were his Huns, his menacing invaders.

In this fashion he approached his eighty-fourth birthday. His manner was

tranquil, but I knew that he was a little troubled by some outstanding

notes which he had signed in order to purchase a house for my brother in

Oklahoma, and to cure this I bought up these papers, canceled them and

put them under his breakfast plate. "I want him to start his

eighty-fifth year absolutely clear of debt," I said to Zulime.

He was much affected by the discovery of these papers. It pleased him to

think that I had the money to spare. It was another evidence of my

prosperity.

Nearly half of _A Son of the Middle Border_ had now been printed and

while he had read it he was shy about discussing it. Something almost

sacred colored the pictures which my story called up. Its songs and

sayings vibrated deep, searching the foundation chords of his life. They

told of a bright world vanished, a landscape so beautiful that it hurt

to have some parts of it revealed to aliens--and yet he was glad of it

and talked of it to his comrades.

Zulime made a birthday cake for him and the children decorated it, and

when Mary Isabel brought it in with all its candles lighted, and we

lifted our triumphant song, he was overwhelmed with happiness and pride.

"I never had a birthday cake or a birthday celebration before in all my

life," he said, and we hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry at that

confession.

We ended the day by singing for him--that was the best of it all; for

both the children could now join with me in voicing the tunes which he

loved. They knew his enthusiasms and were already faithful heirs of his

traditions. Singers of the future, they loved to hear him recount the

past.

All through the month of September as we walked our peaceful way in

Wisconsin the Germans were pounding at the gates of Paris. It comforts

me at this moment to recall how peaceful my father was. He heard of the

war only as of a far-off storm. He had us all, all but Franklin, and

there was no bitterness in his voice as he spoke of his increasing

uselessness. "I'm only a passenger now," he said. "I've finished my

work."

As the Interstate Fair came on, he quietly engaged a neighbor to take us

all down to La Crosse in an automobile. "This is my treat," he said, and

knowing how much it meant to him I gladly accepted. With a fine sense of

being up-to-date he reverted to the early days as we went whirling down

the turnpike, and told tales of hauling hay and grain over these long

hills. He pointed out the trail and spoke of its mud and sand. "It took

us six hours then. Now, see, it's just like a city street."

He was greatly pleased to find an aeroplane flying above the grounds as

we drew near. "They say the Germans are making use of these machines for

scouting--and they are building others to fight with. I can't understand

how they make a ton of iron fly."

Once inside the gates we let him play the host. He bought candy for the

children, paid for our dinners at the restaurant and took us to the

side-shows. It wearied him, however, and about three o'clock he said

"Let's go home by way of Onalaska. I want to visit the cemetery and see

if Father's lot is properly cared for." It seemed a rather melancholy

finish to our day, but I agreed and as we were crossing the sandy

stretch of road over which I limped as a child, I remarked "How short

the distance seems." He smiled like a conqueror, "This is next thing to

flying," he said.

This lonely little burial ground, hardly more impressive than the one at

Neshonoc, contained the graves of all the Garlands who had lived in that

region. "There is a place here for me," he said, "but I want you to put

me in Neshonoc beside your mother."

On the way home he recovered his cheerfulness with an almost boyish

resiliency. The flight of the car up the long hill which used to be such

a terror to his sweating team, gave a satisfaction which broke out in

speech. "It beats all how a motor can spin right along up a grade like

this--and the flies can't sting it either," he added in remembering the

tortured cattle of the past. When I told him of an invitation to attend

a "Home Coming of Iowa Authors" which I was considering, he expressed

his pleasure and urged me to accept. Des Moines was a real city to him.

It possessed the glamour of a capital and to have me claimed by the

State of Iowa pleased him more than any recognition in New York.

The following day he watched while the carpenter and I worked at putting

my study into shape. Ever since the fire two years before its ceiling

had needed repair, and even now I was but half-hearted in its

restoration. As I looked around the square, bare, ugly room and thought

of the spacious libraries of Longfellow, Lowell and Holmes, I realized

my almost hopeless situation. I was only a literary camper after all. My

life was not here--it couldn't be here so far from all that makes a

writer's life worth while. "Soon for the sake of the children I must

take them from this pleasant rut," I said to Zulime. "It is true an

author can make himself felt from any place, but why do it at a

disadvantage? If it were not for Father, I would establish our winter

home in New York, which has the effect of increasing my power as well as

my happiness."

On the twentieth of October Father called me to his room. "I'm getting

near the end of my trail," he said, "and I want to talk to you about my

will. I want you two boys to share equally in all I've got and I'd like

to have you keep this property just as it is, then you'll be safe,

you'll always have a home. I'm ready to go--any time, only I don't like

to leave the children--" His voice failed him for a moment, then he

added, "I know I can't last long."

Though refusing to take a serious view of his premonition I realized

that his hold on life was loosening and I answered, "Your wishes shall

be carried out."

He did not feel like going up to the club that night, and so we played

cards with him. Wilson Irvine, a landscape painter, who was visiting us

chose Constance as a partner against Mary Isabel and her grandsire. Luck

was all in Constance's favor, she and Irvine won, much to the veteran's

chagrin. "You little witch," he said, "what do you mean by beating your

granddad?" He was very proud of her skill, for she was only six years

old.

To end the evening to his liking, we all united in singing some old war

songs and he went away to his bed in better spirits than he had shown

for a week or more.

He was at the breakfast table with me next morning, but seemed not quite

awake. He replied when I spoke to him, but not alertly, not as he

should, and a few minutes later rose with effort. This disturbed me a

little, but a few minutes later he left the house as if to do some work

at the barn, and I went to my writing with a feeling that he was quite

all right.

It was a glorious October morning and from my desk as I looked into the

yard I could see him standing in the gate, waiting for the man and team.

He appeared perfectly well and exhibited his customary impatience with

dilatory workmen. He was standing alertly erect with the sunshine

falling over him and the poise of his head expressed his characteristic

energy. He made a handsome figure. My eyes fell again to my manuscript

and I was deep in my imaginary world when I heard the voice of my uncle

Frank calling to me up the stairs:

"Hamlin! Come quick. Something has happened. Come, quick, quick!"

There was a note in his voice which sent a chill through my blood, and

my first glance into his eyes told me that he had looked upon the

elemental. "Your father is lying out on the floor of the barn. I'm

afraid he's gone!"

He was right. There on the rough planking of the carriage way lay the

old pioneer, motionless, just as he had fallen not five minutes before.

The hat upon his head and his right hand in his pocket told that he had

fallen while standing in the door waiting for the drayman. His eyes were

closed as if in sleep, and no sign of injury could be seen.

Kneeling by his side I laid my hand on his breast. It was still! His

heart invincible through so many years had ceased to beat. His breath

was gone and his empty left hand, gracefully lax, lay at his side. The

veteran pioneer had passed to that farther West from whose vague

savannahs no adventurer has ever returned.

"He must have died on his feet," said my uncle gravely, tenderly.

"Yes, he went the way he wished to go," I replied with a painful stress

in my throat.

Together we took him up and bore him to the house, and placed him on the

couch whereon he had been wont to rest during the day.

I moved like a man in a dream. It was all incredible, benumbing.

Tenderly I disposed his head on its pillow and drew his hands across

his breast. "Here is the end of a good man," I said. "Another soldier of

the Union mustered out."

His hands, strong, yet singularly refined, appealed to me with poignant

suggestion. What stern tasks they had accomplished. What brave deeds

they had dared. In spite of the hazards of battle, notwithstanding the

perils of the forests, the raft, the river, after all the hardships of

the farm, they remained unscarred and shapely. The evidence of good

blood was in their slender whiteness. Honorable, skilful, indefatigable

hands,--now forever at rest.

My uncle slipped away to notify the coroner, leaving me there, alone,

with the still and silent form, which had been a dominant figure in my

world. For more than half a century those gray eyes and stern lips had

influenced my daily life. In spite of my growing authority, in spite of

his age he had been a force to reckon with up to the very moment of his

death. He was not a person to be ignored. All his mistakes, his

weaknesses, faded from my mind, I remembered only his heroic side. His

dignity, his manly grace were never more apparent than now as he lay

quietly, as though taking his midday rest.

A breath of pathos rose from the open book upon his table. His hat, his

shoes, his gloves all spoke of his unconquerable energy. I thought of

the many impatient words I had spoken to him, and they would have filled

me with a wave of remorse had I not known that our last day together had

been one of perfect understanding. His final night with us had been

entirely happy, and he had gone away as he had wished to go, in the

manner of a warrior killed in action. His unbending soul had kept his

body upright to the end.

All that day I went about the house with my children like one whose

world had suddenly begun to crumble. The head of my house was gone.

Over and over again I stole softly into his room unable to think of him

as utterly cold and still.

For seventy years he had faced the open lands. Starting from the hills

of Maine when a lad, he had kept moving, each time farther west, farther

from his native valley. His life, measured by the inventions he had

witnessed, the progress he had shared, covered an enormous span.

"He died like a soldier," I said to the awed children, "and he shall

have the funeral of a soldier. We will not mourn, and we will not

whisper or walk tip-toe in the presence of his body."

In this spirit we called his friends together. In place of flowers we

covered his coffin with the folds of a flag, and when his few remaining

comrades came to take a last look at him, my wife and I greeted them

cordially in ordinary voice as if they had come to spend an evening with

him and with us.

My final look at him in the casket filled my mind with love and

admiration. His snowy hair and beard, his fair skin and shapely

features, as well as a certain firm sweetness in the line of his lips

raised him to a grave dignity which made me proud of him. Representing

an era in American settlement as he did I rejoiced that nothing but the

noblest lines of his epic career were written on his face.

This is my consolation. His last days were spent in calm content with

his granddaughters to delight and comfort him. In their young lives his

spirit is going forward. They remember and love him as the serene,

white-haired veteran of many battles who taught them to revere the

banner he so passionately adored.

[Illustration: The art career which Zulime Taft abandoned (against my

wish) after our marriage, is now being taken up by her daughter

Constance who, at fourteen, signs herself C. Hamlin Garland, Artist.]

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AFTERWORD

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[Illustration: To Mary Isabel, who, as a girl of eighteen, still loves

to impersonate the majesty of princesses, I entrust the future literary

history of Neshonoc.]

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Afterword

At this point I make an end of this chronicle, the story of two families

whose wanderings and vicissitudes (as I conceive them) are typical of

thousands of other families who took part in the upbuilding of the

Middle Western States during that period which lies between the close of

the Civil War and the Great War of Nineteen Fourteen. With the ending of

the two principal life-lines which bind these pages together my book

naturally closes.

In these two volumes over which I have brooded for more than ten years,

I have shadowed forth, imperfectly, yet with high intent, the

experiences of Isabel McClintock and Richard Garland, and the lives of

other settlers closely connected with them. For a full understanding of

the drama--for it is a drama, a colossal and colorful drama--I must

depend upon the memory or the imagination of my readers. No writer can

record it all or even suggest the major part of it. At the end of four

years of writing I go to press with reluctance, but realizing that my

public, like myself, is growing gray, I have consented to publish my

manuscript with its many imperfections and omissions.

My Neshonoc is gone. The community which seemed so stable to me thirty

years ago, has vanished like a wisp of sunrise fog. The McClintocks, the

Dudleys, the Baileys, pioneers of my father's generation, have entered

upon their final migration to another darkly mysterious frontier. My

sunset World--all of it--is in process of change, of disintegration, of

dissolution. My beloved trails are grass-grown. I have put away my

saddle and my tent-cloth, realizing that at sixty-one my explorations

of the wilderness are at an end. Like a captive wolf I walk a narrow

round in a city square.

With my father's death I ceased to regard the La Crosse Valley even as

my summer home. I decided to make my permanent residence in the East,

and my wife and daughters whose affections were so deeply inwound with

the Midland, loyally consented to follow, although it was a sad

surrender for them. As my mother, Isabel McClintock, had given up her

home and friends in the Valley to follow Richard Garland into the new

lands of the West, so now Zulime Taft, A Daughter of the Middle Border,

surrendered all she had gained in Illinois and Wisconsin to follow me

into the crowded and dangerous East. It was a tearing wrench, but she

did it. She sold our house in Woodlawn, packed up our belongings and

joined me in a small apartment seven stories above the pavement in the

heart of Manhattan.

The children came East with a high sense of adventure, with no

realization that they were leaving their childhood's home never to

return to it. They still talk of going back to West Salem, and they have

named our summer cabin in the Catskills "Neshonoc" in memory of the

little pioneer village whose graveyard holds all that is material of

their paternal grandparents. The colors of the old Homestead are growing

dim, and yet they will not permit me to deed it to others. We still own

it and shall continue to do so. It has too many memories both sweet and

sacred,--it seems that by clinging to its material forms we may still

retain its soul.

We think of it often, and when around our rude fireplace in Camp

Neshonoc in a room almost as rough as a frontier cabin, we sit and sing

the songs which are at once a tribute to our forebears and a bond of

union with the past, the shadows of the heroic past emerge. David and

Luke, Richard and Walter, and with them Susan and Lorette--all--all the

ones I loved and honored----.

My daughters are true granddaughters of the Middle Border. Constance at

fourteen, Mary Isabel at eighteen, are carrying forward, each in her

distinctive way, the traditions of the Border, with the sturdy spirit of

their forebears in the West. To them I am about to entrust the work

which I have only partially completed.

Too young at first to understand the reasons for my decision, they are

now in agreement with me that we can never again live in the Homestead.

They love every tree, every shrub on the old place. The towering elms,

the crow's nest in the maples, the wall of growing woodbine, the gaunt,

wide-spreading butternut branches,--all these are very dear to them, for

they are involved with their earliest memories, touched with the glamour

which the imagination of youth flings over the humblest scenes of human

life. To them the Fern Road, The Bubbling Spring, and the Apple Tree

Glen, scenes of many camping places, are all a part of childhood's fairy

kingdom. The thought of never again walking beneath those familiar trees

or sitting in those familiar rooms, is painful to them, and yet I am

certain that their Neshonoc, like my own, is a realm remembered, a

region to which they can return only on the wings of memory or of dream.

Happily the allurement of art, the stimulus of ambition and the promise

of love and honor already partly compensate them for their losses. Their

faces are set to the future. On them I rest my hopes. By means of them

and their like, Life weaves her endless web.

End of Project Gutenberg's A Daughter of the Middle Border, by Hamlin Garland