I WALKED about the city of New York looking at people. I was not too
young any more and could not make myself over to fit a new city. No
doubt certain characteristics of my own nature had become fixed. I
was a man of the mid-western towns who had gone from his town to the
mid-western cities and there had gone through the adventures common to
such fellows as myself. Was there some salt in me? To the end of my
life I would talk with the half slovenly drawl of the middle-westerner,
would walk like such a middle-westerner, have the air of something
between a laborer, a man of business, a gambler, a race horse owner, an
actor. If I was, as I then fully intended, to spend the rest of my life
trying to tell such tales as I could think and feel my way through, I
would have to tell the tales of my own people. Would I gain new power
and insight for the telling by having come East, by consorting with
other story-tellers? Would I understand better my own people and what
had made the tragedies, the comedies and the wonders of their lives?
I was in New York as a guest, as an onlooker, wondering about the city
and the men of the city and what they were thinking and feeling. There
were certain men I wanted to see, who had written things I thought had
given me new lights on my own people, the subjects of my tales.