Hamlin Garland was born in the beautiful La Crosse valley,
September 16, 1860, and lived there until he was eight years
old. Twenty-three years ago he purchased the old homestead
near West Salem, La Crosse County, and to this he delights to
return each year for part of his summer. As one reads his
description of the trip to West Salem over the Northwestern
Line in his story, "Up the Cooley," he is compelled to see
how much Mr. Garland loves the scenes of Wisconsin.
Among the other states which may share in the right to claim
Hamlin Garland are Iowa, Massachusetts, Illinois, and South
Dakota. In Iowa he learned what the rural school, the
academy, and the farm could teach him. It was in the Boston
Public Library that he formed much of his literary style and
determined that the material for his future literary work
should be the western life that he knew so well. In Illinois
he began his work as a teacher and a lecturer. Here he met
the girl who was to become his wife, Miss Zulima Taft, sister
of the artist, Lorado Taft. Chicago is his present home. Mr.
Garland visited his parents in South Dakota in 1883 and took
up a claim there. Here he got material which he incorporated
into some of his stories, among which the Moccassin Ranch is
the most notable.
The experience in these several states gave Hamlin Garland an
excellent opportunity to understand all phases of country
life. He has expressed his observations in description of
boys' games, the labor on the farm, the work of the rural
school, and the varied activities of the rural community. He
knew that the work of the farm in an early day furnished as
much opportunity for the display of resistance and the
determination to use the last bit of strength to win as does
the game of the present. The work of binding the wheat after
a reaper became a game requiring honesty as well as skill and
rapidity. Perhaps no boy of today shoots a basket, makes a
touch-down, or hits out a home run with more pride than did
the youth of this pioneer life retire from the harvest field
at noon or night with the consciousness that he had bound all
his "tricks" without being caught once by the machine as it
made its successive rounds of the field.
Hamlin Garland knew the joys of these contests on the pioneer
farm, and he also knew the sordid side of the narrow and
cramped life of the early settler. He describes both with
equal vividness and sympathy. Wisconsin owes him much for the
work he has done in preserving pictures of her early pioneer
life. His hero and heroine are those ancestors who travelled
forth into the new regions in covered wagons, and by the use
of axe and plow conquered a seemingly unconquerable forest or
a stubborn prairie sod. In his book of short stories, "Main
Travelled Roads," he makes the dedication of it to his heroic
parents in these words:
"To my father and mother, whose half-century pilgrimage on
the main travelled road of life has brought them only toil
and deprivation, this book of stories is dedicated by a son
to whom every day brings a deepening sense of his parents'
silent heroism."
To illustrate Mr. Garland's ability to picture the joyous and
the irksome in the life of the pioneer two selections are
given at this place. The first sets forth the joy of farm
activity, the second, the disheartening influence of abject
toil.
[Illustration: HAMLIN GARLAND]