My writing went well, and if I regretted Boston, I had the
pleasant sense of being so near West Salem that I could go to bed in a
train at ten at night, and breakfast with my mother in the morning, and
just to prove that this was true I ran up to the Homestead at Christmas
time and delivered my presents in person—keenly enjoying the smile of
delight with which my mother received them.
West Salem was like a scene on the stage that day—a setting for a
rural mid-winter drama. The men in their gayly-colored Mackinac
jackets, the sleighbells jingling pleasantly along the lanes, the
cottage roofs laden with snow, and the sidewalks, walled with drifts,
were almost arctic in their suggestion, and yet, my parents in the
shelter of the friendly hills, were at peace. The cold was not being
driven against them by the wind of the plain, and a plentiful supply of
food and fuel made their fireside comfortable and secure.
During this vacation I seized the opportunity to go a little farther
and spend a few days in the Pineries which I had never seen. Out of
this experience I gained some beautiful pictures of the snowy forest,
and a suggestion for a story or two. A few days later, on a commission
from McClure's, I was in Pittsburg writing an article on
“Homestead and Its Perilous Trades,” and the clouds of smoke, the
flaming chimneys, the clang of steel, the roar of blast-furnaces and
the thunder of monstrous steel rollers made Wisconsin lumber camps
idyllic. The serene white peace of West Salem set Pittsburg apart as a
sulphurous hell and my description of it became a passionate indictment
of an industrial system which could so work and so house its men. The
grimy hovels in which the toilers lived made my own homestead a poem.
More than ever convinced that our social order was unjust and
impermanent, I sent in my “story,” in some doubt about its being
accepted. It was printed with illustrations by Orson Lowell and was
widely quoted at the time.
Soon after this I made a trip to Memphis, thus gaining my first
impression of the South. Like most northern visitors, I was immediately
and intensely absorbed in the negroes. Their singing entranced me, and
my hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Judah, hired a trio of black minstrels to come
in and perform for me. Their songs so moved me, and I became so
interested in one old negro's curious chants that I fairly wore them
out with demands for their most characteristic spirituals. Some of the
hymns were of such sacred character that one of the men would not sing
them. “I ain't got no right to sing dem songs,” he said.
In Atlanta I met Joel Chandler Harris, who had done so much to
portray the negro's inner kindliness, as well as his singularly poetic
outlook. Harris was one of the editors of the Atlanta Constitution, and there I found him in a bare, prosaic office, a short, shy,
red-haired man whom I liked at once. Two nights later I was dining with
James A. Herne and William Dean Howells in New York City, and the day
following I read some of my verses for the Nineteenth Century Club. At
the end of March I was again at my desk in Chicago.
These sudden changes of scene, these dramatic meetings, so typical
of my life for many years, took away all sense of drudgery, all routine
weariness. Seldom remaining in any one place long enough to become
bored I had little chance to bore others. Literary clubs welcomed my
readings and lectures; and, being vigorous and of good digestion, I
accepted travel as a diversion as well as a business. As a student of
American life, I was resolved to know every phase of it.
Among my pleasant jobs I recall the putting into shape of a “Real
Conversation” with James Whitcomb Riley, the material for which had
been gained in a visit to Greenfield, Riley's native town, during
August of the previous year.
My first meeting with Riley had been in Boston at a time when I was
a penniless student and he the shining, highly-paid lecturer; and I
still suffered a feeling of wonder that a poet—any poet—could demand
such pay. I did not resent it—I only marveled at it—for in our
conversation he had made his philosophy plain.
“Tell of the things just like they was, they don't need no excuse,”
one of his characters said. “Don't tech 'em up as the poets does till
they're all too fine fer use,” and in his talk with me Riley quaintly
added, “Nature is good enough for God, it's good enough for me.”
In this article which I wrote for McClure's, I made comment
on the essential mystery of the poet's art, a conjury which is able to
transmute a perfectly commonplace landscape into something fine and
mellow and sweet; for the region in which Riley spent his youth, and
from which he derived most of his later material, was to me a
depressing land, a country without a hill, a river or a lake; a
commonplace country, flat, unkempt and without a line of beauty, and
yet from these rude fields and simple gardens the singer had drawn the
sweetest honey of song, song with a tang in it, like the odor of ripe
buckwheat and the taste of frost-bit persimmons. It reinforced my
resolution that the mid-land was about to blossom into art.
In travel and in work such as this and in pleasant intercourse with
the painters, sculptors, and writers of Chicago my first winter in the
desolate, drab, and tumultuous city passed swiftly and on the whole
profitably, I no longer looked backward to Boston, but as the first
warm spring-winds began to blow, my thoughts turned towards my
newly-acquired homestead and the old mother who was awaiting me there.
Eager to start certain improvements which should tend to make the
house more nearly the kind of dwelling place I had promised myself it
should become, hungry for the soil, rejoicing in the thought of once
more planting and building, I took the train for the North with all my
summer ward-robe and most of my manuscripts, with no intention of
reëntering the city till October at the earliest.
To pass from the crowds, the smoke and the iron clangor of Chicago
into the clear April air of West Salem was a celestial change for me.
For many years the clock of my seasons had been stilled. The coming of
the birds, the budding of the leaves, the serial blossoming of spring
had not touched me, and as I walked up the street that exquisite
morning, a reminiscent ecstasy filled my heart. The laughter of the
robins, the shrill ki-ki-ki of the golden-wing woodpeckers, and the
wistful whistle of the lark, brought back my youth, my happiest youth,
and when my mother met me at the door it seemed that all my cares and
all my years of city life had fallen from me.
“Well, here I am!” I called, “ready for the spring's work.”
With a silent laugh, as preface, she replied, “You'll get a-plenty.
Your father is all packed, impatient to leave for Ordway.”
The old soldier, who came in from the barn a few moments later,
confirmed this. “I'm no truck farmer,” he explained with humorous
contempt. “I turn this onion patch over to you.
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