A Daughter of the Middle Border | Page 7

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.
CHAPTER TWO
I Return to the Saddle

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