A Daughter of the Middle Border | Page 2

levels of Dakota) was almost miraculous in effect. Entirely without architectural dignity, our new home was spacious and suggested the comfort of the region round about.
My father, a man of sixty-five, though still actively concerned with a wide wheat farm in South Dakota, had agreed to aid me in maintaining this common dwelling place in Wisconsin provided he could return to Dakota during seeding and again at harvest. He was an eagle-eyed, tireless man of sixty-five years of age, New England by origin, tall, alert, quick-spoken and resolute, the kind of natural pioneer who prides himself on never taking the back trail. In truth he had yielded most reluctantly to my plan, influenced almost wholly by the failing health of my mother, to whom the work of a farm household had become an intolerable burden. As I had gained possession of the premises early in November we were able to eat our Thanksgiving Dinner in our new home, happy in the companionship of old friends and neighbors. My mother and my Aunt Susan were entirely content. The Garlands seemed anchored at last.
II
To the Readers of "A Son of the Middle Border"
In taking up and carrying forward the theme of "A Son of the Middle Border" I am fully aware of my task's increasing difficulties, realizing that I must count on the clear understanding and continuing good will of my readers.
First of all, you must grant that the glamor of childhood, the glories of the Civil War, the period of prairie conquest which were the chief claims to interest in the first volume of my chronicle can not be restated in these pages. The action of this book moves forward into the light of manhood, into the region of middle age. Furthermore, its theme is more personal. Its scenes are less epic. It is a study of individuals and their relationships rather than of settlements and migrations. In short, "A Daughter of the Middle Border" is the complement of "A Son of the Middle Border," a continuation, not a repetition, in which I attempt to answer the many questions which readers of the first volume have persistently put to me.
"Did your mother get her new daughter?" "How long did she live to enjoy the peace of her Homestead?" "What became of David and Burton?" "Did your father live to see his grandchildren?" These and many other queries, literary as well as personal, are--I trust--satisfactorily answered in this book. Like the sequel to a novel, it attempts to account for its leading characters and to satisfy the persistent interest which my correspondents have so cordially expressed.
It remains to say that the tale is as true as my memory will permit--it is constructed only by leaving things out. If it reads, as some say, like fiction, that result is due not to invention but to the actual lives of the characters involved. Finally this closes my story of the Garlands and McClintocks and the part they took in a marvelous era in American settlement.
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CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MY FIRST WINTER IN CHICAGO 1
II. I RETURN TO THE SADDLE 13
III. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF GENERAL GRANT 24
IV. RED MEN AND BUFFALO 38
V. THE TELEGRAPH TRAIL 53
VI. THE RETURN OF THE ARTIST 70
VII. LONDON AND EVENING DRESS 86
VIII. THE CHOICE OF THE NEW DAUGHTER 97
IX. A JUDICIAL WEDDING 122
X. THE NEW DAUGHTER AND THANKSGIVING 140
XI. MY FATHER'S INHERITANCE 153
XII. WE TOUR THE OKLAHOMA PRAIRIE 171
XIII. STANDING ROCK AND LAKE MCDONALD 184
XIV. THE EMPTY ROOM 204
BOOK II
XV. A SUMMER IN THE HIGH COUNTRY 219
XVI. THE WHITE HOUSE MUSICAL 237
XVII. SIGNS OF CHANGE 247
XVIII. THE OLD PIONEER TAKES THE BACK TRAIL 262
XIX. NEW LIFE IN THE OLD HOUSE 271
XX. MARY ISABEL'S CHIMNEY 289
XXI. THE FAIRY WORLD OF CHILDHOOD 307
XXII. THE OLD SOLDIER GAINS A GRANDDAUGHTER 326
XXIII. "CAVANAGH" AND THE "WINDS OF DESTINY" 341
XXIV. THE OLD HOMESTEAD SUFFERS DISASTER 355
XXV. DARKNESS JUST BEFORE THE DAWN 369
XXVI. SPRAY OF WILD ROSES 381
XXVII. A SOLDIER OF THE UNION MUSTERED OUT 389
AFTERWORD 400
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ILLUSTRATIONS
Isabel Clintock Garland, A Daughter of the Middle Border Frontispiece
Zulime Taft: The New Daughter Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Miss Zulime Taft, acting as volunteer housekeeper for the colony 104
At last the time came when I was permitted to take my wife--lovely as a Madonna--out into the sunshine 287
The old soldier loved to take the children on his knees and bask in the light of the fire 304
Entirely subject to my daughter, who regarded me as a wonderful giant, I paid tribute to her in song and story 322
That night as my daughters "dressed up" as princesses, danced in the light of our restored hearth, I forgot all the disheartenment which the burning of the house had brought upon me 368
The art career which Zulime Taft abandoned after our marriage, is now being taken up by her daughter Constance 400
To Mary Isabel who as