Back-Trailers from the Middle Border | Page 3

of my presence in the city, asked me to pose for a portrait, I consented. He had offered to do this for the Institute at our meeting in Chicago two years before, but this was our first opportunity for doing it.
He worked with astonishing rapidity, and at the end of the first sitting told me to come again the next day, As this was Thanksgiving Day and I had an invitation to eat dinner with Augustus Thomas, I was not entirely happy over the arrangement. The best I could do was to go up and take supper. I liked Augustus. He was one of the most alert, intelligent and cultivated men of my acquaintances. He not only instantly apprehended what I was saying, he anticipated what I was about to say Enormously experienced with men and affairs, he was an extraordinarily graceful orator. Although a Democrat of the Jefferson school, he was able to discuss my Republican friends without rancor. An hour with him was always a stimulant.
On the following Sunday I heard my friend Ernest Seton give his "Voices of the Night," a new address on wood-craft, to an audience of blind people at the Natural History Museum, a very adroit and amusing talk, for in addition to his vivid descriptions of life in the forest, he imitated certain animals and birds quite marvelously. At the close of the lecture his delighted audience moved out into the lobby where groups of stuffed birds and animals had been arranged for their inspection. To watch them clustering about these effigies, tracing out their contours with sensitive fluttering fingers, was very moving.
Betts drove me hard. He painted every day, Sunday and all, and on December first, toward the end of the day, he suddenly and quite positively remarked, "It is finished,"" and laid down his brushes. His words gave me relief. I was tired and one of the last things he did was to paint away the line of pain which had come into my forehead.
I left for Chicago the following morning, with a feeling that I was leaving behind me the concerns most vital to me. A sense of weakness, of doubt, of physical depression came over me as I reentered South Chicago New York appeared very clean, very bright, and very inspiring by contrast and retrospect. Zulime and the children were a great joy but to earn a living I must write and all my editorial friends were in the East.
During the first week of my return I met with a committee to help organize the Society of Midland Authors, Recognizing in this another attempt to advance the literary side of Chicago, I was willing to give time and thought to it although I felt increasingly the lure of New York.
The war news was now a regular part of each day's reading and no one expected any change for the better during the winter. Nevertheless I determined that my children should not be shadowed by its tragic gloom, and on Christmas Eve I went out with them to buy decorations for the house just as if the whole world were rejoicing. It was a lovely clear winter night and my happy vivid little girls made me ashamed of my weakness and doubt.
"Oh I don't see how I can wait till tomorrow," Constance said at dinner, and Mary Isabel was equally eager although troubled by a growing knowledge of the fact that father and mother assisted Santa Claus in bringing presents.
I had already smuggled into the cellar a shapely pine nearly ten feet tall, and after the children, highly excited but with resolute promises not to watch or listen, had gone upstairs to bed, Zulime and I set it up and ornamented it.
It was a typical snowy Christmas dawn when I arose, and as soon as I had lighted the candles I called to the children as usual Down they came, with shining eyes, just as they had done for seven years in this house, greeting with unabated ecstasy the magical display In a few moments they were in the thick of discovery and quite overwhelmed with the number and beauty of their presents In customary routine, we first opened our stockings, then adjourned for breakfast which was not much of a meal so far as the children were concerned after which we returned to the sitting room to the boxes and packages which formed an ocean of tissue paper and red ribbons With cries of joy the girls began to burrow and in half an hour the room was littered with the coverings which had been stripped off and thrown aside. The war and my small personal perplexities had no place in their world.
The day after Christmas we took them to see the opera "Hansel and Gretel." At the end