Back-Trailers from the Middle Border | Page 2

dark were swiftly
dimming into gray.
This was at the beginning of the World War whilst our village, now
largely German, was trying very hard to remain neutral In addition to
the sad changes in my household, I was fifty-four years old and
suffering some obscure disorder which manifested itself in acute

cramping pains in my breast and shoulder. The doctors diagnosed my
"misery" as neuritis, but none of them seemed able to give me the
slightest relief and I faced the coming winter with vague alarm.
My daughters were now old enough to sense the change in me (Mary
Isabel was twelve and Constance eight), but they remained loyal
although I must have seemed to them an ailing and irritable old man.
They met me at every return from a lecture tour or a visit to the city,
with cries of joy and a smother of kisses. The tug of their soft arms
about my neck enabled me to put away, for a time, my aches and my
despairs. They still found me admirable and tdok unaccountable
pleasure in my company, with the angelic tolerance of childhood.
They continued to sleep out on the south porch long after the air
became too cold for me to sit beside them and tell them stories. Each
night they chanted their evening prayer, the words of which Mary
Isabel had composed, and I never heard their sweet small voices
without a stirring round my heart The trust and confidence in the world,
which this slender chant expressed, brought up by way of contrast the
devastating drama in France and Belgium, a tragedy whose horror all
the world seemed about to share.
My daughters loved our ugly, old cottage, and had no wish to leave it,
and their mother was almost equally content, but I was restless and
uneasy. There was much for me to do in New York, and so early in
November I took the train for Chicago, to resume the duties and
relationships which I had dropped in the spring. My wife and daughters
were dear to me but my work called.
As I journeyed eastward the war appeared to approach. At my first
luncheon in The Players, I sat with John Lane and Robert Underwood
Johnson, finding them both much concerned with the pro-German
attitude of the Middle West. Lane confessed that he was in America on
that special mission and I did my best to assure him that the West, as a
whole, was on the side of France and Belgium.
The Club swarmed with strangers and buzzed with news of war. Many
of its young writers had gone to France as correspondents, and others

were in government employ. In the midst of the excitement, I was able
to forget, in some degree, my personal anxieties. A singular exaltation
was in the air. No one was bored. No one was indifferent. Each
morning we rose with keen interest, and hour by hour we bought papers,
devoured rumors and discussed campaigns. My homestead in West
Salem and my children chanting their exquisite evensong, receded
swiftly into remote and peaceful distance.
In calling on the editor of the Century Magazine, I learned that this fine
old firm was in the midst of change and that it might at any moment
suspend. As I walked its familiar corridors walled with original
drawings of its choicest illustrations by its most famous artists, I
recalled the awed wonder and admiration in which I had made my first
progress toward the private office of the Editor-in-Chief nearly thirty
years before. I experienced a pang of regret when told that the firm
must certainly move. "I hope it may remain," I said to the editor with
sincere devotion to its past.
One of the chief reasons for my eastern visit at this time was a call to
attend the Annual Meeting of the National Institute of Arts and Letters,
of which I was officer. The first function of the session was a reception
given to Eugene Brieux as a representative of the French Academy by
President Butler of Columbia University at his home on Morningside
Drive, a most distinguished assembly.
Brieux made a fine impression on us all He was unlike any Frenchman
I had ever met He was blond, smoothshaven and quietly powerful On
being introduced to him, I spoke to him in English which he understood
very well until I fell into certain idiomatic western expressions These
he laughingly admitted were out of his reach. He was very friendly and
expressed his deep appreciation of the honor done him by our Institute
and Academy.
On the following morning he was presented to a fine audience in
Aeolian Hall by William Dean Howells, who made a short but
exquisitely phrased address Nearly one hundred of our