Back-Trailers from the Middle Border | Page 7

over," I said in substance. "My father's death has broken the
bond which held me to Wisconsin and I have no deep roots here in
Chicago I intend to establish a home in the vicinity of New York. It is
not without reason that my sense of security increases with every mile
of progress toward Fifth Avenue. Theoretically La Crosse should be
my home. To go into western history properly, I should have a great
log house on Grand-Daddy Bluff with wide verandas overlooking the
Mississippi River; but Manhattan Island is the only place in which I
feel sure of making a living and there I intend to pitch my tent.
"Furthermore, in going east, I shall be joining a movement which is as
typical of my generation as my father's pioneering was of his In those
days the forces of the nation were mainly centrifugal; youth sought the
horizon Now it is centripetal Think of the mid-western writers and
artists, educators and business men who have taken the back-trail.
Howells and John Hay began it Edward Eggleston, Mark Twain dud
Bret Haite followed. For fifty years our successful painters and
illustrators have headed east. I am now definitely one of this band I
shall have some trouble in getting Zulime to pull up stakes in Chicago,
and the children will miss the old home, but its abandonment must
come sooner or later I can't have them growing up*here in Woodlawn
West Salem is no longer American in the old sense and will soon be a
narrow bound for them a sad exile for me Hardly any of my father's

kind remain."
To all this, Fuller, who as a native of Chicago with a wide knowledge
of the Old World had been its most caustic critic, gave approval "Get
away while you can. I'd go if I could--"
I spoke of the Cliff Dwellers, a club I had originated in self-defence at a
time when there was not in all the city a single meeting place for those
interested in the arts. "See how the literary side of it fades out. One by
one its writers have gone east Architecture, painting, sculpture and
music are holding their own, but our fictiomsts and illustrators with no
market in Chicago have nothing to keep them here. Their sales, like
mine, are entirely in New York. The West has never paid me or
published me and in this period of sickness and trouble I feel the need
of contact with my fellows.
"Aside from these advantages, I like New York. It feels like a city. It is
our London, our Paris, our national center as they are racial centers. All,
or nearly all, the publication of every sort takes place there. To live I
must sell my lectures and my stories and the East is my market place."
Fuller listened to all this with admirable patience, smiling at my
attempt to justify a course I had already decided upon, and made only
one adverse remark. "It might be well to wait and see what the war is
going to do to the literary market."
This question was in my mind as I reentered The Players the next day.
The wax had been going on with ever increasing fury for a year and
war correspondents were coming and going like carrier pigeons
Although mid-September it was still hot and the chairs and sofas were
in their summer linen All the magazine editors were on duty and came
and went limply, but to me the heat was a benefit. My pains were
dulled and I slept unexpectedly well.
On the morning of my birthday as I sat at breakfast with a group of my
fellow Players, Lincoln Steffens remarked, "Garland is the link
between the generation of Lowell and Howells and the writers of the
present." To this Mark Sullivan succinctly added, "And a friend to

both."
It is probable that they regarded me as a doomed man for they were
both very kind to me Often of an afternoon Sullivan would say, "Let's
take a drive " Our driver was always an old Irishman who owned a
sedate horse attached to an ancient low-hung two-seated cab, and as we
drove slowly about the park we talked of the war and its effect on
literature, on the changes at work in politics and a hundred other topics.
It was Mark's chief recreation during the mid-week his breath of
country air.
He admitted that he could not tell just when he would be able to use the
last half of my autobiographical narrative but encouraged me to have it
ready. "Make it personal. People want to know that it is your own story.
You say it was written in the first person originally?"
"Yes, it was mainly in