Back-Trailers from the Middle Border | Page 9

it. I'll have it read at once."
That night I mailed the novel to him and a few days later received from
him a most cordial note. "My reader likes your work, as I do," he wrote
in substance. "I'll take The Captain but I want a five-year contract
covering the picture rights to all your books I'll have you riding about
in your own limousine within a year."
Confidence in his judgment, joined with my own faith in one or two of
my more romantic novels, led me (after much hesitation and debate) to
sign the contract which his company desired. "This ends your troubles,"
he genially remarked as we came to terms.
My hopes seem comic to me now, but his enthusiastic report combined
with Mark Sullivan's check in payment for the remaining chapters of A
Son of the Middle Border so lightened my financial world that I wired
an exultant message to my wife "Our skies are clearing Don't worry

any more " And in a letter of the same date I explained in detail the
glorious possibilities of this contract and said.
"Mark Sullivan thinks it almost a necessity for me to establish a home
in New York. He thinks I should be in close cooperation with Colonel
Brady in working out the five-year picture program on which we have
started. He thinks I should be here for other literary reasons. We can
now safely count on buying a place here. Put our house on sale, and
bring the children East at the earliest possible moment. I'll have a roof
ready for them."
Such childlike trust in the promise of a motion picture firm may cause
my readers to smile, but I was not alone in a motor of her own. Indeed
she frequently said, "Some day I'm going to own my own horses and
ride in the Park--"
Through all this delicate adjustment between life in our little flat and
visits to the palaces of our friends, I bore witness to the lovely restraint,
the beautiful reasonableness of both my daughters, for while the school
in which they were enrolled was expensive, and most of their
classmates came from homes of luxury, I never heard either of my
children complain of a made-over gown or a retrimmed ha
Occasionally Mary Isabel alluded to the fact that they were the only
members of their class who walked to and from the school, and
whimsically admitted that in answer to the question, "Where is your
car?" she had replied, "Ofer on Madison Avenue," leaving her
questioner to make hr own guess as to whether the vehicle alluded to
was a parked limousine or merely a street car. She remained without
envy and without complaint.
They both had prominent parts in the dramatics of the school and
whenever they played, their mother and I were always in the audience.
Sometimes I was the only doting father present, but that did not trouble
me To have failed of attendance on such occasions would have been a
sad dereliction of duty. That my presence was essential to the happiness
of my girls was warrant enough for me.
They both loved to have me read Shakespeare to them, and with the

memory of Edwin Booth's interpretation to guide me, I was able to
characterize Brutus, Hamlet and Othello in such wise that they listened
with absorbed attention, their shining eyes and glowing cheeks attesting
their delight Afterward I overheard them declaiming some of the lines,
just as I used to do in Boston after hearing Booth.
I also read Tennyson and Browning with them, and our of leaving,
found allurement in the thought of seeing wondrous New York with
Daddy.
She adored Chicago. To her it was a vast and splendid capital,
possessing limitless gardens and lofty palaces. It was a place of towers
whose parapets looked out on shoreless seas and across spaces
inhabited by roaring friendly demons. She rejoiced in the "White City"
and the parks glorious with bloom which no other part of her world
could equal. The snows which fell in winter, the winds which whistled
upon the lips of our chimney, and the moon riding among the stars
above our roof were of sweetest charm to her. To go east on a visit was
agreeable, but to abandon forever this magical world, to give up her
playmates and her familiar walks and walls, amounted to a breakup in
her world.
'What about West Salem? Shall we never see the old homestead again?
Can't we ever picnic on the hill or camp in the coulees again? Must we
say good-by to 'The Nest in the Tree,' and the doll's house under the
maples?"
So she queried and her mother answered whilst I, moving painfully on
lame legs, wrought each