The whole panorama of western settlement and its city building unrolled before me, as Charles L. Hutchinson, President of the Art Institute, rose in his place, and in the name of the most aspiring of Chicago's men and women, welcomed the members of the American Academy and the National Institute as representatives of American Art and American Literature. Once again and for the moment our city became a capital in something like the character of Boston a generation before. This conception was illusory, of course, but we permitted ourselves the illusion and accepted the praise which our visitors showered upon us with a belief that we had gained, at last, a recognized place in the Nation's esthetic history.
During the weeks of preparation for this event I had been happy and content, but a few days later, after the clubs had fallen back to their normal humdrum level I acknowledged with a sense of hopeless weariness that our huge city had a long way to go before it could equal the small Boston of Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, and Howells. My desire to rejoin my fellows in New York was intensified. "As there is only one London for England so there is only one New York for America."
All through the autumn of 1913 I ground away at my story of the Middle Border, conscious of the fact that—in a commercial sense—I was wasting my time, for several of my editorial friends had assured me of that fact—but each morning as I climbed to my study I forgot my drab surroundings. Closing the door of the bitter present and turning my back on the stormy future I relived my audacious youth and dreamed of the brave days of old.
Thanksgiving Day in West Salem was misty, dark and still, but the children—bless their shining faces—regarded it as just the right kind of weather for our festival. They were up early and running of errands for their mother who was chief cook. Our only guests were three lonely old women, and it gave me a pang of pity for the children who were forced thus to tolerate a group of gray-heads to whom life was a closing, mournful dirge. Happily, my daughters had the flame of invincible youth in their blood and danced and sang as if the world were new and wholly beautiful, which it was, to them.
Dear little daughters! They didn't know that Daddy was worried about his future and theirs, and no sooner were we back in our Chicago home than they began to look away toward Christmas. "Poppie!"—Mary Isabel would repeat—"only three weeks till—you know what! Remember!"
I remembered. Once again their stockings were stuffed to the hem, and their tree, a marvel of light, touched the ceiling with its pliant tip on which sparkled a golden star. To them I was still a wonder-worker. For a week I put aside my dark musings and rejoiced with them in their fairy world.
Now it chanced that the University Club of Pittsburg had booked me for a lecture early in January and in taking account of this, I planned to invade Manhattan once again, in a desperate attempt to dispose of my rewritten Son of the Middle Border, and to offer, also, one or two short stories which I had lately put into clean copy. Humbly, sadly, unwillingly I left my home that cold, bleak, dirty day, staggering under the weight of my valises, for I was not in good health and my mood was irresolute.
Change was in my world and change of an ominous kind was in my brain. Subjects which once interested me had lost their savor, and several tales in which I had put my best effort had failed to meet my own approval and had been thrown aside. No mechanic, no clerk, would have envied me as I boarded a filthy street car on my way to the Englewood station. That I had reached a fork in my trail was all too evident. The things for which I had labored all my days were as ashes in my hand. I walked with a stoop and the bag containing my manuscript dragged at my shoulder like a fifty-pound weight as I painfully climbed the steps leading to the waiting-room of the grimy, noisy, train station. I was a million miles from being a "distinguished man of letters" at that moment, and with a sense of my poverty and declining health, took a seat in the crowded day coach and rode all day in gloomy silence. At noon I dined on a sandwich. Dollars looked as large as dinner plates that day. "Your only way to earn money is to save it," I accused myself.
At the University Club in Pittsburg I recovered slightly. The lecture having been announced to take place in the dining-room could not be staged till nine o'clock—a fact which worried me for I had arranged to take the night train for the East—and this alarm, this fear of losing my train led me to begin by address while my audience was assembling, and my hurried utterance led to weariness on the part of my hearers. My performance was a failure, and to complete my disheartenment I reached the station about five minutes after the last eastern train had pulled out.
Dismayed by this mishap, I took a seat in a corner and darkly ruminated. "What shall I do now? Shall I go back to Chicago? Or shall I go on?"