"No," I replied, "I'm not going to shingle any more—except for exercise after I get my homestead in the west—but I think—I'm not sure—I think I can make a living with my pen."
He became serious at this and said, "I'm sorry to have you go—but you are entirely right. You have found your work and I give you my blessing on it. But you must always count yourself one of my teachers and come and speak for us whenever you can." This I promised to do and so we parted.
Early in September I went west and having put myself in the hands of the State Central Committee of Iowa, entered the field, campaigning in the interests of the People's Party. For six weeks I travelled, speaking nearly every day—getting back to the farms of the west and harvesting a rich fund of experiences.
It was delightful autumn weather, and in central Iowa the crops were fairly abundant. On every hand fields of corn covered the gentle hills like wide rugs of lavender velvet, and the odor of melons and ripening leaves filled the air. Nature's songs of cheer and abundance (uttered by innumerable insects) set forth the monstrous injustice of man's law by way of contrast. Why should children cry for food in our cities whilst fruits rotted on the vines and wheat had no value to the harvester?
With other eager young reformers, I rode across the odorous prairie swells, journeying from one meeting place to another, feeling as my companions did that something grandly beneficial was about to be enacted into law. In this spirit I spoke at Populist picnics, standing beneath great oaks, surrounded by men and women, work-worn like my own father and mother, shadowed by the same cloud of dismay. I smothered in small halls situated over saloons and livery stables, travelling by freight-train at night in order to ride in triumph as "Orator of the Day" at some county fair, until at last I lost all sense of being the writer and recluse.
As I went north my indignation burned brighter, for the discontent of the people had been sharpened by the drought which had again cut short the crop. At Millbank, Cyrus, one of my old Dry Run neighbors, met me. He was now a grave, stooping middle-aged man also in the midst of disillusionment. "Going west" had been a mistake for him as for my father—"But here we are," he said, "and I see nothing for it but to stick to the job."
Mother and father came to Aberdeen to hear me speak, and as I looked down on them from the platform of the opera house, I detected on their faces an expression which was not so much attention, as preoccupation. They were not listening to my words, they were thinking of my relationship to them, of the mystery involved in my being there on the platform surrounded by the men of the county whom they most respected. They could not take my theories seriously, but they did value and to the full, the honor which their neighbors paid me—their son! Their presence so affected me that I made, I fear, but an indifferent address.
We did not have much time to talk over family affairs but it was good to see them even for a few moments and to know that mother was slowly regaining the use of her limbs.
Another engagement made it necessary for me to take the night train for St. Paul and so they both went down to the station with me, and as the time came to part I went out to the little covered buggy (which was all the carriage my father owned) to start them off on their lonely twelve-mile trip back to the farm. "I don't know how it is all coming about, mother, but sometime, somewhere you and I are going to live together,—not here, back in Osage, or perhaps in Boston. It won't be long now."
She smiled, but her voice was tremulous. "Don't worry about me. I'm all right again—at least I am better. I shall be happy if only you are successful."