A Son of the Middle Border

by Hamlin Garland

There was no hint of obligation, however, in the hours which they spent in seeing my brother's performance as one of the "Three Twins" in Incog. The piece was in truth very funny and Franklin hardly to be distinguished from his "Star," a fact which astonished and delighted my mother. She didn't know he could look so unlike himself. She laughed herself quite breathless over the absurd situations of the farce but father was not so easily satisfied. "This foolery is all well enough," said he, "but I'd rather see you and your friend Herne in Shore Acres."

At last the day came when they both expressed a desire to return to Santa Barbara. "We've had about all we can stand this trip," they confessed, whereupon, leaving Franklin at his job, we started down the valley on our way to Addison Garland's home which had come to have something of the quality of home to us all.

We were tired but triumphant. One by one the things we had promised ourselves to see we had seen. The Plains, the Mountains, the Desert, the Orange Groves, the Ocean, all had been added to the list of our achievements. We had visited David and watched Franklin play in his "troupe," and now with a sense of fullness, of victory, we were on our way back to a safe harbor among the fruits and flowers of Southern California.

This was the pleasantest thought of all to me and in private I said to my uncle, "I hope you can keep these people till spring. They must not go back to Dakota now."

"Give yourself no concern about that!" replied Addison. "I have a program laid out which will keep them busy until May. We're going out to Catalina and up into the Ojai valley and down to Los Angeles. We are to play for the rest of the winter like a couple of boys."

With mind entirely at ease I left them on the rose-embowered porch of my uncle's home, and started east by way of Denver and Chicago, eager to resume work on a book which I had promised for the autumn.

Chicago was now full in the spot-light of the National Stage. In spite of the business depression which still engulfed the west, the promoters of the Columbian Exposition were going steadily forward with their plans, and when I arrived in the city about the middle of January, the bustle of preparation was at a very high point.

The newly-acquired studios were swarming with eager and aspiring young artists, and I believed, (as many others believed) that the city was entering upon an era of swift and shining development. All the near-by states were stirred and heartened by this esthetic awakening of a metropolis which up to this time had given but little thought to the value of art in the life of a community. From being a huge, muddy windy market-place, it seemed about to take its place among the literary capitals of the world.

Colonies of painters, sculptors, decorators and other art experts now colored its life in gratifying degree. Beauty was a work to advertise with, and writers like Harriet Monroe, Henry B. Fuller, George Ade, Peter Finley Dunne, and Eugene Field were at work celebrating, each in his kind, the changes in the thought and aspect of the town. Ambitious publishing houses were springing up and "dummies" of new magazines were being thumbed by reckless young editors. The talk was all of Art, and the Exposition. It did, indeed seem as if culture were about to hum.

Naturally this flare of esthetic enthusiasm lit the tow of my imagination. I predicted a publishing center and a literary market-place second only to New York, a publishing center which by reason of its geographical position would be more progressive than Boston, and more American than Manhattan. "Here flames the spirit of youth. Here throbs the heart of America," I declared in Crumbling Idols, an essay which I was at this time writing for the Forum.