With love overflowing and free
And her rivers which run to the sea,
In Iowa, 'Beautiful Land.'"
Among Iowans in middle-life and older, the name of Robert J. Burdette, or "Bob" Burdette as he was familiarly called, brings vividly to mind a genial, sunny little man from Burlington, who went about doing good, making people forget their woes by accepting his philosophy—a simple philosophy, that of looking upon the sunny side of life. The "Chimes from a Jester's Bells" still ring in our ears, though the jester has passed on.
Reference has been made to the pioneer magazine of Iowa, the Midland Monthly, of Des Moines. As its eleven volumes include the first contributions of a considerable number of Iowa authors who have since become famous, this publication may be said to have inaugurated an era of intellectual activity in Iowa. Its first number contained an original story, "The Canada Thistle," by "Octave Thanet" (Miss French), a group of poems by Hamlin Garland from advance proofs of his "Prairie Songs," an original story by S. H. M. Byers, and other inviting contributions.
Looking back over the Iowa field from the viewpoint of 1894, when the Iowa Magazine entered upon its short-lived career (1894-99), I find, in addition to the authors and works already mentioned, a nationally interesting episode of the John Brown raid, by Governor B. F. Gue. Maud Meredith (Mrs. Dwight Smith), Calista Halsey Patchin and Alice Ilgenfritz Jones, the three pioneer novelists of Iowa, were among the magazine's contributors. In 1879, the Lippincotts published "High-water Mark" by Mrs. Jones. In 1881 appeared Maud Meredith's "Rivulet and Clover Blossoms," and two years later her "St. Julien's Daughter." Mrs. Patchin's "Two of Us" appeared at about the same time.
Miss Alice French, "Octave Thanet" to the literary world, has been a known quantity since 1887, when her fine group of short stories, "Knitters in the Sun," put Iowa on the literary map. "Expiation," "We All," a book for boys, "Stories of a Western Town" and "An Adventure in Photography" followed. Miss French has continued to write novels and short stories well on into the new century. In fact some of her strongest creations bear the twentieth century stamp.
Hamlin Garland was also known and read by many as early as the eighties. His, too, was the short-story route to fame, and Iowa was his field. From his literary vantage ground in Boston, the young author wrote in the guise of fiction his vivid memories of boy life and the life of youth in northeastern Iowa and southwestern Wisconsin. His "Main Traveled Roads," the first of many editions appearing in 1891, made him famous. Though the stories contained flashes of humor, the dominant note was serious, as befitted the West in the Seventies in which the author as boy and man struggled with adverse conditions. But the joy of youth would rise superior to circumstance, as is evidenced in the charming sketch of "Boy Life in the West."[ [3] I like to recall the prose-poem with which it concludes:
"I wonder if, far out in Iowa, the boys are still playing 'Hi Spy' around the straw-piles…. That runic chant, with its endless repetitions, doubtless is heard on any moonlight night in far-off Iowa. I wish I might join once more in the game—I fear I could not enjoy 'Hi Spy' even were I invited to join. But I sigh with a curious longing for something that was mine in those days on the snowy Iowa plains. What was it? Was it sparkle of winter days? Was it stately march of moon? Was it the presence of dear friends? Yes; all these and more—it was Youth!"
Before the century closed, this transplanted Iowan had also written "Jason Edwards," a story of Iowa politics, "Wayside Courtships," "Prairie Folks," "Spirit of Sweetwater," "Trail of the Gold-seekers," and scores of short stories first published in the magazines.