For smoother paths than I have trod."[ [7]
Mr. Weaver was president of the Iowa Press and Authors Club in 1914-15 and the success of the famous Iowa Authors' Homecoming in October, 1914, was in large measure due to his untiring efforts.
In that Great American Desert of "free verse," the Chicago magazine, Poetry, the persistent seeker can find here and there an oasis that will well repay his search. One of these surprises is a poem entitled "The Wife,"[ [8] by Mrs. Helen Cowles LeCron, of Des Moines. It is the plea of a longing soul for relief from the "sullen silence," and the "great gaunt shadows" of the "shaggy mountains," and for a return to "the gentle land," and to "the careless hours when life was very sweet." Mrs. LeCron is a prolific writer of clever and timely verse for the press, and is a poet of many possibilities.
Honoré Willsie (whose maiden name is Dunbar) was born in Ottumwa, Iowa, is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, and is a resident of New York City. To her able editorship may be attributed the new literary quality of The Delineator. It was Mrs. Willsie's varied successes as a writer of papers on social problems, sketches, short stories and serials which won for her the literary editorship of that popular periodical. Her success as a novelist mainly rests upon "Heart of the Desert," "Still Jim," and "Lydia of the Pines," all published within the last four years, and each stronger than its predecessor.
A successful art publisher and an enthusiastic traveler, Thomas D. Murphy, a native Iowan, long a resident of Red Oak, is the author of a group of well-written and profusely illustrated books of travel, all written within the last decade, as follows: "British Highways and Byways"; "In Unfamiliar England"; "Three Wonderlands of the American West"; "On Old-World Highways"; and "On Sunset Highways."
Allan Updegraff is a born Iowan whose fame has come early in life. His "Second Youth" (1917) is winning praise from the critics as "an agreeable contrast with the stuffy bedroom atmosphere" of many books of the period, as refreshingly "modest humor," and as having "touches of characterization and serious feeling" which keep up the interest to the close.
Among the native Iowans who have distinguished themselves in literature is Willis George Emerson, of Denver, born near Blakesburg, Iowa. Mr. Emerson is author of "Buell Hampton," and a half-dozen other novels, the latest, "The Treasure of Hidden Mountain," also a hundred or more sketches and stories of travel.
Of the well-known authors who, during the impressionable years of their youth resided for a time in Iowa, the most famous is "Mark Twain" (Samuel L. Clemens) who, after his wanderjahr, in the late summer of 1854, took the "Keokuk Packet" and landed in Muscatine, Iowa, and there became the guest of his brother, Orrin, and his sister, Jane. Early in the spring of '55, his brother meantime having married and removed to Keokuk, Iowa, he paid his brother another visit. Orrin offered him five dollars a week and board to remain and help him in his printing office. The offer was promptly accepted. The Keokuk episode extended over a period of nearly two years, "two vital years, no doubt, if all the bearings could be known." Here he made his first after-dinner speech, which delighted his audience. Here he made a record in a debating society. Unable to pay his brother his wages, Orrin took him in as a partner! A lucky find of a fifty-dollar bill enabled Twain to start on his travels. Meanwhile he contracted to write travel sketches for the Keokuk Saturday Post. His first letter was dated "Cincinnati, November 14, 1856." "It was written in the exaggerated dialect then considered humorous. The genius that a little more than ten years later would delight the world flickered feebly enough at twenty-one."[ [9] A second letter concluded the series! Years later, just before he joined the Holy Land excursion out of which grew his "Innocents Abroad," he visited Keokuk and delivered a lecture. He came again after his return from the trip, on his triumphal lecture tour across the continent. Years later he and Cable gave readings in Keokuk, and while there he arranged a permanent residence for his mother. In 1886, with his wife and daughter, he paid his mother a visit, renewing old acquaintances and making new friends. In August, 1890, he was called to Keokuk by the last illness of his mother. It will thus be seen that, next to his home in Elmira, New York, his "heart's home" was Keokuk.
Nixon Waterman, author, journalist and lecturer, born in Newark, Illinois, and long a resident of Boston, was for several years an attaché of a small daily paper in Creston, Iowa. Among his published works is a comedy entitled "Io, from Iowa." In his several books of verse are many poems evidently inspired by memories of old times on the prairies of southwestern Iowa. Here is an echo from the poet's lost youth:
"Strange how Memory will fling her