A Daughter of the Middle Border

Although my mother met me each morning with a happy smile, she walked with slower movement, and in studying her closely, after three months' absence, I perceived unwelcome chang...

It was full summer when we got back to Wisconsin, and The Old Homestead was at its best. The garden was red with ripening fruit, the trees thick with shining leaves, and the thr...

At half-past six on the morning following our arrival at the Homestead, my father opened the stairway door and shouted, just as he had been wont to do in the days when I was a b...

On reaching my Elm Street home the next day, I was surprised and deeply gratified to find on my desk a letter from William Dean Howells, in which he said: "I am at the Palmer Ho...

My first morning in the old Homestead without my mother was so poignant with its sense of loss, so rich with memories both sweet and sorrowful, that I shut myself in my study an...

Meanwhile, Chicago rushing toward its two million mark, had not, alas! lived up to its literary promise of '94. In music, in painting, in sculpture and architecture it was no lo...

The writing of the last half of my Grant biography demanded a careful study of war records, therefore in the autumn of '97 I took lodgings in Washington, and settled to the task...

No one who reads the lives of writers attentively can fail of perceiving the periods of depression--almost of despair--into which we are all liable to fall--days when nothing th...

After an absence of five months I returned to La Crosse just in time to eat Old Settlers Dinner with my mother at the County Fair, quite as I used to do in the "early days" of I...

For nearly two years I did not even see the Homestead. My aversion to it remained almost a hatred. The memory of those desolate weeks of quarantine when my little daughter suffe...

Although my _Ulysses Grant, His Life and Character_ absorbed most of my time and the larger part of my energy during two years, I continued to dream (in my hours of leisure), of...

As a matter of record, and for the benefit of young readers who may be contemplating authorship, I here set down the fact that notwithstanding my increasing royalties, my gross...

On my return to Chicago, I made good report of Father's condition and said nothing of his forebodings, for I wanted Zulime to start on her vacation in entire freedom from care....

No doubt the reader has come to the conclusion, at this point, that my habits as an author were not in the least like those of Burroughs or Howells. There has never been anythin...

My father was a loyal G. A. R. man. To him, naturally, the literature, the ceremonies and the comradeship of the Grand Army of the Republic were of heroic significance for, notw...

The summer of 1912, so stormy in a political sense was singularly serene and happy for us. The old house had been received back into favor. It was beloved by us all but especial...

Among the new esthetic and literary enterprises which the Exposition had brought to Chicago was the high-spirited publishing firm of Stone and Kimball, which started out valiant...

(pictographs as primitive as those which line the walls of cave dwellings in Arizona) on which she gazed in ecstasy, silent till she suddenly discovered that this effigy meant a...

One of the disadvantages of being a fictionist lies in the fact that the history of one's imaginary people halts just in proportion as one's mind is burdened with the sorrowful...

At about half-past seven of a clear November morning I called my bride to the car window and presented to her, with the air of a resident proprietor, a first view of Pike's Peak...

"Well, Mother," I said as I took my seat at the breakfast table the second day after our Thanksgiving dinner, "I must return to Chicago. I have some lectures to deliver and besi...

In going back over the records of the years 1912 and 1913, I can see that my life was lacking in "drive." It is true I wrote two fairly successful novels which were well spoken...

Confession must now be made on a personal matter of capital importance. Up to my thirty-ninth year I had never worn a swallow-tail evening coat, and the question of conforming t...

To pass from the crowds, the smoke and the iron clangor of Chicago into the clear April air of West Salem was a celestial change for me. For many years the clock of my seasons h...

The Homestead on the day of our return, was not only a violent contrast to the castle in Glen Eyrie, but its eaves were dripping with water and its rooms damp and musty. It was...

In the midst of this period of hard work on _Hesper_, news of the death of Frank Norris came to me. Frank Norris the most valiant, the happiest, the handsomest of all my fellow...

Although for several years my wife and children had spent four months of each year in West Salem, and notwithstanding the fact that my father was free to come down to visit us a...

One night just before leaving for the city, I invited a few of my father's old cronies to come in and criticize my new chimney. They all came,--Lottridge, Stevens, Shane, Johnso...

That night as my daughters "dressed up" as princesses, danced in the light of our restored hearth, I forgot all the disheartenment which the burning of the house had brought upo...