Wisconsin in Story and Song. Various

H. S. H.

GENERAL WRITERS.

       Table of Contents

HAMLIN GARLAND.

       Table of Contents

      Hamlin Garland was born in the beautiful La Crosse valley, September 16, 1860, and lived there until he was eight years old. Twenty-three years ago he purchased the old homestead near West Salem, La Crosse County, and to this he delights to return each year for part of his summer. As one reads his description of the trip to West Salem over the Northwestern Line in his story, "Up the Cooley," he is compelled to see how much Mr. Garland loves the scenes of Wisconsin.

      Among the other states which may share in the right to claim Hamlin Garland are Iowa, Massachusetts, Illinois, and South Dakota. In Iowa he learned what the rural school, the academy, and the farm could teach him. It was in the Boston Public Library that he formed much of his literary style and determined that the material for his future literary work should be the western life that he knew so well. In Illinois he began his work as a teacher and a lecturer. Here he met the girl who was to become his wife, Miss Zulima Taft, sister of the artist, Lorado Taft. Chicago is his present home. Mr. Garland visited his parents in South Dakota in 1883 and took up a claim there. Here he got material which he incorporated into some of his stories, among which the Moccassin Ranch is the most notable.

      The experience in these several states gave Hamlin Garland an excellent opportunity to understand all phases of country life. He has expressed his observations in description of boys' games, the labor on the farm, the work of the rural school, and the varied activities of the rural community. He knew that the work of the farm in an early day furnished as much opportunity for the display of resistance and the determination to use the last bit of strength to win as does the game of the present. The work of binding the wheat after a reaper became a game requiring honesty as well as skill and rapidity. Perhaps no boy of today shoots a basket, makes a touch-down, or hits out a home run with more pride than did the youth of this pioneer life retire from the harvest field at noon or night with the consciousness that he had bound all his "tricks" without being caught once by the machine as it made its successive rounds of the field.

      Hamlin Garland knew the joys of these contests on the pioneer farm, and he also knew the sordid side of the narrow and cramped life of the early settler. He describes both with equal vividness and sympathy. Wisconsin owes him much for the work he has done in preserving pictures of her early pioneer life. His hero and heroine are those ancestors who travelled forth into the new regions in covered wagons, and by the use of axe and plow conquered a seemingly unconquerable forest or a stubborn prairie sod. In his book of short stories, "Main Travelled Roads," he makes the dedication of it to his heroic parents in these words:

      "To my father and mother, whose half-century pilgrimage on the main travelled road of life has brought them only toil and deprivation, this book of stories is dedicated by a son to whom every day brings a deepening sense of his parents' silent heroism."

      To illustrate Mr. Garland's ability to picture the joyous and the irksome in the life of the pioneer two selections are given at this place. The first sets forth the joy of farm activity, the second, the disheartening influence of abject toil.

      

HAMLIN GARLAND

HAYING TIME

       Table of Contents

      From "BOY LIFE ON THE PRAIRIE." Published by permission of Harper Bros.

      Haying was the one season of farm work which the boys thoroughly enjoyed. It usually began on the tame meadows about the twenty-fifth of June, and lasted a week or so. It had always appealed to Lincoln,[1] in a distinctly beautiful and poetic sense, which was not true of the main business of farming. Most of the duties through which he passed needed the lapse of years to seem beautiful in his eyes, but haying had a charm and significance quite out of the common.

      At this time the summer was at its most exuberant stage of vitality, and it was not strange that even the faculties of toiling old men, dulled and deadened with never ending drudgery, caught something of exultation from the superabundant glow and throb of Nature's life.

      The corn fields, dark green and sweet-smelling, rippled like a sea with a multitudinous stir and sheen and swirl. Waves of dusk and green and yellow circled across the level fields, while long leaves upthrust at intervals like spears or shook like guidons. The trees were in heavy leaf, insect life was at its height, and the air was filled with buzzing, dancing forms and with the sheen of innumerable gauzy wings.

      The air was shaken by most ecstatic voices. The bobolinks sailed and sang in the sensuous air, now sinking, now rising, their exquisite notes ringing, filling the air like the chimes of tiny silver bells. The kingbird, ever alert and aggressive, cried out sharply as he launched from the top of a poplar tree upon some buzzing insect, and the plover made the prairie sad with his wailing call. Vast purple-and-white clouds moved like bellying sails before the lazy wind, dark with rain, which they dropped momentarily like trailing garments upon the earth, and so passed on in stately measure with a roll of thunder.

      The grasshoppers moved in clouds with snap and buzz, and out of the luxurious stagnant marshes came the ever thickening chorus of the toads and the frogs, while above them the kildees and the snipe shuttled to and fro in sounding flight, and the blackbirds on the cattails and willows swayed with lifted throats, uttering their subtle liquid notes, made mad with delight of the sun and their own music. And over all and through all moved the slow, soft west wind, laden with the breath of the far-off prairie lands of the west, soothing and hushing and filling the world with a slumbrous haze.

      The weather in haying time was glorious, with only occasional showers to accentuate the splendid sunlight. There were no old men and no women in these fields. The men were young and vigorous, and their action was swift and supple. Sometimes it was hot to the danger point, especially on the windless side of the stack (no one had haybarns in those days) and sometimes the pitcher complained of cold chills running up his back. Sometimes Jack flung a pail full of water over his head and shoulders before beginning to unload, and seemed the better for it. Mr. Stewart kept plenty of "switchel" (which is composed of ginger and water) for his hands to drink. He had a notion that it was less injurious than water or beer, and no sun strokes occurred among his men.

      Once, one hot afternoon, the air took on an oppressive density, the wind died away almost to a calm, blowing fitfully from the south, while in the far west a vast dome of inky clouds, silent and portentous, uplifted, filling the horizon, swelling like a great bubble, yet seeming to have the weight of a mountain range in its mass. The birds, bees, and all insects, hitherto vocal, suddenly sank into silence, as if awed by the first deep mutter of the storm. The mercury is touching one hundred degrees in the shade.

      All hands hasten to get the hay in order, that it may shed rain. They hurry without haste, as only adept workmen can. They roll up the windrows by getting fork and shoulder under one end, tumbling it over and over endwise, till it is large enough; then go back for the scatterings, which are placed, with a deft turn of the fork, on the top to cap the pile. The boys laugh and shout as they race across the field. Every man is wet to the skin with sweat; hats are flung aside; Lincoln, on the rake, puts his horse to the trot. The feeling of the struggle, of racing with the thunder, exalts him.

      Nearer and nearer comes the storm, silent no longer. The clouds are breaking up. The boys stop to listen. Far away is heard the low, steady, crescendo, grim roar; intermixed with crashing thunderbolts, the rain streams aslant, but there is not yet a breath of air from the west; the storm wind is still far away;