To my wife Zulime Taft, who for more than twenty years has shared my toil and borne with my shortcomings, I dedicate this story of a household on the vanishing Middle Border, with an ever-deepening sense of her fortitude and serenity. Acknowledgments are made to Florence Huber Schott, Edward Foley and Arthur Dudley for the... Read�More

January Twenty-second. Dear Mrs. LeCron: In the spring of 1898, after finishing my LIFE OF ULYSSES S. GRANT, I began to plan to go into the Klondike over the Telegraph Trail. One day in showing the maps of my route to William Dean Howells, I said, "I shall go in here and come out there,"... Read�More

This little story is the outcome of two trips (neither of which was in the Bear Tooth Forest) during the years 1909 and 1910. Its main claim on the reader’s interest will lie, no doubt, in the character of Berea McFarlane; but I find myself re-living with keen pleasure the splendid drama of wind and... Read�More

Saturday had been a strenuous day for the baseball team of Winona University, and Victor Ollnee, its redoubtable catcher, slept late. Breakfast at the Beta Kappa Fraternity House on Sunday started without him, and Gilbert Frenson, who never played ball or tennis, and Arnold Macey, who was too effeminate to swing a bat, divided the... Read�More

PIONEERS. They rise to mastery of wind and snow; They go like soldiers grimly into strife, To colonize the plain; they plow and sow, And fertilize the sod with their own life As did the Indian and the buffalo. SETTLERS. Above them soars a dazzling sky, In winter blue and clear as steel, In summer... Read�More

My Dear Mr. Garland:—You have been kind enough to let me see the proofs of Cavanagh: Forest Ranger. I have read it with mingled feelings—with keen appreciation of your sympathetic understanding of the problems which confronted the Forest Service before the Western people understood it, and with deep regret that I am no longer officially... Read�More

This book is a faithful record, so far as I can make it, of the most marvellous phenomena which have come under my observation during the last sixteen or seventeen years. I have used my notes (made immediately after the sittings) and also my reports to the American Psychical Society (of which I was at... Read�More

Sibley Junction is in the sub-tropic zone of Colorado. It lies in a hot, dry, but immensely productive valley at an altitude of some four thousand feet above the sea, a village laced with irrigating ditches, shaded by big cotton-wood-trees, and beat upon by a genial, generous-minded sun. The boarders at the Golden Eagle Hotel... Read�More

Those in the Light Viola Lambert, the subject Mrs. Lambert, her mother Jos. Lambert, her step-father Anthony Clarke, her pastor Dr. Britt, her physician Morton Serviss, her lover Kate Rice, her friend Dr. Weissmann, her investigator Simeon Pratt, her patron Those in the Dark Waldron, her father McLeod, her "control" Waltie, her poltergeist Jennie Pratt,... Read�More

AFTER the appointment with Miss Merival reached him (through the hand of her manager), young Douglass grew feverishly impatient of the long days which lay between. Waiting became a species of heroism. Each morning he reread his manuscript and each evening found him at the theatre, partly to while away the time, but mainly in... Read�More

Winter in the upper heights of the Bear Tooth Range is a glittering desolation of snow with a flaming blue sky above. Nothing moves, nothing utters a sound, save the cony at the mouth of the spiral shaft, which sinks to his deeply buried den in the rocks. The peaks are like marble domes, set... Read�More

Harold was about ten years of age when his father, the Rev. Mr. Excell, took the pastorate of the First Church in Rock River. Many of the people in his first congregation remarked upon "the handsome lad." The clear brown of his face, his big yellow-brown eyes, his slender hands, and the grace of his... Read�More

The meeting of true lovers' eyes Seems wrought of chance; and yet Perhaps the same grim law abides Therein as when the dead one lies Low in the grave, and memory chides, And with hot tears love's lids are wet. She was in the box; he was far above in the gallery. He looked down... Read�More

Rose was an unaccountable child from the start. She learned to speak early and while she did not use "baby-talk" she had strange words of her own. She called hard money "tow" and a picture "tac," names which had nothing to do with onomatop[oe]ia though it seemed so in some cases. Bread and milk she... Read�More

TO WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, THE FOREMOST HISTORIAN OF OUR COMMON LIVES AND THE MOST VITAL FIGURE IN OUR LITERATURE, I DEDICATE THIS STUDY OF THE GREAT MIDDLE WEST, ITS CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND LANDSCAPE. In this story of "A Spoil of Office" it was my intention to treat life as it would present itself to a... Read�More

My cabin cowers in the pathless sweep Of the terrible northern blast; Above its roof the wild clouds leap And shriek as they hurtle past. The snow-waves hiss along the plain, Like spectral wolves they stretch and strain And race and ramp—with hissing beat, Like stealthy tread of myriad feet, I hear them pass; upon... Read�More

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 The main-travelled road in the West (as everywhere) is hot and dusty... Read�More