about old
times and old friends. She told me how one family had gone back to New
York for a visit, and had returned very happy, in getting back to
their Western home. As she told the story, the pathos of it struck me.
I went into another room and began to write. The story was one of the
best chapters of my book _Main-Traveled Roads_. I read it to mother,
and she liked it, and upon telling her that I thought it was worth at
least seventy-five dollars, she replied: "Well, if that is so, I think
you ought to _divvy_ with me, for I gave you the story." "I will,"
said I, and so, when I got my seventy-five dollars, I sent her a check
for thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents. I got many other good
suggestions during that trip to Dakota. I wrote poems and stories.
Some of the stories were published in _The Century_, and I remember
that I received six hundred dollars within two weeks from its editors.
It was perhaps a year later before I published my first book. It had a
good sale, and I have been writing from that day to this.'

"Hamlin Garland spends a part of every year in the West. He has bought
the old home place where he was born in Wisconsin, and he has there a
little farm of four acres, upon which he raises asparagus,
strawberries, onions, and bushels of other things. His mother lives
with him. During my talk with him the other night he said: 'I like the
West and the Western people. I have been brought up with them, and I
expect to devote my life to writing about them. I spend a portion of
each summer on the Rocky Mountains, camping out. I like to go where I
can sleep in the open air and have elbow-room away from the crowded
city.'"

LXX

STEPHEN CRANE: A "WONDERFUL BOY"

In 1900, Stephen Crane, while yet barely thirty, died. His early
passing away was widely regarded as a loss to American literature. In
England he was especially admired as a vigorous writer. His _The Red
Badge of Courage_ won him wide recognition as a keen analyst. Old
soldiers who read the story could not believe that it was written by a
boy who was born after the war had ended. By many critics his stories
of boyhood are considered the writings that shall be longest
remembered. Shortly before his death Mr. Crane wrote the following
letter to the editor of a Rochester daily:

"My father was a Methodist minister, author of numerous works of
theology, and an editor of various periodicals of the church. He was a
graduate of Princeton, and he