ah, that Charles, my former partner in Dakota, had returned to
the old home very ill with some obscure disease. Mitchell Morrison was a
watch-maker and jeweler in Winona and Lee Moss had gone to Superior. The
scattering process had begun. The diverging wind-currents of destiny had
already parted our little group and every year would see its members
farther apart. How remote it all seems to me now,--like something
experienced on another planet!

Each month saw me more and more the Bostonian by adoption. My teaching
paid my board, leaving me free to study and to write. I never did any
hack-work for the newspapers. Hawthorne's influence over me was still
powerful, and in my first attempts at writing fiction I kept to the
essay form and sought for a certain distinction in tone. In poetry,
however, Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, and Walt Whitman were more to my
way of thinking than either Poe or Emerson. In brief I was sadly
"mixed." Perhaps the enforced confinement of my city life gave all poems
of the open air, of the prairies, their great and growing power over me
for I had resolved to remain in Boston until such time as I could return
to the West in the guise of a conqueror. Just what I was about to
conquer and in what way I was to secure eminence was not very clear to
me, but I was resolved none the less, and had no immediate intention of
returning.

In the summer of 1886 Brown held another Summer School and again I
taught a class. Autumn brought a larger success. Mrs. Lee started a
Browning Class in Chelsea, and another loyal pupil organized a
Shakespeare class in Waltham. I enjoyed my trips to these classes very
much and one of the first stories I ever wrote was suggested by some
characters I saw in an old grocery store in Waltham. As I recall my
method of teaching, it consisted chiefly of readings. My critical
comment could not have been profound.

I was earning now twelve dollars per week, part of this went for railway
fare, but I still had a margin of profit. True I still wore reversible
cuffs and carried my laundry bundles in order to secure the discount,
but I dressed in better style and looked a little less like a starving
Russian artist, and I was becoming an author!

My entrance into print came about through my good friend, Mr. Hurd, the
book reviewer of the _Transcript_. For him I began to write an
occasional critical article or poem just to try my hand. One of my
regular "beats" was up the three long flight