--you can,
but you must bend to your desk like a man. You must grind!"

I didn't feel in the least like a successful fictionist and being a
household word seemed very remote,--but I went away resolved to "grind"
if grinding would do any good.

Once out of the city, I absorbed "atmosphere" like a sponge. It was with
me no longer (as in New England) a question of warmed-over themes and
appropriated characters. Whittier, Hawthorne, Holmes, had no connection
with the rude life of these prairies. Each weedy field, each wire fence,
the flat stretches of grass, the leaning Lombardy trees,--everything was
significant rather than beautiful, familiar rather than picturesque.

Something deep and resonant vibrated within my brain as I looked out
upon this monotonous commonplace landscape. I realized for the first
time that the east had surfeited me with picturesqueness. It appeared
that I had been living for six years amidst painted, neatly arranged
pasteboard scenery. Now suddenly I dropped to the level of nature
unadorned, down to the ugly unkempt lanes I knew so well, back to the
pungent realities of the streamless plain.

Furthermore I acknowledged a certain responsibility for the conditions
of the settlers. I felt related to them, an intolerant part of them.
Once fairly out among the fields of northern Illinois everything became
so homely, uttered itself so piercingly to me that nothing less than
song could express my sense of joy, of power. This was my country--these
my people.

It was the third of July, a beautiful day with a radiant sky, darkened
now and again with sudden showers. Great clouds, trailing veils of
rain, enveloped the engine as it roared straight into the west,--for an
instant all was dark, then forth we burst into the brilliant sunshine
careening over the green ridges as if drawn by runaway dragons with
breath of flame.

It was sundown when I crossed the Mississippi river (at Dubuque) and the
scene which I looked out upon will forever remain a splendid page in my
memory. The coaches lay under the western bluffs, but away to the south
the valley ran, walled with royal purple, and directly across the flood,
a beach of sand flamed under the sunset light as if it were a bed of
pure untarnished gold. Behind this an island rose, covered with noble
trees which suggested all the romance of the immemorial river. The
redman's canoe, the explorer's batteau, the hunter's lodge, the
emigrant's cabin, all stood rela