hand, and doing my full day's work and more.

At the end of the week I wrote to my friend Kirkland, enclosing some of
my detailed notes and his reply set me thinking. "You're the first
actual farmer in American fiction,--now tell the truth about it," he
wrote.

Thereafter I studied the glory of the sky and the splendor of the wheat
with a deepening sense of the generosity of nature and monstrous
injustice of social creeds. In the few moments of leisure which came to
me as I lay in the shade of a grain-rick, I pencilled rough outlines of
poems. My mind was in a condition of tantalizing productivity and I felt
vaguely that I ought to be writing books instead of pitching grain.
Conceptions for stories began to rise from the subconscious deeps of my
thought like bubbles, noiseless and swift--and still I did not realize
that I had entered upon a new career.

At night or on Sunday I continued my conferences with father and mother.
Together we went over the past, talking of old neighbors and from one of
these conversations came the theme of my first story. It was a very
simple tale (told by my mother) of an old woman, who made a trip back
to her York state home after an absence in the West of nearly thirty
years. I was able to remember some of the details of her experience and
when my mother had finished speaking I said to her, "That is too good to
lose. I'm going to write it out." Then to amuse her, I added, "Why,
that's worth seventy-five dollars to me. I'll go halves with you."

Smilingly she held out her hand. "Very well, you may give me my share
now."

"Wait till I write it," I replied, a little taken aback.

Going to my room I set to work and wrote nearly two thousand words of
the sketch. This I brought out later in the day and read to her with
considerable excitement. I really felt that I had struck out a character
which, while it did not conform to the actual woman in the case, was
almost as vivid in my mind.

Mother listened very quietly until I had finished, then remarked with
sententious approval. "That's good. Go on." She had no doubt of my
ability to go on--indefinitely!

I explained to her that it wasn't so easy as all that, but that I could
probably finish it in a day or two. (As a matter of fact, I completed
the story in Boston but mother got her share of the "loot" just the
same.)

Soon afterward, while sitting in the door looking out over the fields, I
pencilled the first draft of a little poem cal