n of the south, the west and the east, are
working (without knowing it) in accordance with a great principle, which
is this: American literature, in order to be great, must be national,
and in order to be national, must deal with conditions peculiar to our
own land and climate. Every genuinely American writer must deal with the
life he knows best and for which he cares the most. Thus Joel Chandler
Harris, George W. Cable, Joseph Kirkland, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary
Wilkins, like Bret Harte, are but varying phases of the same movement, a
movement which is to give us at last a really vital and original
literature!"

Once set going I fear I went on like the political orator who doesn't
know how to sit down. I don't think I did quit. Howells stopped me with
a compliment. "You're doing a fine and valuable work," he said, and I
thought he meant it--and he did mean it. "Each of us has had some
perception of this movement but no one has correlated it as you have
done. I hope you will go on and finish and publish your essays."

These words uttered, perhaps, out of momentary conviction brought the
blood to my face and filled me with conscious satisfaction. Words of
praise by this keen thinker were like golden medals. I had good reason
to know how discriminating he was in his use of adjectives for he was
even then the undisputed leader in the naturalistic school of fiction
and to gain even a moment's interview with him would have been a rich
reward for a youth who had only just escaped from spreading manure on
an Iowa farm. Emboldened by his gracious manner, I went on. I confessed
that I too was determined to do a little at recording by way of fiction
the manners and customs of my native West. "I don't know that I can
write a novel, but I intend to try," I added.

He was kind enough then to say that he would like to see some of my
stories of Iowa. "You have almost a clear field out there--no one but
Howe seems to be tilling it."

How long he talked or how long I talked, I do not know, but at last
(probably in self-defense), he suggested that we take a walk. We
strolled about the garden a few minutes and each moment my spirits rose,
for he treated me, not merely as an aspiring student, but as a fellow
author in whom he could freely confide. At last, in his gentle way, he
turned me toward my train.

It was then as we were walking slowly down the street, that he faced me
with the trust of a comrade and asked, "What would you th