eir suffering, my pen refused to
shed its ink. Over the hidden chamber of their maternal agonies I drew
the veil.

The old soldier had nothing to say but mother wrote to me, "It scares me
to read some of your stories--they are so true. You might have said
more," she added, "but I'm glad you didn't. Farmers' wives have enough
to bear as it is."

"My stories were not written for farmers' wives," I replied. "They were
written to convict the selfish monopolistic liars of the towns."

"I hope the liars read 'em," was her laconic retort.

Nevertheless, in spite of all the outcry against my book, words of
encouragement came in from a few men and women who had lived out the
precise experiences which I had put into print. "You have delineated my
life," one man said. "Every detail of your description is true. The
sound of the prairie chickens, the hum of the threshing machine, the
work of seeding, corn husking, everything is familiar to me and new in
literature."

A woman wrote, "You are entirely right about the loneliness, the
stagnation, the hardship. We are sick of lies. Give the world the
truth."

Another critic writing from the heart of a great university said, "I
value your stories highly as literature, but I suspect that in the
social war which is coming you and I will be at each other's throats."

This controversy naturally carried me farther and farther from the
traditional, the respectable. As a rebel in art I was prone to arouse
hate. Every letter I wrote was a challenge, and one of my conservative
friends frankly urged the folly of my course. "It is a mistake for you
to be associated with cranks like Henry George and writers like
Whitman," he said. "It is a mistake to be published by the _Arena_. Your
book should have been brought out by one of the old established firms.
If you will fling away your radical notions and consent to amuse the
governing classes, you will succeed."

Fling away my convictions! It were as easy to do that as to cast out my
bones. I was not wearing my indignation as a cloak. My rebellious
tendencies came from something deep down. They formed an element in my
blood. My patriotism resented the failure of our government. Therefore
such advice had very little influence upon me. The criticism that really
touched and influenced me was that which said, "Don't preach,--exemplify.
Don't let your stories degenerate into tracts." Howells said, "Be fine,
be fine--but not too fine!" and Gilder war