worst of it rested in the fact
that the landless seemed willing to be robbed for the pleasure of those
who could not even dissipate the wealth which rolled in upon them in
waves of unearned rent.

And yet, much as I felt this injustice and much as the city affected me,
I could not put it into fiction. "It is not my material," I said. "My
dominion is the West."

Though at ease, I had no feeling of being at home in this tumult. I was
only stopping in it in order to be near the Hernes, my brother, and
Howells. The Georges, whom I had come to know very well, interested me
greatly and often of an evening I went over to the East Side, to the
unpretentious brick house in which The Prophet and his delightful family
lived. Of course this home was doctrinaire, but then I liked that
flavor, and so did the Hernes, although Katharine's keen sense of humor
sometimes made us all seem rather like thorough-going cranks--which we
were.

In the midst of our growing security and expanding acquaintanceship, my
brother and I often returned to the problem of our aging parents.

My brother was all for bringing them east but to this I replied, "No,
that is out of the question. The old pioneer would never be happy in a
city."

"We could buy a farm over in Jersey."

"What would he do there? He would be among strangers and in strange
conditions.--No, the only solution is to get him to go back either to
Iowa or to Wisconsin. He will find even that very hard to do for it
will seem like failure but he must do it. For mother's sake I'd rather
see him go back to the LaCrosse valley. It would be a pleasure to visit
them there."

"That is the thing to do," my brother agreed. "I'll never get out to
Dakota again."

The more I thought about this the lovelier it seemed. The hills, the
farmhouses, the roads, the meadows all had delightful associations in my
mind, as I knew they must have in my mother's mind and the idea of a
regained homestead in the place of my birth began to engage my thought
whenever I had leisure to ponder my problem and especially whenever I
received a letter from my mother.

There was a certain poetic justice in the return of my father and mother
to the land from which they had been lured a quarter of a century
before, and I was willing to make any sacrifice to bring it about. I
take no credit for this, it was a purely selfish plan, for so long as
they were alone out there on the plain my own life must continue to be
troub