A Daughter of the Middle Border

Daughter of the Middle Border,
by Hamlin Garland

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Title: A Daughter of the Middle Border
Author: Hamlin Garland
Release Date: August 15, 2007 [EBook #22329]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DAUGHTER OF THE MIDDLE BORDER ***

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Transcriber's Note
This book in this edition won the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Literature in
the "Biography or Autobiography" category. As such, every attempt

has been made to reproduce it exactly as it was printed and as it won
the award. In particular, inconsistent hyphenation of compound words
is pervasive in this text and has been retained. Unconventional
punctuation--for example using a comma to splice two sentences--has
also been retained exactly as printed.
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A DAUGHTER OF THE MIDDLE BORDER
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By HAMLIN GARLAND
A SON OF THE MIDDLE BORDER A DAUGHTER OF THE
MIDDLE BORDER ULYSSES S. GRANT, HIS LIFE AND
CHARACTER
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[Illustration: Isabel McClintock Garland, A Daughter of the Middle
Border.]
[Illustration: Zulime Taft: "The New Daughter."]
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A DAUGHTER OF THE MIDDLE BORDER
BY HAMLIN GARLAND Member of The American Academy of Arts
and Letters
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921
All rights reserved
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1921, By HAMLIN GARLAND.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1921.
Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company New York, U. S. A.
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To my wife Zulime Taft, who for more than twenty years has shared
my toil and borne with my shortcomings, I dedicate this story of a
household on the vanishing Middle Border, with an ever-deepening
sense of her fortitude and serenity.
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Acknowledgments are made to Florence Huber Schott, Edward Foley
and Arthur Dudley for the use of the photographs which illustrate this
volume.
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FOREWORD
I
To My New Readers
In the summer of 1893, after nine years of hard but happy literary life
in Boston and New York, I decided to surrender my residence in the
East and reëstablish my home in the West, a decision which seemed to
be--as it was--a most important event in my career.
This change of headquarters was due not to a diminishing love for New
England, but to a deepening desire to be near my aging parents, whom I
had persuaded, after much argument, to join in the purchase of a family
homestead, in West Salem, Wisconsin, the little village from which we
had all adventured some thirty years before.
My father, a typical pioneer, who had grown gray in opening new

farms, one after another on the wind-swept prairies of Iowa and Dakota,
was not entirely content with my plan but my mother, enfeebled by the
hardships of a farmer's life, and grateful for my care, was glad of the
arrangement I had brought about. In truth, she realized that her days of
pioneering were over and the thought of ending her days among her
friends and relatives was a comfort to her. That I had rescued her from
a premature grave on the barren Dakota plain was certain, and the hope
of being able to provide for her comfort was the strongest element in
my plan.
After ten years of separation we were agreed upon a project which
would enable us as a family to spend our summers together; for my
brother, Franklin, an actor in New York City, had promised to take his
vacation in the home which we had purchased.
As this homestead (which was only eight hours by rail from Chicago) is
to be one of the chief characters in this story, I shall begin by
describing it minutely. It was not the building in which my life began--I
should like to say it was, but it was not. My birthplace was a
cabin--part logs and part lumber--on the opposite side of the town.
Originally a squatter's cabin, it was now empty and forlorn, a dreary
monument of the pioneer days, which I did not take the trouble to enter.
The house which I had selected for the final Garland homestead, was
entirely without any direct associations with my family. It was only an
old frame cottage, such as a rural carpenter might build when left to his
own devices, rude, angular, ugly of line and drab in coloring, but it
stood in the midst of a four-acre field, just on the edge of the farmland.
Sheltered by noble elms and stately maples,