31

Glad He Lived on Plains

Hamlin Garland, Author, Finds Most Fine
Things Are Rooted in the Soil.

Hamlin Garland, author, who is
69 but doesn't look it, and lives
in New York but writes mostly of
the middle west, is glad that fate
decreed that he should spend 12
years of his early life breaking
the sod and helping his father
farm a homestead on the northern
Iowa plains.

From the soil and plains of the
west is inherited something fine
that is retained throughout life,
he believed.

"Take literature," he said.
"When I speak of American literature
I like to think of books
like 'Death Comes to the Archbishop,'
by your Nebraska author,
Willa Cather. Here is a book
without hero or other factors that
are commonly supposed to be
necessary in novels. The title
would seem 'impossible' to most
authors and publishers. But the
work itself is so fine that the
book jumped almost overnight
into the ranks of the best sellers."

Reveal Obscure History.

American authors, especially
those "of the soil," are writing
about hitherto unknown phases
of American history, and by
bringing these things to light are
adding to the merit of literature,
said Mr. Garland.

As for himself, Mr. Garland is
engaged on "the biggest thing I
ever tackled," he said. It will be
four volumes of autobiographical,
middle-border history, covering
the development of the west. Mr.
Garland is writing it from a diary
that he kept for 30 years. Its
title is "Roadside Meetings of a
Literary Nomad."

Mr. Garland in the early 90's
used to come to Omaha to visit
with Mrs. Elia W. Peattie, who
became an author, and her husband,
Robert Peattie, who then
were employed on The World-Herald,
he said. "I was attracted
to the World-Herald," he said,
"by its fine book page. Mrs.
Peattie wrote the reviews."

Mr. Garland is a close friend
of Gurdon W. Wattles, former
Omaha financier, now of Los
Angeles. "Mr. Wattles," he said,
"was a farmer boy from Iowa,
who came to Omaha and became
a powerful banker and business
man, and accumulated wealth.
Now, in Los Angeles, he has developed
on his estate the finest
gardens that I have ever seen.
It is another case of man inheriting
and retaining something fine
from the middle-western soil."

Authors Go to New York.

Authors, said Mr. Garland,
leave their home states and
towns and flock to publishing
centers like New York for economic
reasons. "They find it better
to be near the market," he
said. "In Chicago I organized
the Cliff Dwellers, a club composed
of men and women engaged
in the five arts. But the
writers wandered away. The
club, with its architects, sculptors,
painters and musicians, and
some writers, still flourishes."