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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."

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."