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A BOHEMIAN IN NEBRASKA

A Peep at a Home Which Is a Slice Out of Bohemia.

A Wife and a Mother Who Finds Time to Turn out Poems, Humor, and Fiction.

It's not very often that a woman is a bohemian --a genuine bohemian. And it must be confessed that Nebraska is not the place where one would go to look for a woman of that kind, and certainly he would not journey all day along the Burlington road, over the prairie, so the tiny town of [liubbeli?] - the quietest place, with prohibition politics- to find such a woman.

Yet, there is one there. Perhaps some night you will get in that little town, lying down among its hills, about midnight. The place will be black as Erebus. Everyone
of the busy, simple-living folk of the hamlet will be in bed. But up the dark, straight street one light will be shining, and it will show you inside - for the curtain is always up - a group people in a room which does not in the least look like the room of a quiet Nebraska family village.

It is lined with books. It has a typewriter in it, and a writing desk, and a jolly big stove, and some chairs and sofas designed for loafing. And it has pictures [noist?] all of the sort you would expect to find out on the prairie - little sketches of clever [?], old engravings, souvenirs of occasions, mementoes of famous folks. There never was a more informal room - never It's a room where you any good things if it is in you to do it There's something in the atmosphere of the place that brings the humor out of you. And when you get in one of those comfortable chairs with a glass of beer in your hand, and no particular care whether it is time to go to bed or not, and the Chicago, New York, and Omaha papers at your elbow, and new books and magazines yet to be cut lying near, and the memory of a dinner that was very much more than good - that was daring and scientific in its way - then suddenly, bohemia has come to you, and the Nebraska prairie with its hard working, quiet living people seem very far away.

The big world of letters is around you, the world of Puck has come to you. You laugh with all those who have every, by laughing, made themselves famous. You feel as if the spirits of all those who were cleverest that ever you have known, had come out with you over the wind racked plains, and were there, drinking beer and laughing, too.

It's the mistress of the place that brings all this about. She is a woman not unknown in this state to those who keep track of such small literature as Nebraska can turn out. Her name is Kate McPhelim [Cleary?], and she is an Irish woman, as her name indicates - an Irish gentlewoman, as her name may or not indicate. I think she was born somewhere in Canada. But she has for a mother an elegant, most carefully reared Irishwoman of the old school, whose manners are an education in courtesy, but who has, within, something of the reckless humor in her, which gives her daughter her individuality. Mrs. Cleary's father was a man who held many positions of high trust in New Brunswick, and who was a great dealer in timber, in the days when that meant ship owning, and pioneering courage, and commercial adventure, and all that sort of thing, and he had a reputation for brilliancy and wit. There was plenty of money in those days, and a very formal way of living, and Kate went to the best convent schools, and has studied French and embroidery, and never knew she was going to turn out a bohemian. Later when her father died, her mother took her over to Ireland, to relatives there, and she lived in places where the traditions of her family would hardly let her speak to another child in the neighborhood. It is hinted, however, that about this time Kate began to slip out to the village lane to play with the baker's daughter and that, at times, she even wrote rhymes, and did other things which showed the beginning of that charming disregard for consequences which have made her what she is.

Fortunes have a sad way of dwindling when they get in lawyers' hands, and Mrs. [dePhelim?] had to come back from Ireland. She took her two sons out of college, and settled in Philadelphia with her three children. There were four children of them in fact, for an old country gentlewoman, brought up in the exclusion and with the protection which Mrs. McPhelm had been, was just about as well calculated [-o?] take care of herself in a bustling American city as a humming bird is to care for itself among [cormorants?]. However, Mrs. [dePhelm?] put her dainty heirlooms around in her little rented home, and continued to read her favorite poets, and to bring up her children in her own tender and delicate way, and she trusted to the Lord for the rest the children, who had found that the Lord [-ld?] not buy theater tickets for them, nor new novels, had begun to write verses and [-arns?] for story papers, and as they all wrote verses with as much ease as a duck swims in water, it came about after a time that the money received began to make itself felt.

There were days of carless poverty, in which no one's heart was very heavy. With mother who was never too tired or too proper to cook a chop at midnight, and who laughed over their funny verses and wept over their pathetic tales, and thought she had a family of poets, how could the three young folk be sad? It wasn't possible. Besides, life was interesting. At [-ght] there was the balcony of the theater go to, if one couldn't afford anything better, and by day there was the fascinating work of story writing, and always she [-y?] family circle, and so time went on, and the little [?] increased, and the [-rary?] work which had been a makeshift [?] for one of them, at least, a fixed occupation. For the oldest of the three, [-ward?] McPhelm, who has been for twelve years the dramatic critic of the Chicago Tribune, and whose reputation is [?] best of that of any dramatic critic west New York, entered newspaper work with the intention of making it a profession. And he is recognized among newspaper people as being the writer the most limpid and well [-ed?] English to be found in the [?] pages of the daily paper. More-[?] he has shown a fineness of discrimination that leads him at the first to estimate the worth of an actor, and his [?], family uttered in the midst of popular humor, have all ultimately come to be accepted, even by the public.

As for his sister Kate, she married. Her husband could not live in Chicago, owing the cruel lake winds, and he came west search of a more favorable climate, and [-sected?] Hubbell, and went in the lumber business there about ten years ago. There [?] four well beloved babies in the house--though two of them would probably resent being called babies. And the old bohemian life is somewhat changed.

But even the four babies, and the care- study of the household art has not put top to Mrs. Cleary's literary work. She [?] romantic sales for the story papers; [?] contributes some of the brightest jokes [?] appear in Puck, she sends delightful [-tches?] to the Chicago Tribune, and she occasionally writes verses. Perhaps she [-uld?] do all of this work more earnestly [?] did not do it so easily. What I mean say is that she has no definite aim in [?]. She does not care whether she "succeeds" or not. She wants to live as happy as possible, and she writes because enjoys it, not because she has an ambition to write. She does without thought care work which slower [?] persons would spend sleepless nights over. And after she has [?] it she thinks no more about it, but [?] it if she happens to want the money anything, and if she doesn't she lets it in her drawer. It is, however, to [?] just so careless of success that it is to come. Perhaps she would write more persistently if there was need for [?] so from a monetary point of view, since there is no such need, and as she everything he wants, writing is taken [?] as a form of amusement. It is

A BOHEMIAN IN NEBRASKA

A Peep at a Home Which Is a Slice Out of Bohemia.

A Wife and a Mother Who Finds Time to Turn out Poems, Humor, and Fiction.

It's not very often that a woman is a bohemian --a genuine bohemian. And it must be confessed that Nebraska is not the place where one would go to look for a woman of that kind, and certainly he would not journey all day along the Burlington road, over the prairie, so the tiny town of [liubbeli?] - the quietest place, with prohibition politics- to find such a woman.

Yet, there is one there. Perhaps some night you will get in that little town, lying down among its hills, about midnight. The place will be black as Erebus. Everyone
of the busy, simple-living folk of the hamlet will be in bed. But up the dark, straight street one light will be shining, and it will show you inside - for the curtain is always up - a group people in a room which does not in the least look like the room of a quiet Nebraska family village.

It is lined with books. It has a typewriter in it, and a writing desk, and a jolly big stove, and some chairs and sofas designed for loafing. And it has pictures [noist?] all of the sort you would expect to find out on the prairie - little sketches of clever [?], old engravings, souvenirs of occasions, mementoes of famous folks. There never was a more informal room - never It's a room where you any good things if it is in you to do it There's something in the atmosphere of the place that brings the humor out of you. And when you get in one of those comfortable chairs with a glass of beer in your hand, and no particular care whether it is time to go to bed or not, and the Chicago, New York, and Omaha papers at your elbow, and new books and magazines yet to be cut lying near, and the memory of a dinner that was very much more than good - that was daring and scientific in its way - then suddenly, bohemia has come to you, and the Nebraska prairie with its hard working, quiet living people seem very far away.

The big world of letters is around you, the world of Puck has come to you. You laugh with all those who have every, by laughing, made themselves famous. You feel as if the spirits of all those who were cleverest that ever you have known, had come out with you over the wind racked plains, and were there, drinking beer and laughing, too.

It's the mistress of the place that brings all this about. She is a woman not unknown in this state to those who keep track of such small literature as Nebraska can turn out. Her name is Kate McPhelim [Cleary?], and she is an Irish woman, as her name indicates - an Irish gentlewoman, as her name may or not indicate. I think she was born somewhere in Canada. But she has for a mother an elegant, most carefully reared Irishwoman of the old school, whose manners are an education in courtesy, but who has, within, something of the reckless humor in her, which gives her daughter her individuality. Mrs. Cleary's father was a man who held many positions of high trust in New Brunswick, and who was a great dealer in timber, in the days when that meant ship owning, and pioneering courage, and commercial adventure, and all that sort of thing, and he had a reputation for brilliancy and wit. There was plenty of money in those days, and a very formal way of living, and Kate went to the best convent schools, and has studied French and embroidery, and never knew she was going to turn out a bohemian. Later when her father died, her mother took her over to Ireland, to relatives there, and she lived in places where the traditions of her family would hardly let her speak to another child in the neighborhood. It is hinted, however, that about this time Kate began to slip out to the village lane to play with the baker's daughter and that, at times, she even wrote rhymes, and did other things which showed the beginning of that charming disregard for consequences which have made her what she is.

Fortunes have a sad way of dwindling when they get in lawyers' hands, and Mrs. [dePhelim?] had to come back from Ireland. She took her two sons out of college, and settled in Philadelphia