238

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 valued more because it brings her into association with clever people all over the country than for any other reason. And her correspondence is of the sort that keeps her constantly in touch with the eastern cities, and that gives to her days a pleasant excitement. Some charming people have been entertained in that little house up the quit Hubbell street, and the gay little ponies that race over the hills with the family phaeton have introduced some distinguished visitors to the Nebraska hills.

To find a life so full, so interesting, so entertaining and--bohemian--for there is no other word for it--out in the Nebraska prairies, has never ceased to be an astonishment to me. And I hope I have not got in any way betrayed the confidence imposed in me in telling something of the inner life of this peculiar home. And I think it would not be possible to mention that home without mentioning also the genial, kindly, generous and most hospitable gentleman who is at the head of it, and whose friendship is worth anybody's winning.

Here are some of the poems that have been inspired by that life out on the prairies. And they go to show that the plains are throbbing with interest for any who have the brains to perceive their charm. But then, if you have learned the art of living, what does it matter what your surroundings are? The spot does not exist o earth which is not full of interest for him who has brains enough to discover what lies hidden there. These poems are but a few of very many written there. And they do not paint the plains any better than have some of the tales written from the same place. There was one little story, for example, of a child lost in a corn field, which appeared in St. Nicholas, which perhaps gave the atmosphere of Nebraska better than any other tale written by the story writers of this state. But here are the poems.

The Corn

When the merry April morn
Laughed the mad March winds to scorn,
In the swirl of sun and showers
Were a million legions born,
Ranged in rippled rows of green,
With a dusky ridge between,
O'er the western world was seen,
The great army of the corn

And when in May time days,
The buttercups gold blaze
[?] like flashed o'ver [?] and hollow
And the pleasant prairie ways;
Each battalion from the sod,
Flags [?] flutter and a nod
Nearer heaven nearer God
Crept to [?] perfect praise.

And when the June time heat
Over all the land did fleet,
The melody of meadow larks
In mellow music best
Martia measures, to beguile
The royal rank and file,
That kept growing all the while
To the sounds erence and sweet.

When the fierce sun of July
[?] relentlessly on high
And in the creeks the water brights
All drop by drop ran dry,
And as from a furnace mouth,
The hot wind of the south
Backed the orn with cruel drouth,
It seemed that it would die.

But the nights benign and blue
Brought the blessed balm of dew,
And baptized the corn in beauty,
Ever fresh and ever new,
Till, in amber August light,
'Twas so golden that you [?]
Fancy Midas touched the bright,
Tender tassels it out-threw.

Now the sweet September's here,
And the plover [pipoth?] clear,
And each shattered sheath of satin
Holds a guerdon of good cheer,
And the corn all ripe and high,
Taller far than you or I.
Standeth spear-like to the sky,
In the sunset of the year!

Drifting Down

Gone the ripple and the rushes
Of the love-song of the thrushes,
Gone the roses in the closes of the garden and the blushes
Of the shy verbena creeping
By the old south wall, and sleeping
All its sweetness in the sunshine of the sleepy summer bushes,
And ever o'ver it all, in a gold and crimson [ball?]
Over mignonette grown tawny, and o'ver grass a bronzing brown
With a rustle and a whir, and a sad and solemn stir.
The leaves are drifting down, dear, oh, the leaves are drifting down

Come the mornings gray and chilly,
Come the nights serene and stilly.
Comes an airy midnight fairy, tracing [?] and rose, and lily
On the window panes that glisten,
While in dreams the children listen
To the swing of skites that ring, and shouts that echo shrilly,
And ever, ever, still, in the hollow, on the hill,
By the roadside where the sunflower lifts aloft a ruined crown,
Like the dear old dreams of youth, dreams of honor, fame and truth
Forever falling from us--do the leaves keep drifting down

Let the summer set in splendor,
Let the summer tribute render
Bridelike beauty, bridelike duty, every charm divine and tender.
To the conquering king, who loudly
All in trumpet tones and proudly
Tells the story of his captive, and her passionate surrender
And with the leaves that fall, in a rich and royal pall.
O'er the rose heart's crumbled crimson, and the grass grown dull and brown.
Let the bitterness, the strife, all the little ills of life,
Go drifting, drifting down, dear--with the leaves go drifting down!

NOT FINISHED

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 valued more because it brings her into association with clever people all over the country than for any other reason. And her correspondence is of the sort that keeps her constantly in touch with the eastern cities, and that gives to her days a pleasant excitement. Some charming people have been entertained in that little house up the quit Hubbell street, and the gay little ponies that race over the hills with the family phaeton have introduced some distinguished visitors to the Nebraska hills.

To find a life so full, so interesting, so entertaining and--bohemian--for there is no other word for it--out in the Nebraska prairies, has never ceased to be an astonishment to me. And I hope I have not got in any way betrayed the confidence imposed in me in telling something of the inner life of this peculiar home. And I think it would not be possible to mention that home without mentioning also the genial, kindly, generous and most hospitable gentleman who is at the head of it, and whose friendship is worth anybody's winning.

Here are some of the poems that have been inspired by that life out on the prairies. And they go to show that the plains are throbbing with interest for any who have the brains to perceive their charm. But then, if you have learned the art of living, what does it matter what your surroundings are? The spot does not exist o earth which is not full of interest for him who has brains enough to discover what lies hidden there. These poems are but a few of very many written there. And they do not paint the plains any better than have some of the tales written from the same place. There was one little story, for example, of a child lost in a corn field, which appeared in St. Nicholas, which perhaps gave the atmosphere of Nebraska better than any other tale written by the story writers of this state. But here are the poems.

The Corn

When the merry April morn
Laughed the mad March winds to scorn,
In the swirl of sun and showers
Were a million legions born,
Ranged in rippled rows of green,
With a dusky ridge between,
O'er the western world was seen,
The great army of the corn

And when in May time days,
The buttercups gold blaze
[?] like flashed o'ver [?] and hollow
And the pleasant prairie ways;
Each battalion from the sod,
Flags [?] flutter and a nod
Nearer heaven nearer God
Crept to [?] perfect praise.

And when the June time heat
Over all the land did fleet,
The melody of meadow larks
In mellow music best
Martia measures, to beguile
The royal rank and file,
That kept growing all the while
To the sounds erence and sweet.

When the fierce sun of July
[?] relentlessly on high
And in the creeks the water brights
All drop by drop ran dry,
And as from a furnace mouth,
The hot wind of the south
Backed the orn with cruel drouth,
It seemed that it would die.

But the nights benign and blue
Brought