Synopses & Reviews
THE MODERN READERS SERIES ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE, General Editor A Son of the Middle Border TO THOSE YOUNGER AMERICANS WHO WISH TO SHARE IN IMAGINATION THE EXPERIENCES OF THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO CLEARED THE FORESTS AND BROKE THE PRAIRIE SOD OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, I DEDICATE THIS SPECIAL EDITION OF MY CHRONICLE, A SOW OF THE MIDDLE BORDER TO MY YOUNG READERS THE first question which you have a right to ask me Is this Is this a true story My answer to you is as direct as your question, It is. The characters are all my relatives or my friends, and they are described as I remember them. I do not say that they are as other persons knew them at the time I merely assert that they are set down as they seemed to me. They are represented from the point of view of a man recalling the world of his boyhood. I am not con cerned with any other persons judgment. The Garlands and McClintocks and other migrat ing families whose fortunes are recorded in this volume and in its sequel A Daughter of the Middle Border are set down in their homely way of life precisely as I saw them. The incidents are all equally exact. Nothing is added to any event except the color which naturally comes into the picture as the deep-laid memories of my boyhood come to the surface of my mind to soften or aggrandize the experience or character in process of delineation. In describing the tasks which I was called upon to do at an early age I had no intention of awaking pity for myself. I mentioned these duties as a part of the life of the pioneer, a necessary part of my narrative. With all my labor I had a good time, for there were the prairies with their blooms, their birds, and their beasts, and all about me were other boys andgirls toiling as I toiled and playing as I played, knowing no other life and with very little complaint to make of parents or of home. vii To My Young Readers If we were careless of the ceaseless drudgery of our mothers, it was the carelessness of children who regard their parents as in some way their special unwearying providence. It was a great and wonderful era, that era of settle ment which followed close upon the close of the Civil War, and I rejoice that I had a hand in it. I have the graybeards pleasure in reliving the bright world of his youth, and I would pass that pleasure down to the children of the tenth generation of the Middle Border if I could. The patriotism of those men of the West, the traditions which they represented, seem to me to be of high inspirational value in the present day. It is well that the boys and girls of the East, of the cities, should know the ways by which the wilderness was brought to the uses of civilization. It may be of interest and value to some of my young readers to know that this book was many years in the writing, and that many of its pages were rewritten ten times and some of its paragraphs were revised more than twenty times not merely that the words should be the best I could employ but that the subtler shades of meaning might be recovered and recorded. I do not say that I succeeded. I am merely admitting that there is nothing hastily or carelessly included in this volume, its faults are the inescapable results of my own limitations. The longing to relive its scenes and to renew its relationships is the natural emotion of the man in whose world the shadows are beginning to lengthen on the grass. HAMLIN GARLAND TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS WHOREAD THIS VOLUME HAVE you ever read in school an account of a mans life written by himself Probably you have in the case of Benjamin Franklins Autobiography. That inter esting book gave you a picture of times and customs and of the growth and development of a man from boy hood to maturity and success, in the days of our great great-grandfathers, in the days of the Revolution, Franklin was an eastern city man whose life was spent and whose success was won in the great cities of his day, both at home and abroad...
Synopsis
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