hall never do another book. I have finished what I started
out to do, I have pictured certain broad phases of the West as I know
it, and I'm done. I am out of commission."

Fuller, who had been of this mood for several years, was not content to
have me assume a despairing attitude. "You're just tired, that's all,"
he insisted. "You'll come to a new theme soon."

* * * * *

Movement is swift on the Border. Nothing endures for more than a
generation. No family really takes root. Every man is on his way. Cities
come and builders go. Unfinished edifices are left behind in order that
something new and grander may be started. Some other field is better
than the one we are reaping. I do not condemn this, I believe in it. It
is America's genius. We are all experimenters, pioneers, progressives.

For years I had in mind to write a book to be called _The Winds of
Destiny_, in which I should take up one by one the differing careers of
my classmates and friends who had found our little prairie town too
narrow and too poor to afford them fullest action. I never got to it,
but from time to time I found some new material for it--material which,
alas! I can not now find imagination enough to vitalize.

For example: One morning during a stay in New York, I found among my
letters a note from an almost forgotten school-fellow, inviting me to
dine with himself and wife at the Ritzdorf. The name on this note-head
developed on the negative plate of my memory, the picture of two
shock-headed, slender-legged schoolboys pacing solemnly, regularly,
morning after morning, into the campus of the Seminary in Osage, Iowa.
Their arms were always laden with books, their big brows bulging with
thought. Invariably marching side by side like a faithful team of
horses, turning aside neither to fight nor to play, they provoked
laughter.

They were the sons of a farmer (a man of small means, who lived a mile
or two from the village), and although they were familiar figures in the
school they could hardly be said to be a part of it. Their poverty,
their homespun trousers which were usually too short and too tight, and
their poverty together with a natural shyness, kept them out of school
affairs, although they were always at the top of their classes. To me
they were worthy--though a bit grotesque.

My letter of invitation was from the younger of these boys, and having
accepted his invitation, I was a bit in doubt as to w