he aroused memories of my youthful world a respite from the
dull grind of my present.

My duties as head of the Cliff Dwellers and as Secretary of The Theater
Society tended to keep me in Chicago. My lecture engagements became
fewer and I dropped out or Eastern Club life, retaining only long
distance connection with the world of Arts and Letters. In losing touch
with my fellows something vital had gone out of me.

In spite of all my former protestations, the city began to take on the
color of Henry Fuller's pessimism. My youthful faith in Chicago's future
as a great literary center had faded into middle-aged doubt. One by one
its writers were slipping away to Manhattan. The Midland seemed farther
away from publishers than ever, "The current is all against us,"
declared Fuller.

As a man of fifty-two I found myself more and more discordant with my
surroundings. With sadness I conceded that not in my time would any
marked change for the better take place. "Such as Chicago now is, so it
will remain during my life," I admitted to Fuller.

"Yes, if it doesn't get worse," was his sad reply.

I would have put my Woodlawn house on sale in 1912 had it not been for
my father's instant protest. "Don't take Zulime and the children so far
away," he pleaded. "If you move to New York I shall never see any of you
again. Stay where you are. Wait till I am 'mustered out'--it won't be
long now."

There was no resisting this appeal. With a profound sense of what Zulime
and the children meant to him, I gave up all thought of going East and
settled back into my groove. "We will remain where we are so long as
father lives," I declared to my friends.

My wife, who had perceived with alarm my growing discontent with
Chicago, was greatly relieved by this decision. To her the thought of
migration even to the North Side was disturbing, for it would break her
close connection with the circle whose center was in her brother's
studio. I am not seeking to excuse my recreancy to The Middle West; I am
merely stating it as a phase of literary history, for my case is
undoubtedly typical of many other writers who turned their faces
eastward.

The plain truth is I had reached an age where I no longer cared to
pioneer even in a literary sense. Desirous of the acceptances proper to
a writer with gray hair and a string of creditable books, I wished to go
where honor waited. I craved a place as a man of letters. That my powers
were deteriorating in th