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January twenty-second.

Dear Mrs. LeCron:

In the spring of 1898, after finishing my LIFE OF ULYSSES S. GRANT, Ibegan to plan to go into the Klondike over the Telegraph Trail. One dayin showing the maps of my route to William Dean Howells, I said, "Ishall go in here and come out there," a trail of nearly twelve hundredmiles through an almost unknown country. As I uttered this I suddenlyrealized that I was starting on a path holding many perils and that Imight not come back.

With this in mind, I began to dictate the story of my career up to thattime. It was put in the third person but it was my story and the storyof my people, the Garlands and the McClintocks. This manuscript, crudeand hasty as it was, became the basis of A SON OF THE MIDDLE BORDER. Itwas the beginning of a four-volume autobiography which it has taken mefifteen years to write. As a typical mid-west settler I felt that thehistory of my family would be, in a sense, the chronicle of the era ofsettlement lying between 1840 and 1914. I designedly kept it intimateand personal, the joys and sorrows of a group of migrating families. Ofthe four books, Volume One, THE TRAIL MAKERS, is based upon my memory ofthe talk around a pioneer fireside. The other three volumes are as trueas my own memory can make them.

Hamlin Garland

A SON OF THE MIDDLE BORDER

A SON OF THE MIDDLE BORDER

by

Hamlin Garland

GROSSET & DUNLAP   —   Publishers
by arrangement with
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1914 and 1917
By P. F. COLLIER & SON

Copyright, 1917
By HAMLIN GARLAND

Set up and electrotyped. Published August, 1917. Reprinted
March, 1925, December, 1925. Reissued, January, 1927,
February, 1928.

[Pg v]

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