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Show VflVCX' W.N.U. SERVICE STSW THE STORY THUS FARl Ames Crejr aaa his wife settle en a farm In Missouri, Mis-souri, wkera Hemer was Born. Sirceay Haaat eknrch, company (or Sinner an4 teer welchhir;. Tire Croyi attended the Omaha Exposition, where Homer bad nil Brit taste ef the entaise. He lnlib4 hlfh seheel ms4 eelleie, then went t New York City where he secured, a Jeh ai coh on Theeetere Dreiser's woman's maca-shio. maca-shio. On a visit home he was flad to lean that rhebe, who bad been bis father's fa-ther's hOQsekeeoer tines his mother's death, was to marry his father. Homer returned to New York and had his trtt novel, "Boone Step," accepted for publication. pub-lication. Royalties were practically Both-tn( Both-tn( on this book. CHAPTER XX The old settlers were going. He nd Phebe would get In the bugy and Join the procession. When there was a G.A.R. funeral, he would put on his eld blue uniform and stand by the grave; then he would came borne and bang the uniform in the closet till next time. He wrote no mere at all. Pheee'i letters always ended, "Your father says to came home whenever yau can." The Inevitable happened. One day I got a telegram. "Your father is tailing. Phebe." No one came to meet me at the deat; there waa no one to awing my grin. But when I got out of the Jitney, Phebe was at the dear ta meet me, looking aid and worn, her yes itni framed in the (aid glasses. "He's been asking all morning when you'd get here." The eld gentleman waa in the earth roam, in the house south af tbo water tawer. In the walnut bed ae bad brought In tram the farm. His knotted, misshapen bands were an the etrtside af the carers. Be kald his band aut ta me and said la a faint valce, "I'm glad ta see yam, son. I guess yau gat In an the :lt. At the foat af the bed, Dext ta the south wall, was the old tin, camel-back camel-back trunk I bad taken ta the university. uni-versity. It was now covered with a horse blanket, and I sat dawn on Jt Els face was drawn, but his eyes were as blue as ever. The same spirit of mutual understanding we bad always when we got together, after being separated, leaped up. AH th questions were about me. "How Is yaur wife, HomerT" "What kind of weather have you been bavin' bav-in' back East?" . It was not long before be began to talk about the farm. "Homer, you've got a good farm there." The poignancy touched me. He was releasing re-leasing his hold on the farm. "Some of them laughed at me when I got it because there wasn't any timber on it, but It worked out pretty well!" A gleam in his eyes there, for now he had the best farm in the neighborhood. neighbor-hood. "Your mother was always awful fond of you." He was not one to pay compliments himself, and I realized that he was also saying this for himself. He spoke of events of years ago ai If they had Just happened. Once a dashy-dressed drummer for a nursery nur-sery had come to our house, driving a high-stepping livery team, and asked me to drive around with him and introduce him to the farmers. For which he would pay my father five dollars a day a fortune. And now my father spoke of It "I'm glad I didn't take It." He bad to rest and I crept out ef the roam for a while. When I looked In again his blue eyes were still open. "I wish you'd pare my fingernails." finger-nails." And now I realized something that touched me. He had never been a man to show open marks of affection, affec-tion, such aa putting his arm around me, as I have seen so many fathers do to their children. But now ... In these last hours ... he wonted the feel af his son. I had sense enough to make the paring of the nails last as long as I could. "I've got my G. A. R. suit hangln' In the closet. I've always been proud of ft." His eyes closed; after a while they opened. "Do you remember the time I bought the buffalo robe for Christmas for your mother?" I nodded, choked with feeling. He wonted to do something for me, as if It was some final fatherly touch. "Phebe and I have a good fenthcr bed upstairs we're not usln'. How would you like to have It?" I explained as gently as I could that people In New York did not use feather beds. "I suppose not," he snld with a sigh. It was not long before he was back to the form. "It's all frco and dear. It's been my ambition to leave It to you that way and that's what I'm doing. Don't ever put a mortgage on It They cat like a cancer." The time enme when I must go back, and I went in and sat on the cnmel-bnckod trunk for tho last time, finally when the moment came, I shook hli gnurlod hnnd. 'Take enra of yourself, Homer." It was tho Inst thing ho ever snld to me. After I had been back about a week, I got word that the end hud ooina. I could not go to tho funeral . , only In my thought' I built a borne in Forest Hills, Long Island, New York ("The Little Lit-tle House with the Big Mortgage" I called it) and wrote two more ping books. I wrote all sorts of stuff, and that's just about what it was. There was my old trouble of never nev-er being able to tell whether what I was writing was good, or not. It all seemed good when the words were flowing; pretty bad when the words were stiff and cold. But I kept grinding away and managed ta make a living. We had more ambitious plans than burning a mortgage, and soon we were about them. Yes, actually n the way to Europe. One of the persons on the ship was Walter Lipp-mann. Lipp-mann. I wrote him a note I would Eke to meet him, and soon I was buying him a drink. How sweet it was to consort with the famous, elbow el-bow to elbow, no looking up and no looking down. And it was not long before we were in Paris. Wonderful Paris I That was the way I had always seen it described and that was the way it was always mentioned by returning re-turning friends. But I had to see it through my own eyes. It was disappointing. dis-appointing. It was odd and strange and it was interesting, but certainly not wonderful Nothing seemed to be logical, and to me the people seemed to be slightly on the demented de-mented side. 1 looked at the French through what were, I supposed, cornfield eyes, but I was making up my mind as to what I saw and felt They seemed aloof and artificial, some- BMBtssaB7 The crooked narrow streets, the yard-wide sidewalks. times on the verge of childishness. Now that I look back, this may have been because I met only the French who came in contact with the public. I did not get into a home where I could meet "the real French," as my wiser and more experienced friends called them; and I could not parley their language. lan-guage. So I had to judge by what I saw. And that was what I have done all my life. I realize much of It has been wrong, but still it was my own point of view. We went to the Riviera and took rooms at the Grand Hotel In Salnte Maxima and I went to work on an Idea for the novel that was ta follow fol-low "West of the Water Tower." The guidebook said Sainte Maxime was one of the lovely spots on the Mediterranean, and the two or three Americans we met said it was delightful de-lightful To me it was Just plain cockeyed. The crooked narrow streets, the yard-wide sidewalks, the nonsensical two-wheeled carts, the mailman carrying his letters In a tin box suspended from his shoulders. shoul-ders. The people eternally sitting in cafes swigging beer or tiny drinks. Such a place was interesting to see, like a pumpkin show, but certainly not the pluce where I wonted to live. Or the kind of life I wanted to live. Dale Carnegie, who was born on a farm a few miles from where I was, came to see me. He had seen much more of Europe than I hnd; in fact had lived there. But when we got down to cases, he felt about It much as I did. I suppose you can't ever get a farm out of a person. For that matter, I don't know that I want to. The part I liked best was ta see how the French farmed. Of course I couldn't tnlk to them, but I walked across their land and watched them working. I must have watched sympathetically, sym-pathetically, for none chased me off. I was fascinated by their market days and, no matter how hard I was supposed to be working, I managed to bo there. Taking pigs to market In baKkrtsI Carrying sheep with their fret lashed over a polel It was pluy farming. Having a manure pile Just outside the house. It was disgusting. Uut when I looked a llltlo deeper and saw the handicaps the farm-ers farm-ers had to overcome, and their poor soil and primitive machinery, my respect wont up. It was toy farming, farm-ing, but, everything considered, tliey turnod In a good Job Often I thought haw I would Ilka to take one of them to my farm and show him the langstralghtstane-less langstralghtstane-less rows, three horses abreast swinging down a black loam field, a whole hill covered with steers, a feed lot alive with shcats. How he would blink. Yet these French farmers knew tricks I didn't If our Missouri Mis-souri farmers had to clop around in wooden shoes and plow with a four-inch four-inch moldboard . . . would we have done any better? In the spring we went back to Paris. The day after we arrived, as Homer, Junior, was riding bis tricycle tri-cycle around the hotel grounds he put his hand on his back and said in his childish voice that his back hurt. By morning he was worse. We got the doctors at the American Hospital, Hos-pital, and they also brought in the best professeurs in Paris to help our little boy. How far from home we seemedl But it wasn't really so far, after all, for five Americans came to our hotel to ask if there was anything they could do. But some-1 times no one can help. He died in that lonely Paris hotel. But in the next room were three Americans we had never seen before be-fore who had come, as they said, "in case we needed them." When our little boy was buried from the American Church, there must have been a dozen Americans there we bad never seen before and who came up and offered their sympathy. sym-pathy. A kind-faced man I had never nev-er seen before and have never seen since, put his arm around my shoulder shoul-der and said: "The rest of them asked me to say they know how yot' must feel when this happens so tar from home." It made America seem very close. When the coffin, covered with an American flag, was taken through the streets, the Frenchmen lifted their haU. That helped, toe. It all helped and yet, at suck time, nothing helps, tor when the big crises came we enter them alone. But same way or other we da stand them, we do go on living, we laugh again. After twenty-two months in Europe Eu-rope we returned te 11 Standish Road. (Item: fourteen windowpanes in eur little house were broken.) It had been a lovely Oing.'but all of our money was gone. One day a real estate neighbor "dropped" in to see me. (On what small incidents does the door of life swing.) I had known him for soma time, and had seen his cars grow bigger and rakier. Now what was I going to do? he asked. Well, I was going to plug along as best I could. Then he asked me about how much I expected to make without quite asking ask-ing It And when I told him without quite telling him, he looked distressed. dis-tressed. It was a shame to see a person work so hard and get so little. lit-tle. He began to tell about "deals" he had pulled off. He wasn't the only one doing that; everybody was making money in real estate. All a person had to do was to get "control" "con-trol" of a piece of property, hang on a while, then sell at a whacking price. My tongue was soon hanging out He mentioned two or three men who, as he said, were playing the game. I began to think of myself my-self as playing the game. There was a piece of property coming onto the market by forced sale; it was an easy way for somebody some-body to pick up some easy money. I had never picked up any easy money mon-ey in my life and now under his hypnotic hyp-notic powers It seemed about time. If I could raise some money and make a down payment he could buy that corner lot for me. The way property was Jumping, I could sell it in na time at a neat profit Why, I could make five thousand dollars! "That's nothing in comparison to what some of the boys are making!" he said. When I told him It seemstd big to me, he smiled pityingly. I'd just never waded around In real estate. Then he told of another man, who, as he phrased It had hit the jack pot. Ho came several times and several sev-eral times I walked across the corner cor-ner lot that was bound to skyrocket He was a bit shocked when I confessed con-fessed how little money I had. Well, writers were simply not businessmen. business-men. Bit by bit It got around to putting a mortgage Cn our house. I would not put one on the farm. I stood out against that Should we, or should we not7 It would be only for a brief time, then we'd clean up (as my friend said), wipe off the mortgage mort-gage and have a neat sum In the bank. The more he talked, the more plainly I could see he was right. But there was a catch. I would have to pay $210 a month interest and taxes, a staggering sum. But It would b ho explained, only for a short time! Then there would be that neat sum. After days of swinging between confidence and hesitation, we marched down and put a mortgage on the little house with the lovely rounded doorway, and became the owners of a corner lot. There It was, when we walked across It oural Kvery Inch of It; well, at least, ev-ery ev-ery other Inch. Now I woidd reelly have t0 WlXrI; No doubt of that (TO P.1C CONTtNtnr.ri) |