CHAPTER I BIRTHPLACE In a quaint, old farmhouse in the lovely state of Iowa, near the city of Dubuque, in the county of the same name, there is a small library containing many old volumes some of which almost a hundred years ago came from a far-off land beyond the sea. Among these is the Good Book, sacred, not only on account of its being the inspired Word of God, but also on account of its containing the family record of births and deaths, the forms and faces of the departed seen only in dreamland. The fourth birth-date of the nine children born to James and Martha Ann Anderson McGee is this one: William John McGee, born April 17, 1853, near Farley, Iowa. "The hills are dearest that our childish feet have climbed the oftenest and the flowers most sweet," and the memories, too, of these scenes are the longest retained. These hills and dales, so richly adorned and beautiful, cannot fail to impress and to inspire one who is in sympathy with nature. I am convinced that our home environs had no little influence in shaping my brother's career, by developing in him the desire to probe into the mysteries of nature and to bring to light and to record her secrets. I am convinced, too, that they placed him more intimately in harmony with her workings and deepened in him an inherent taste for the beautiful. When a building spot was sought on the land my father entered from the government, my mother selected a site with such a beautiful landscape view, that it might have driven to ecstacies either poet or artist. Several rods in front of the house was a semicircle of woodland. It was not in the "dim old forest," that enraptured the poetically inclined Cory sisters, but just the right distance to lend enchantment to the view. Here stately monarchs of the forest reared their graceful branches heavenward, interspersed with undergrowth of smaller varieties of trees and hazelbrush. In many places the semicircle of large trees was edged with wild plum and wild crab-apple trees and to the south was a pond and an open space. Over this pond and the edge of the timber land as it appeared to us, a beautiful rainbow often appeared in rainy weather, and when the days were clear and bright, we could look out of the door of the house in early morning, and see the sun just peeping over the trees and rising in all his splendor and glory. Nature seldom makes mistakes. The Divine Artist is the best we have. In all this grand panorama of rainbow and sunshine, of forest and open space, making such a gorgeous landscape effect, no improvement could possibly be thought of. No human artist could come near doing justice to the scene. It was especially beautiful in springtime and in autumn when Jack Frost began to assert his sway and to leave his brilliant markings and harmonious blending of colors on the forest leaves. Beyond our woodland, hills and vales succeed each other, the hills gradually rising in height until on the banks of the great Mississippi River they break off in precipitous bluffs. To the westward, vast rolling prairies extended almost uninterruptedly to the muddy waters of the Missouri, crossed only by the noble rivers which flow across the state. One of the great delights of our Iowa rivers, rills, hills, vales, and woodlands, was the abundance of wild flowers found in and near them. I have traveled over Uncle Sam's territory east to the "Hub" and west over the Rockies to the Pacific Coast; I have caught glimpses of some of the belongings of other nations, but never yet have I found anything which, to my mind, could compare with the beautiful Iowa, in the way particularly of lovely woodland and native flowers. I have viewed a most magnificent sunset from the deck of an ocean steamer on the coast of California; and as the vessel moved slowly out of the harbor and away out into the deep, blue sea, the soft light of evening fell upon the smooth, placid waters of Humboldt Bay and a long gleam of light from the sun as it was sinking below the horizon, showed the grandeur and sublimity of ocean, coast, and mountain. What words could picture the beauty of such a scene! I have looked with admiration upon the Sequoia gigantia and other trees which grow with it near the Pacific Coast. The giant forests of California and Oregon; the cascades, rapids, waterfalls, lofty mountains, deep gorges, the fauna and flora of the Rocky Mountains have filled me with wondering awe and dread; but all these sights and sounds, and even Niagara's thundering roar, have not impressed me in the same way, nor filled my soul with the consummate joy I felt, in viewing the sights and scenes of Iowa in the days of her pristine splendor. Hers was not the wild and rugged grandeur of the Rocky or Himalaya regions, which is apt to fill the mind with awe and dread, but the calm, peaceful, and delicate beauty that inspires trustfulness, reverence, and adoration. Here were gently sloping elevations of land, covered with nature's most beautiful green and decorated with innumerable wild flowers most varied in hue, most diverse in variety, and in fragrance most intoxicating. Between these elevations, cool and shady ravines wound along, through many of which flowed tiny streams of clear, cold, spring water which gushed forth from rocks imbedded in these little hills. To describe adequately these scenes of nature's primitive, transcendent glories, would baffle the power of human tongue. Iowa's poet, the Honorable Eugene Secor, has composed a little poem about the Building of Iowa, which I here transcribe for it is thoroughly in accord with the ideas I have of my beloved land. THE BUILDING OF IOWA "The plows of the Infinite One, By giants Herculean drawn, Made ready the soil for this garden, Before thy fortunate dawn, My Iowa-beautiful land. "From far away frozen regions, In layers of generous till, The hoary ice-king spread deftly The grist of his adequate mill, For Iowa-beautiful land. "The Gulf with full buckets came flying To water this garden of God; And lo! a confessed miracle An undefiled carpet of sod For Iowa - beautiful land. "The clear, fishful lakes were teeming, "Soft-verdured with nutritive grasses, Ere the plowshares of toil silvered here "But God wanted men for thy buildingStrong men who were fit pioneers To plant here the seeds he had garner'd And sifted through long trying years, My Iowa beautiful land. "They came the brave sons of the forest; They came the picked manhood of toil; They came the best samples of Europe; They came to raise men on thy soil, My Iowa-beautiful land." But they ruthlessly cut down the forests; [This verse inserted by writer] "They planted the school and the chapel, They planted a liberal code, They planted the altar and ingle, They planted the epic and ode In Iowa beautiful land. "Here flourish the seedlings of Progress, Here Law and Religion are in bloom, Here Art and Belles Lettres are budding, Here grow the rich fruitings of Home, In Iowa-beautiful land. "The dear fragrant flowers of memory, That comfort the spirit like wine, |