Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[240] were forming, and I remember when boys in New England used to peep through barn doors to admire the great wagons in which the emigrants were to travel. Then came Mrs. Kirkland's A New home, Who'll follow? （1839). Besides this we had Irving's Tour of the prairies (1835) and his Astoria the following year. The West was still a word for vast expeditions, for the picturesqueness and the uncertainty of Indian life, and not for the amenities of a civilized condition. Aspirants for literary fame were not long lacking, to be sure, but as most of their work was based upon reading rather than experience, it had nothing characteristically Western about it. Most of them turned instinctively, ere long, to the Atlantic coast for sympathy and bookstores, as the Atlantic states had looked to Europe.

I shall always remember with satisfaction the delight with which Elizabeth Whittier, the poet's far more brilliant and vivacious sister, used to tell the tale of how their mother was once called to their modest front door, about 1850, by two plump and lively maidens who inquired for her son. They were told that he was not at home. They