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Garland met most of the big literary men of his day, liked most of them. William Dean Howells was his close friend. James A. Herne, actor-author of onetime famed play, Shore Acres, was another. Garland was one of the discoverers of Stephen Crane; he admired Crane's genius, deprecated his habits, gave him many an ill-received lecture. He venerated Walt Whitman and was indignant at the squalor of his Camden surroundings. Mark Twain, James Whitcomb Riley, Eugene Field, John Burroughs, Edward MacDowell, James M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, Bernard Shaw, Israel Zangwill, Henry James —he knew them all. On a visit to England, onetime Pitcher Garland met Cricketer Conan Doyle. Each upheld his favorite game: Doyle politely doubted the possibility of throwing a curve. Garland pitched a cricket ball at him, convinced him.
Garland's sense of humor, robust if not very uproarious, is strong enough to include himself. When he was a young man still trying to pierce the carapace of Boston, he overheard someone saying of him, " 'He's a diamond in the rough,' a fact which I myself dimly appreciated." Several times Garland met famed Humorist Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley), but "he was very serious in his talks with me, perhaps because he felt something depressing in me. We discussed weighty things most weightily."
Author Hamlin Garland, 70, has a white mustache, a mane of white hair, a good-natured expression. He married (1899) Zulime Taft, sister of Sculptor Lorado Taft. They have two daughters. The Garlands live in Manhattan. Other books: Trail Makers of the Middle Border, A Son of the Middle Border, A Daughter of the Middle Border, Back Trailers of the Middle Border.
*New books are news. Unless otherwise designated, all books reviewed in TIME were published within the fortnight. TIME readers may obtain any book of any U. S. publisher by sending check or money-order to cover regular retail price ($5 if price is unknown, change to be remitted) to Ben Boswell of TIME, 205 East 42nd St., New York City.