"I was born on a farm in Union County, Iowa, near the boundary of the then Dakota Territory. Like most boys bred and raised in an atmosphere of eighteen hours of work out of twenty-four, I matured early. At twelve I was a useful citizen, at fifteen I was to all practical purposes a man,--did a man's work whatever the need. In this capacity I was alternately farmer, rancher, cattleman. Something prompted me to explore a university and I went to Iowa, where for six years I vibrated between the collegiate, dental, and medical departments. After graduating from the dental in 1898 I drifted to Sioux Falls and began to practise my profession. As the years passed the roots sank deeper and I am still here. "Work? My writing is done entirely at night. The waiting-room,--the plum-tree,--requires vigorous shaking in the daytime. After dinner,--I have a den, telephone-proof, piano-proof, friend-proof. What transpires therein no one knows because no one has ever seen. "Recreation? I have a mania, by no means always gratified,--to be out of doors. Once each summer 'the Lady' and I go somewhere for a time,--and forget it absolutely. In this way we've been able to travel a bit. We,--again 'the Lady' and I,--steal an hour when we can, and drive a gasoline car, keeping within the speed laws when necessary. Once each Fall, when the first frost shrivels the corn-stalk and when, if you chance to be out of doors after dark you hear, away up overhead, invisible, the accelerating, throbbing, diminishing purr of wings that drives the sportsman mad,--the town knows me no more." Every novel may have a happy close, but a real life's story has but one inevitable ending,--Death. And to "the Lady" has been left the sorrowful task of writing "Finis" across the final page. January 29, 1909, he died at his home in Sioux Falls after a brief illness. But thirty-one years of age, he had won a place in literature so gratifying that one might well rest content with a recital of his accomplishments. But his youth suggests a tale that is only partly told and the conjecture naturally arises,--"What success might he not have won?" Five novels, "Ben Blair," "Where the Trail Divides," "The Dissolving Circle," "The Quest Eternal," and "The Dominant Dollar," besides magazine articles, and a number of short stories (many of them appearing in this volume) were all written in the space of eight years' time, and, as he said, were entirely produced after nightfall.