Some of his better sculpture has disappeared. One of his pieces was used by a lady as security for a loan. It has gone from human ken. His study of Woodrow Wilson at Poznan, Poland, was uprooted and no doubt melted by the Nazis in the Second World War. A second artist took the hat off Robert E. Lee on Stone Mountain “because Lee would never wear a hat in a place where ladies were present.” The face as one sees it today was altered in this thoughtful improvement. Much of Borglum’s early work seems to have passed through similar vicissitudes. However, most of what he did throughout his creative years seems to be with us still--statues in a dozen states, small ones, grand ones, but always anatomically perfect ones. If he had never done anything but the Newark Lincoln and the Wars of America group, he would have done enough to put him among the leaders of his art. But beside those and a generous scattering of bronze and marble all across the United States, there is still Rushmore. His own criticism of Rushmore is still the most apropos: “They’ll be a long time wearing that one down.” CHAPTER TWO _THE DIM BEGINNING_ The beginnings of Gutzon Borglum are not easy to trace. Until more than fifty years after his birth nobody seems to have cared where he came from or when. Nobody was much interested in who his parents were or how or where he was brought up. By that time the evidence of his boyhood was far away and hazy. When in middle age he turned his head toward the Far West he had known shortly after the Civil War he saw a past that was exciting, colorful and glamorous. He was lyrical in talking about it and wrapped up in memories of unbelievably noble inspiration. But the oddest feature of his reminiscence is that, except for his stylistic urge, he never wandered far from historic fact. Gutzon Borglum was born in a frontier town in Idaho. His early childhood was spent in Fremont, Nebraska, jumping-off place of the covered wagons, haunt of wild Indians. And whatever hints he conveys about Gutzon, he is probably telling the truth. He was never anybody but Gutzon. He intended, when he sat down to recall his youth, to write an autobiography. But writing an autobiography was just one more task that took its place in a tremendous program of brass casting, airplane design, mountain dressing, sea-wall building, picture projection, boxing promotion, park improvement, old-building restoration, motor-bus operation, horse raising, politics and--every now and then--colossal sculpture. When he died he had written two chapters and several hundred thousand words of notes and journals, an astonishing record, presenting a picture of an old warrior battling for youth against a cynical world. He said in his introduction: