Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE Because his are initials to conjure with, I quote F. P. A. (Franklin P. Adams, of the New York Tribune) to introduce the author of God's Puppets, short long-stories telling of life—men, women, and their ways—in Kansas: "Fiction in America recovers from its blight When I read a small-town story by Old Bill White. . . ." Yet Mr. White is ignored by those who write critically in books concerning what is euphemistically termed American Literature. For all that, Mr. White is (as Mr. Francis Hackett has said, as In the Heart of a Fool proves) an artist with words, a creator of characters that live without undue manipulation or help from their creator. And he is as naive and simple as a child. When asked for the story of his life, he was quite taken aback. "I would rather you would judge from my books," he said. "Every writer has a multiple personality and his characters represent the various faces of his life. You can get the dates from Who's Who; you can get something from my picture"—that of a bucolic Westerner, a hog-raiser—"but not much. Iam willing to be judged by my books. I suppose that is the only way I can get myself across the chasm from one human being to another who is out of eye reach ... I may possibly be in New York"—he sailed for Europe early in December to attend the Peace Conference as a reporter, and to become one of our delegates to the meeting with the Russian leaders scheduled for Prince's Island—"I may possibly be in New York and if you could come up there, I should be pleased to talk the arm off of you, if you will let me. But for the life of me I cannot see how I can make any headway through the written page"—this, mind you, from the man who wrote The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me, autobiography such as the mo...