The Clarence Darrow Digital Collection
Written letter from Clarence Darrow collection
Collage of Clarence Darrow at different ages Postcard from Clarence Darrow Collection

Clarence Darrow Signature

The Clarence Darrow Letters

Hamlin Garland to Clarence Darrow, December 14, 1904


Click on the image to view as a PDF. A transcription of the letter is on the right.

West Salem Wis

Dear Mr. Darrow:


I have read your book with pleasure and pain - it is so true - so unflinchingly true and so sad! We all live through the experiences you have so simply told - your pathos your humor come very close to me. I too look back from a "gray world" to a land of wondrous sunshine on the prairie - and last year my father and I went back to our Iowa home to suffer - as it turned


the same disillusionment as that chronicled in your book. Our neighbors were mainly dead - My playmates were stooped and sullen men who looked at me with a kind of elemental questioning of the [?] - Yes "farmington" is worth while and there is a bigger work in you. This is but a first exercise sketch. - Let me see you when I return to Chicago next week - I want to tell you that this is a big theme beautifully treated as far as it goes and it should go farther -

Mrs. Garland joins me in liking the book.

Hamlin Garland

Dec 14
Hamlin Garland
West Salem, Wis.






Clarence Darrow, Esq.

Chicago

Ill.

[M.?] McClung

CHICAGO, ILL
DEC 15
8: 30 PM
1904

Jessie Budd