Sword and Pen

An American biography published during its subject's lifetime. John Algernon Owens tells the life of Willard Glazier, born into a modest family in New York State: a childhood on the farm, years as a schoolteacher, then the Civil War in the Union cavalry, capture, prison and escape. Having become a successful author, Glazier crosses the United States on horseback, then travels by canoe down the Mississippi, whose true source he claims to have found, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. An admiring portrait, rich in letters and articles from the period.