Elder Conklin and Other Stories — Key Ideas to Explore

Dialogue as a Map of Desire and Deception

In the excerpt from "Elder Conklin," Harris uses dialogue to reveal character and motive with remarkable economy. When Miss Loo Conklin accuses Bancroft of asking Jessie Stevens to a dance, his response is immediate and heated: "I certainly didn't ask her." The exchange is built on a misunderstanding fueled by a third party's lie—Seth Stevens. Harris does not simply report the conflict; he dramatizes it through the characters' word choices. Loo's phrase "I didn't give him the mitten" requires Bancroft to ask for clarification, highlighting the cultural gap between them. Later, when she repeats "'Afraid,' as if the word stung her," the narrator notes her physical reaction, linking speech to bodily response. This technique recurs in other stories: in the second excerpt, the Reverend John P. Letgood composes a letter with careful attention to alliteration and tone, revealing his vanity and self-deception. Harris thus makes dialogue and internal monologue a primary tool for exposing the gap between what characters say and what they feel.

The Landscape as Emotional Mirror

Harris frequently uses setting to reflect or contrast with his characters' inner states. In the opening of "Elder Conklin," the description of the prairie at sunset—"the sun was sinking, a ball of orange fire against the rose mist of the sky"—creates a serene backdrop that belies the tension between Bancroft and Loo. The house stands on the crest of a roll in the prairie, a position that suggests visibility and exposure, much like the characters' own vulnerability in their social interactions. Later, in the story featuring Reverend Letgood, the weather shifts with his mood: "The day was cloudy; a thunderstorm was brewing, and had somehow affected his temper." This direct correlation between atmosphere and emotion is typical of Harris's method. He does not overstate the connection; instead, he lets the natural world serve as a quiet counterpoint to human preoccupations. The orchard of peach-trees and the creek fringed with cottonwoods in the first story ground the romance in a specific, tangible place, while the storm in the second story underscores the minister's internal turmoil.

The Performance of Piety and Propriety

Harris's characters are acutely aware of how they appear to others, and the stories often hinge on the gap between public performance and private reality. Reverend Letgood's letter to the Chicago deacons is a masterclass in calculated piety: he writes of needing "Divine assurance" and seeking guidance "at the foot of the Great White Throne," yet the narrator reveals that his real concern is his relationship with Mrs. Hooper. Harris notes that Letgood "liked this letter so much that he read it over a great many times," exposing his vanity. The minister's prayer that night is "more earnest than they had been of late—perhaps because he avoided the dangerous topic." This ironic aside is typical of Harris's narrative voice, which remains detached but pointed. Similarly, in the first story, Miss Conklin's indignation at being thought afraid is a performance of pride, while Bancroft's internal comparison of her to "a perfect Hebe" reveals his literary pretensions. Harris thus presents a world where social roles—Elder, schoolmaster, minister—are constantly tested by private desires.

Readers of Elder Conklin and Other Stories will find that Harris's fiction rewards attention to small details: a gesture, a phrase, a shift in the weather. The stories are not plotted around dramatic events but around moments of recognition and misrecognition. Pay particular attention to how characters speak—the rhythms of their dialogue often tell more than they intend. Harris's West is not a landscape of mythic heroism but a stage for ordinary human folly and longing.

That rainy afternoon, Harris’s frontier hypocrisies felt almost humid against the windowpane, each minister’s letter a small, self-betraying sigh. Later, idly, I found myself turning pages of The Little Lady of Lagunitas: A Franco-Californian Romance — Reading Companion, and the same quiet ache of performance—of loving behind a veil—seemed to linger there, gentler, under a different sun.