Her attempt in March 1896 to secure a teaching position in Lincoln came to naught. She marked more time back in Red Cloud. Then, three months later, lightning struck. She received an offer from James Axtell at Pittsburgh’s Home Monthly—a resolutely middlebrow magazine with nothing to offend against prevailing Presbyterian tastes—to join their staff as an associate editor and contributor. E. K. Brown describes the magazine thus: “There were departments devoted to floriculture, fashions, the nursery, Christian endeavor; articles on cycling for pleasure, Angora cats, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the care of children’s teeth.”
Still, this was one of those pivotal moments in a life, determining much of what was to come. Here at last, where the Allegheny and the Monongahela meet to form the Ohio, was a city: pulsing, gritty, prosperous, ambitious. The names to conjure with were Westinghouse, Frick, Mellon, and, above all, Carnegie. Stupendous wealth justified itself in the brick and mortar of libraries and concert halls. The musical and literary life was on a different scale from anything she’d dreamt of. As Red Cloud was too small after Lincoln, so Lincoln was suddenly too small in light of Pittsburgh.
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