Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/138

 cial dispensation from heaven. A boy of some humble household who showed his predilection by haranguing the cows and chickens, would be dedicated in the ambitions of sacrificing parents to something higher than agriculture, while if he simply drew pictures or silently dreamed dreams or had a mind of unspectacular logic, he could go trudging wearily on behind the plow.

The man who had something of a natural gift could move from one triumph to another. Oratory was the accompaniment of leadership; what the orator said was quoted and repeated, so that a speech spread far be yond the confines of the immediate listeners. The politician, the preacher, the lawyer or even the schoolmaster was expected to be a good speaker and if he failed in this respect it was much harder in those days than now to reach success without it. For instance, Peter Skene Ogden studied law for a while but gave it up, "owing to his harsh and squeaking voice."

The qualities that made men popular on the plat form in early Oregon, are evident in the appraisals contained in the biographical sketches written a long while ago. To give an idea of what an orator was expected to be like and often was like in former times, a few orator descriptions are here lifted from those old biographies. Take first Hon. John Burnett, who came in 1858 to Corvallis, "without money and without friends, a stranger in a strange land":

It is as an advocate that he has made some of his most effective speeces.... His style of eloquence is bold, manly and full of deep feeling; and there are hundreds of men who can testify to the power of his impassioned appeals to a jury.