Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/139

 In another line of work, there was Brother C. C. Riley, Oregon immigrant of 1853, who was pastor of the Baptist churches at Lacreole, Union, Yamhill, Shiloh and French Prairie:

Of all the ministers that I have had the good pleasure to labor with or listen to, he was the ablest in exhortation I ever heard; highly poetical in his flights of oratory.

Even Moses, an Indian chief, could break down the prejudices against his race by the hallowed gift of speech and oratorical looks:

He is now fifty years old.... Aside from the uncanny and searching look of his restless eyes, he is almost the perfection of barbarous beauty.... On account of his oratorical ability and majestic mien, he has often been called the Webster of the Columbia.

Marion Francis Mulkey, of Portland, came to Oregon in 1847 as a boy and later went east to Yale with J. W. Johnson, who became the first president of the University of Oregon. But even the restraints of a Yale training were sometimes broken through:

As a speaker he was logical, and kept his point in constant view, compelling the attention of the jury, and convincing them to the full extent of his premises. While usually cool and unemotional, he was capable of breaking into passages of deep feeling and eloquence.

The nature of the situation when there were two well-known orators on the platform, opposed to each other in tense and dramatic debate, has been described by a reporter, perhaps by the editor himself, in anything but a non-partisan way, in the State Journal, Eugene City, May 28, 1864:

Last Saturday a large crowd assembled in the court house to hear the ex-Senator and secession candidate for the Vice Presidency, Joe Lane. Gov. Gibbs, being present, was per-