Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/343

Rh status as perhaps the leading Oregon historian a definite status as a writer of creative literature.

The latter book, published in 1877, was called The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems. It contained ten stories, originally contributed to the Overland Monthly and other western magazines: "The New Penelope," with its setting in Northern California; "A Curious Interview," a tale of Nootka Sound; "Mr. Ela's Story," an episode of the Rogue River country ; "On the Sands," about Teresa of Tillamook Head and her four lovers; "An Old Fool," a story of the mouth of the Columbia River; "How Jack Hastings Sold His Mine," "What They Told Me at Wilson's Bar," "Miss Jorgensen," "Sam Rice's Romance," and "El Tesoro," all located in Northern California. They have some ingenuity of plot, and high values of mood, characterization and style, which indicate that she had considerable gift for fiction if she could have had time from history to develop it. In her preface she called the stories "sketches of Pacific Coast life" and said of them: "If they have merit, it is be cause they picture scenes and characters having the charm of newness and originality, such as belong to border life."

The book contained 40 poems, and one feels that she thought better of them than she did the stories, for in 1900 she reprinted about half of them in a separate volume, with additions. In The New Penelope preface she said "they embody feelings and emotions common to all hearts, East or West; and as such, I dedicate them to my friends on the Pacific Coast, but most especially in Oregon;" and she referred to them