Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/353



T. R. COON: The Hills of Lyle.

, in December, 1882, there was a young man of 21, tall, slender, dark-haired, blue-eyed and grave-demeanored, who had just emerged from a long conflict within his soul by being converted at a revival meeting in the community school house. This young man was Frederic Homer Balch.

From his boyhood he had read ancient history and, with an early instinct for creative scholarship, he had carried this over in his own environment to a firsthand study of the myths and legends of the Columbia River tribes, walking miles to visit a tepee that might hold an aged Indian. The Great Spirit of those people had become as real to him and even more to be believed in than the white man's God, for his extensive reading had included the agnostic doctrines of clever and convincing writers, and until that December of 1882 he had been an infidel.

In that month peace was substituted for the questioning agony of his spirit. In the compensatory evangelism of his conversion, he was not content to be a layman. He became a home missionary of the Congregational Church, serving the scattered settlements on the north shore of the Columbia and later acting as pastor at Lyle and White Salmon.

In accepting the Christian religion he made two great renunciations.