Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/354

318 To write books was what he had wanted to do from early boyhood. As he grew older his ambition did not fade out or merely linger in dreamy longing. He fixed upon the subject for the literature that he would produce and that subject was the Northwestern Indians.

At Goldendale and at Lyle he had lived in a frontier farmhouse of hewn logs, with a huge stone fireplace that furnished light as well as heat. Part of the summer provisioning against the coming of the long winter evenings was a big collection of pine knots. "One of these when thrown on a bed of coals would blaze into a brilliant light that flooded the room, dying down into a twilight glow."

By such an illumination the dark-haired, blue-eyed young man, in the period of his unbelief, had written a novel. It was called Wallulah. He had spent weeks and months upon it. He wrote it after long labor in the fields. He wrote it after rowing forth and back across the Columbia and ten hours work with pick and shovel on the Oregon Railway & Navigation line, then being built along the south shore. His father had been a school teacher and did not condemn such literary ardor as foolish, or place a veto upon it. His mother, though shocked at its dark philosophy, did not interfere with its progress. And his little sister, seeing how much the pile of penciled foolscap meant to him, and having or needing no other reason, looked upon the thickening manuscript as a precious treasure.

Now, Wallulah was an agnostic novel. After his conversion he appeared upon the hearthstone with it in his hands and, to the horror of the household, cast it into the fire. His orthodox mother, who had suffered