Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/355

 because of the skeptical beliefs and theories the book contained, protested in vain against its destruction. His little sister "sobbed and cried as the flames curled around the leaves and reduced them to ashes." The narrow standards of that day made him think it would be sacrilege to write stories while preaching the gospel, and a zealot's duty was upon him to purge his soul of the atheism of his novel. The artist in him was in anguish as crisp and scarlet segments of the burning foolscrap were sucked upward in the draft of the chimney, but he stood stubbornly by and watched it perish.

This was his first great renunciation. With the destruction of the manuscript of Wallulah he gave up his study of profane history and concentrated tn the Bible; instead of probing the long, long retrospects of wrinkled chiefs for myth and tribal chronicle, he now looked upon them as souls to be saved; he pulled out by its deep roots the writing ambition which had persisted through adolescence when other boys were having transient desires for many occupations. He was not an Indian giver—nobody heard him say so if he ever repented of this sacrifice of Wallulah to God and church, but nearly fifty years later one indignantly wants to be apostate for him. Here was the most gifted novelist the Oregon country has produced in a century of settlement, and only the subsequent rebound of his own instinctive genius kept the creative riches within him from being completely smothered and extinguished.

This was his first great renunciation. He was yet to make another.