Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/401

 wards editor of the San Francisco Argonaut, who received his early newspaper training under Harvey W. Scott:

"Writing was not to Mr. Scott a natural gift. His propensity was to thought rather than to expression. He had nothing of the light and easy grace, in the making of phrases, which, with many, renders the operation of writing little more than pastime. Literally he forged his matter into form, and if the form was always fine it was made less so by instinctive art than by unremitting labors. With many writers ... the very process of expression oftentimes inspires and shapes the thought. With Mr. Scott the thought always dominated the expression. I question if he ever wrote a careless sentence in his life. Every utterance was first considered carefully, then—often very slowly—hammered into shape....

I have said that Mr. Scott was not by nature a writer; and, truth to tell, he was a bit contemptuous of those who were. He had a sneering phrase which he often applied to easy, graceful, purposeless work. "Feeble elegance," was his characterization of all such.... Oftentimes not only his desk, but the floor about him, would be littered by sheets of paper written over but rejected. He detested slovenliness in the form of a manuscript, and would laboriously erase words, phrases and whole sentences and rewrite over the space thus regained. His thought was definite, but he made serious work of getting it into form; and he never shirked any labor to this end, although to the end of his life it was always a labor."

Confirmation of this style by hard work, was given by Chester Rowell, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, in his address at the unveiling of the Scott statue:

It is curious that so facile a reader should have been so laborious a writer, but all Mr. Scott's associates so describe him. Not that what he wrote was hard to read. On the con-