Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/431

 ered that the "RAM PANT" letters were written by me—a seventeen-year-old boy with flaxen hair, of whom such a thing was never suspected.

At the age of 19 he married his stepmother's sister—Mrs. Nancy Batte, a widow with a little girl. When they left the Grand Ronde Valley in May, 1877, to return to the Waldo Hills, they had two girls and a boy, in addition to his step-daughter. With such responsibilities at the age of 26, and with only his two hands to meet them, it looked like even his eager and imaginative spirit could not long be harborage for dreams.

He took possession of a farm of 320 acres in the Waldo Hills and for the next 20 years he was engaged "solely in the endless work" of improving it and making a living from it. The only rest he had was the four terms of 40 days each as a member of the legislature, and the time spent in making public speeches.

More than by these brief periods of recess, however, he had a means of escape from the drudgery of his life, something to keep his mind from settling into emptiness as he followed the furrows, something to keep his outlook from being narrower than the encircling hills. That habit he had started so impulsively during a boyhood day alone in the farmhouse in Union County, had now become his daily comfort, his refreshment and his recreation. Twenty times harvest followed planting, he went from 26 to 56, but dullness was warded off, zest was retained, and a man of unblunted sensitiveness went from the house to the barn and from the barn to the field in unceasing routine, because he had formed the regular practice of setting down his thoughts and feelings on paper. After all, the delightful style of Fifty Years in Oregon did not come to him from an unconscious source at the age of 60. Its grace was perfected in a substantial way during a score of years by an over-worked farmer, whose toil it paradoxically increased but lightened. The explanation is in the following paragraphs:

Early in life I found myself possessed of a liking for newspaper