Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/437

Rh the well-dressed drummers told him "that in Paris most everybody drew pictures, and that some day they'd take me." He finally got a temporary job with the Portland Mercury, which gave him the assignment of going to New Orleans to draw pictures of a prize fight. Then he secured a position on the art staff of the Oregonian, but he didn't last long. Again he came back to Silverton, and neighborly commiseration was increased for his father, who continued to be his "champion against all comers who believed that I should have done manual labor, while he was satisfied if I would only draw pictures." He raised chickens, did odd jobs and kept on drawing pictures. In 1892, when his next chance came, the people of Silverton said goodby to the accompaniment of good advice, one old woman telling him as she shook hands:

Homer, if you fail this time, come home and give up this here making pictures, and help your father work, as he's getting pretty old!

He did not fail. In 1895, after three years on the San Francisco Examiner, he was taken by Hearst to New York, where he became famous.

He was mostly a cartoonist in the eyes of the world, but he was also a lecturer, a writer, a raiser of pheasants and a breeder of Arabian horses. In the fall of 1893 he married Daisy Moore of San Francisco. They had two children.

The Silverton people who felt sorry for his father, changed their moods when echoes of his great fame came back to them and when they heard of the big salary he was getting. His life had been magnificently justified in their eyes-but not in his own. Acknowledging so fully the influence of his native community on all that he was or became, he conspicuously confirms the observations made at various times in this book that complete gaiety and lightheartedness are not traits of Oregon character as revealed in biography, history and literature. He made people laugh with his merry lectures on Silverton, he gladdened hundreds of thousands with his cartoons, and part of the fresh charm