Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/449

 published in 1900 by A. C. McClurg & Company of Chicago. Some man on the editorial staff of that firm possessed a surer judgment of manuscripts than most editors of his time. Except for him, two of Oregon's most popular novels might never have been published: this book of Mrs. Dye's and The Bridge of the Gods. How it came to be written, how she toiled over it, its long wait, and her discouragement, have been described by her:

"Old Dr. McLoughlin was one of the first pioneers I heard of when I came to Oregon and his life seemed so interesting to me that I began to study him. There were old ladies in Oregon City who had known him and I talked with them. I got all the books I could find with anything about him. I did not hurry, but kept up my work, tracing down every new fact I could hear about him.

After I had gathered all my material I wove romance into the stirring events of the early days. I selected my hero and my heroine and then set about writing the book. It was my first experience. Month by month I wrote, rewrote, revised, corrected and thought. I finally completed the book and sent it to Harper's.

Harper's wrote me a very kind letter and said they would publish the book in their magazine if I would cut it up for publication in serial form. Well, I worried and fumed over that for weeks. I just couldn't cut it up. It seemed to me like my whole life was wrapped in those pages. . ..

Finally I took the manuscript and threw it into a bureau drawer and forgot about it.

I said, "What's the use writing, anyway? It isn't appreciated."

I was completely discouraged. For six years my book remained in that bureau drawer.

It happened at the end of six years that an old classmate of mine came out from the East to visit with me and my husband and almost the first thing he said to me was, "I thought you were going to write books?"

I told him I had written a book and had cast it away in the bureau drawer. He asked to see it and I dug it out for him.

He read it over and said he could get a publisher for me, so I told him to take it along. He left here in January, and in June my book was out. You can imagine my gratitude and happiness."

Her second book, Stories of Oregon, was published the same year by The Whitaker and Ray Company of San Francisco as Volume 7 in their Western Series of Readers. Of this and the hard luck that attended it, Mrs. Dye said: