Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/464

 are familiar. There is a charming old-fashioned one of her at six, very sober, her lower lip forming a depression like slightly folded paper as it rises from the inward curve of her chin, her hair parted in the middle and straight except for a rebellious roach at the front. And there is another one of her at ten, her bobbed hair unparted, curly and disheveled; a photographic shadow still showing a little trench under neath her lower lip and showing now a dimple in the chin; her eyes, which we know were blue, in a clear and contemplative gaze, in promise of a great capacity to see and recognize; and impressed upon the beauty of her childish face was still that lingering neutrality between joy and sadness. Yet she was the little girl who made Dr. Pope's other pupils laugh; who was full of mischief and exploits; who had and has always retained a lively sense of humor.

At 14 she had her first poem published, as she has mentioned. The Oregon City editor who gave this contribution the hospitality of his columns was not wholly kind, for he was an arithmetical realist who could not see the difference between imaginative and actual truth. In a note he called attention to the youth of the author and pointed out that according to the next to the last stanza she would have been only four years old when she experienced the tragic love affair which the verses commemorated. That stanza, exceedingly good for a 14-year-old girl but of too long a retrospect, was as follows: