Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/466

424 young man. Before she left Oregon City, along in the middle 80's, she married Russell Carden Higginson.

He was from New York, a young man of New England culture and a descendant of the old Higginson family of that region. He was a druggist by trade. By that time Oregon City had been a community of genuine culture, and one of some adornment, for nearly half a century, but its young men seemed provincial in social accomplishments in comparison with him. He is remembered by those who knew him as a man with most exquisite manners and extremely courteous to women but of uncertain equanimity and with a hair-trigger temper. She always felt, according to her friends, that he did not sufficiently encourage or appreciate her literary work. After their marriage they resided for a while in Portland and then lived for about two years at La Grande, where he had a store and where, in a long riding habit, she went out through the Grand Ronde Valley on horseback twice a day. In the latter part of 1888 they removed to Bellingham. For many years he was the successful proprietor of a drug store there. He died in 1909.

While living in Oregon and later, she knew Joaquin Miller, who sent her pictures, letters, galley proofs of his poems and called her in his gallant way "the divine Ella Higginson." She did not know Minnie Myrtle Miller personally but through close acquaintance with a niece heard much about her, including the mention that has already been made in a previous chapter of Joaquin's icicly absence of uxoriousness. Following are some other remembrances, direct and hearsay, that she has of the Millers: