Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/467

 {{quote|I was surprised to find what scant and ignorant mention Bancroft made of Joaquin and Minnie Myrtle. Minnie Myrtle had a sister who wrote a few poems. I did not see them until just before she died—about ten years ago—and I hastily wrote and had printed a notice of them and heard that it made her "very happy," because "no one else had ever noticed them."

The dearest friend I ever had was a niece of Minnie Myrtle, who was a beautiful woman. I recall a portrait of her in the Oregonian, which won my childish fancy. Do not ever believe that Minnie Myrtle wrote any of the poems credited to him—as some Oregon critics claim. She wrote in an entirely different style, and he needed no assistance on his way to fame.

I still have some galley proofs of Joaquin's poems. He sent them to me long ago, and they are not of particular interest} but do have brief jottings in his execrable hand writing. I used to tack his letters on a wall and decipher from a distance with a field glass. Once a club here asked him to come up and give them a talk. He replied that he would come if "the divine Ella Higginson" would see him. But I was in Alaska. Of course, that adjective applied to me has clung as a great joke, for I am exactly the opposite.}} When she moved to Bellingham in the late fall of 1888, it was not much like the cosmopolitan little city of today, and Washington was still a territory. She arrived at two o'clock in the morning on the old boat Idaho. She went afoot behind a guide with a lantern, her baggage following in a wheelbarrow, to the Whatcom House, the accommodations of which had been too highly recommended. It was little more than a sailor's boarding house. In its bar room a man was killed the night she stayed there. As soon as possible the next day she found temporary quarters elsewhere, until she could move into her own home far up the