Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/484

 other where he spent relaxed and happy hours with such subjective-minded men as poets, artists, scholars, philosophers and social reformers. His stands and his utterances were sincere but could not wholly look so. His vigorous doctrines at outs with the sanctity of the status quo did not alienate his profitable clients, but others cried Jekyll and Hyde. When he spoke for the emancipation of man and society he was twitted with the fact that he was a prominent attorney for soulless corporations.

So, in complete break with all this, he inaugurated the fourth period of his life. After prolonged, arduous and successful duty, he turned his face fully towards the sincerities. To seek serenity after the hard struggles and compromises of life is common, and is called retirement. This goes on for a while and death comes, all in decorous concatenation with the past, and the firm's name is still Scrooge & Marley. What this poet did was to take up a new life to him altogether authentic by cutting entirely loose, in apostolic severance, from the old. By the most exacting standards of his former existence, he left every obligation magnificently performed, and not performed in gloom or with irritation over unsatisfied longings, but high-spiritedly and with gallant courtesy and consideration. He was already an old man, yet he was like a boy, high-conscienced but irresistibly eager for the trees and the bending skies, who does all the chores before he leaves a good home for the open road. His duty so well accomplished, his age, his social and professional standing, and all the things that he had been saying and that were now believed, excused him to some extent