Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/509

Rh but contributed to the magazines and newspapers, or had their poems used as songs, or reached the people without publication through oral recitation, sometimes at big annual occasions very effectively so. They were the many necessary to make the few and as a group must remain in their obscurity, though in their total output there would be at least enough for one bright volume, which some day ought to be carefully collected and printed.

As an example of the number of minor poets writing at some single time in Oregon, let us take August of 1880. In that month and that year Eva L. Burbank of Lafayette, a talented 19-year-old musician, went to Long Beach, Washington, with an East Portland excursion. She was drowned in the surf and her body was never found. We are told that "more than twenty pieces of beautiful poetry have been written and published with reference to her sad death."

Poetry was so much in the air that its practice was not always limited to one in a family. In the case of the Millers, there were not only Joaquin and Minnie Myrtle, but there was Lischen Miller, their sister-in-law, the wife of George Melvin Miller of Eugene. Their daughter Maud also had a few poems published, and Minnie Myrtle's sister composed verses. There was a minor poet along with a major one in another family. J. D. Lee, the speaker at the 41st annual Pioneer Reunion in 1913, said of Sam. L. Simpson's brother: "Sylvester Confucius Simpson, a man of brilliant intellect, passed away recently in San Francisco. . . . Sylvester was no mean poet, and a man of great learning." Ella Higginson's sister, Carrie Blake Morgan, was also a poet and contributed to several magazines, in addition to being author of The Path of Gold. Of two others Frances Fuller Victor has said: "E. L. and O. C. Applegate are men with the hereditary strain of literary talent in their composition—neglected, as in the case of their uncle, 'the sage of Yoncalla.

Men who reached prominence in various other fields, wrote and published some poetry. Among these was Governor George L. Curry; Edward Dickinson Baker, the brilliant orator and United States Senator from Oregon; President P. L. Campbell of the University of Oregon; B. F. Irvine, editor of the Oregon Journal; Willis T. Hawley, for many years a United States congressman; and Dr. George B. Kuykendall. Poems by the first four may be found in Oregon Literature by Dr. J. B. Horner.

Maybe not enough for a generalization but at least here and there a community leaven is noticeable. At Independence, where Robert R. Parrish made harness and rhymes for 27 years, the weekly paper, the West Side, for the issue of March 21, 1890, contained: 1. "A. B. and Doc.", an acrostic by S. S., with "compliments of the writer to