Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/583

Rh to blame. He had the day right and the month, but overstepped the year. In the absence of other who's who sketches of the poet, this date was copied in the account of him given in the Oregon Native Son, in Horner's Oregon Literature, in the introduction by the poet's own brother-in-law in The Gold-Gated West, and in their notes by Leslie Scott and Robert H. Down. For 25 years in the most available references to Sam. L. Simpson, the public has read that he died on June 14, 1900, when it was June 14, 1899.

This was reported over the telephone to a man who is much interested in the fame of the poet.

"Great Scott," he cried in alarm, "I wonder if it's that way on the tombstone."

"No, it's all right out there."

It is correct in the Lone Fir Cemetery and in the obituary in the Oregonian, but everywhere else the most famous of Oregon poets is recorded as having died a year later than he actually did.

There is, of course, another and very practical side to the whole date situation in history, which softens indictments. Looked at from the angle of how contemporaneous events slide by and are forgotten, the wonder is that things of the past can be located in time as definitely as they are. An historian who cannot for the life of him tell the date of his marriage anniversary or the birthdays of his children, can get greatly peeved because he cannot find out precisely by looking at Bancroft, Carey, Hines' Missionary History, Wyeth's Correspondence and Journals and Lee's own diaries—when Jason Lee and his party arrived at Fort Vancouver.