Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/680

 the father, who had come on ahead, did not suspect the substitution. It is even more remarkable that the substituted Opal asked for a dog Ginger (not the Brave Horatius of the diary), a little red chair and other things that the original Opal had left at Colton.

Opal has often been spoken of as of lowly origin, but there was nothing about the Whiteley parentage to be renounced. They cared well for their children, and the mother, saved by death from the embarrassment of the diary, is spoken of by those who knew her as having been a woman of education and refinement.

Family pictures prove beyond reasonable doubt that Opal is a Whiteley, but in mental characteristics she fits more the place her supposed child fantasy gives her. However, at least one member of the Whiteley family has an imagination as lively as Opal's and once explained away the foster parentage claim with a story as fanciful as any of Opal's.

The diary which Sedgwick wanted, sent post haste from Los Angeles to Boston, was in 50 or 60 cardboard boxes, all of it supposed to have been written in Opal's younger years, and supposed to have been torn into shreds by a younger sister who didn't approve of Opal's love for nature and her conversations with trees, bees, pigs, bugs and other things.

Opal's family moved many times and Opal lived in various places besides home. According to Opal's own story, she guarded the diary carefully, but I have in years of effort found but three persons who ever saw any of it and they only saw one box. Surely a girl guarding 50 or 60 cardboard boxes would have attracted some attention. At the home where she was