Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/80

60 The Macedonian Cry to the missionaries was first uttered in prose, in the form of a letter to the Christian Advocate and Journal in the issue of March 1, 1833. It was signed G. P. D., the initials for G. P. Dishoway of New York. Dishoway, in using prose, fully realized that it was fine material for the poets, three of whom he publicly nominated in the following reference:

"How deeply affecting is the circumstances of the four natives travelling on foot 3,000 miles through thick forests and extensive praries, sincere searchers after truth! The story has scarcely a parallel in history. What a touching theme does it form for the imagination and pen of a Montgomery, a Mrs. Hemens, or our own fair Sigourney!"

Montgomery's fame has not survived like that of the two women, and those familiar with the works of Mrs. Hemens and Mrs. Sigourney can appreciate with what unerring exactitude Mr. Dishoway selected those most suitable to describe in flaming verse the four Flatheads and their pious quest. Mrs. Hemens was the author of a collection called Lays of Many Lands, to which this would have been an appropriate addition. Mrs. Sigourney was something of a specialist in missionary pieces, which included Departure of Missionaries for Ceylon, Parting Hymn of Missionaries to Burmah and Dirge of a Missionary in Africa. Mr. Dishoway knew his poets and picked them well—only they did not respond.

The fact that William Cullen Bryant was not included in the nominations, still further marks Mr. Dishoway as a man with intimate knowledge of the versifiers of his time. Bryant had become a fashionable