Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/379



The most widely known the world over of the native sons of Oregon was Homer Davenport, the famous cartoonist, lecturer, and author. He was born in the Waldo Hills, Marion County, on March 8, 1867, living there and in Silverton until reaching his majority. When twenty-five years of age he had developed no talent for any special business career save a disposition to draw pictures of birds and animals on fences and other convenient backgrounds. In 1892, his father sent him to San Francisco where he secured a position on the San Francisco "Chronicle," and later was employed by William Randolph Hearst on the "Examiner." Here Mr. Hearst discovered young Davenport's talent, so when Mr. Hearst, in 1895, entered the New York newspaper field he took Davenport with him as a special cartoonist. In the homer davenport following year, during the presidential campaign, the cartoonist made a reputation for humorous, pungent and effective representations of different phases of that contest that won for him a national fame which grew until his death, May 2. 1912.

Homer Davenport was a born genius, a man of rare imagination, a master story-teller, and a man with a heart as tender as that of a woman. He was as democratic in manner as the commonest day laborer, and when in London calling on William E. Gladstone—finding him in the woods at Hawarden—told him he was "from Silverton, Oregon, a town that had a brass band and a sawmill." The greatest