Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/204

192 with." His printer (in the Osprey office, Washington), adds: "I have had years of experience with various authors and editors, and can truthfully say his genial friendship and appreciation stands out markedly beyond all others.' "He never neglected a letter," says Mrs. Coues, "although from a total stranger, asking for assistance. He gave it if he could, most generously, and if unable, gave a courteous answer, and a reason. I myself have counted sixty letters he had written in about six hours not merely a reply of a few lines. His one great desire in life was a search after truth, and kept his mind receptive to all that could give him a clue."

Doctor Coues spent the summer of 1899 in New Mexico, making researches in his usual energetic fashion "forgetful of his fifty-seven years" as he wrote me after returning home ill. It was not years, however, that bore so heavily upon him; but the crowding of five yearswork into one. This it was that deprived the world of his incomparable services in the very fullness of his intellectual powers.

Doctor Coues was the son of Samuel Elliott Coues and Charlotte Haven Ladd Coues, born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, September 9, 1842. His literary tastes were inherited from his father, who was a writer on scientific subjects. He was educated at Ganzaga College and Columbia University, Washington, D. C., from which he graduated in 1861. He continued to reside at the capital, and his life was spent in contact with all that was strongest and best in a nation which his talents helped to make conspicuous in the fields of science and literature. His death occurred at Johns Hopkin's Hospital, Baltimore, December 25, 1899. The State of Oregon cannot fail to place his name high among the fathers of her early history.

FRANCES F. VICTOR.