Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/105

Rh From heredity and through the experiences of his younger life, Mr. Scott gained the bent of individual character which ruled all his years. He never ceased to be a pioneer. The vision of the pioneer, the temper of the pioneer, the spirit of the pioneer—these were the dominating tendencies of his life. Knowledge with reflection gave him philosophy, culture refined his mind, mental training gave him orderliness of method, discipline self-imposed but absolute gave him power. All these regarded as forces, as time moved on, were augmented by the assurances of approved capability, of an established professional ascendancy and ultimately of a notable fame. But with all and back of all there was the temper and mental attitude of the pioneer. In all his thoughts, in all his ways of doing things, in every phase of his many-sided attitude toward life, there appeared the mental bias—if I may so name it—of the pioneer.

Self-reliance was the resounding motif in Mr. Scott's symphony of life. His dependence in all things was upon himself. He never thought to be "boosted" by society or government. He had little patience with those who looked outside of themselves or beyond their own efforts for advantages or benefits. With none of the vices of surface knowledge, of improvised and makeshift method, of the self-satisfied emotionalism characteristic of the self-made man, Mr. Scott was yet a self-made man. He was self-educated, self-disciplined, self-reliant. Above all of the men I have ever known he was self-centered, not in the sense that he thought overmuch of self or was devoted to the things which pertained, to self, but in the rarer and finer sense of self-dependence in the motives and usages of life.

The pioneer is necessarily an individualist, and never was there a man more imbued with the spirit of individualism than Mr. Scott. He and his kind had worked their way under and through the hardest conditions. They had fought and had achieved against multiplied resistant forces. In later times to those about him who declaimed against conditions he was wont to exclaim with impatience, not untouched with as-