Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/121

Rh never once saw or heard the slightest suggestion of the cloven foot. It became oftentimes an office of friendship as well as a matter of duty to point out to Mr. Scott the practical hazards of one line of action or another. He was always openly receptive to suggestions from any source. But it would have been a bold man who, knowing Mr. Scott's tendencies of mind, would have pressed a point based upon financial, social or other personal considerations. His concern, with a not undue regard for what was expedient, and therefore practically wise, was with what was fundamentally right.

Somewhere in my youth—perhaps in the correspondence of Mr. George W. Smalley, who for so many years wrote both entertainingly and wisely of Europe and European affairs in a New York paper—I read an, explanation of the rather curious fact that English provincial journalism has always been abler than the journalism of London. Newspapers like the Leeds Mercury and the Manchester Guardian have always had a clearer vision than the journals of the metropolis. The explanation was to this effect, namely, that the provincial editor, sitting a little upon one side, so to speak, apart from the suggestions and influences of London life, sees things in a truer perspective. This remark has long stuck in my mind and has seemed to explain in part an exceptional quality in Mr. Scott's editorial writing. Oregon for thirty years of Mr. Scott's professional career was a country detached and apart, and even to this day it is far removed from the greater centers of political and material life. The telegraph brings daily reports of leading events, but it brings only essentials. The ten thousand side lights which illuminate the atmosphere of New York, Washington or London are lacking. The man who deals at such range with the current doings of the world has no aid through daily contact with the agents of great events and can have small knowledge of the incidental and oftentimes significant gossip which attends upon important movements. His resource must be a broad view of things. He must measure events not as they stand related to incidents, but by the gauge of fixed principles. The conditions under