Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/289

 try his hand at mining, but knew as little about that as he did about making rails. At last, however, he got settled down to writing poetry and was then in his proper element.

In the first place, he had the education and scholastic training necessary to enable him to put his thoughts on paper in a manner that could defy the critics; and this enabled him to say what he had to say with boldness and freedom. He worked as I have seldom seen men work before or since, barely stopping long enough to eat and help with the culinary chores. If genius is "the faculty of taking infinite pains," as some one describes it, he had it to perfection. Often, on going in at noon or at night, I would hear him, long before I got near the house, going over his numbers to be sure they had the right sound and rhythm before he would transmit them to paper. When once he had his lines put down, they were apt to be in every way correct and as he wanted them to remain. Seldom was it that he had to interline or reconstruct a stanza after it was written, though he often threw away a good verse, containing an excellent poetical idea, because of his failure to get a suitable rhyme. For he, like most of our Oregon poets, recognized the controlling influence of certain fixed rules for the construction of poetry. He did not, as did Walt Whitman, repudiate such trammels, that he might soar more easily to imperial heights. Any performance is apt to be noteworthy in proportion to the difficulties in the way of its accomplishment. Still there are people in the world men of unquestioned literary attainments and seemingly in their natural senses who are capable of saying that Walt Whitman wrote poetry. He did observe one rule, and I believe only one he was very particular to have every line commence with a capital letter, without regard to length or rhythm. But as for sound, his lucubrations might just as well have been called prose. Or, if the rules of construction can be pushed aside for one author upon such things, people should make allowance for those writers who accept the handicap of rules and those who do not. Once let all writers be equally emancipated from the conventional thraldom of the rules, think