Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 15.djvu/295

 McDonald, known to the newspaper world as the "Triple Thunderer," certainly one of the ablest writers at that time on the Pacific Slope. Equally valuable testimony was rendered by Judge J. H. Reed, an able lawyer, with strong literary leanings and conspicuously identified with the early history of the state. The money he acquired through his profession was largely expended in the mineral development of the state, especially the southern part of it. In writing from Kangaroo Camp, in the cinnabar section on the Klamath, over the nom de plume of "Bevens," he pays a tribute to our poet that I deem worth quoting in its entirety. This was as far back as December 8, 1877. He had been writing of mines and matters geological, when he suddenly turns his attention to poetry, the mail having just brought him a paper containing the poem he alludes to.

"A bas with geology ! To the dogs with diorite and porphyry and feldspar and mica schist! I have just picked up a paper containing Simpson's poem to "Hood," and hard granite and hard luck have disappeared in company, and the poem acts like the 'insane root which takes the reason prisoner.' It is what opium is to the smoker, the lotus to its eaters and hasheesh to the Oriental dreamer. It excites and it allays, and produces mental activity and intellectual voluptuousness. To us 'laymen and unlearned' as we are, it gives pleasure, and whatever in literature or art produces pleasure must be beautiful in its degree. If a higher amount of refinement or cultivation could not enjoy it, we are thankful for our crudeness. Will its author have to go abroad and get the endorsement of Walt Whitman before his countrymen will admire him and stamp him a poet or not? * * * Has Whittier or even Tennyson a better line than the following: