Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/205



CHAPTER TEN. The Hermit of Three Rivers.

In 1839 Kelley reestablished himself at Three Rivers. He had acted for many years as agent for Octavius Pickering of Boston, who owned land in the village and also the unoccupied mill privilege which had once been the property of the Three Rivers Manufacturing company.^ He was not yet fifty years old, but his active life was already done; and broken in body and in spirit, he passed the remaining thirty-five years of his life in poverty and isolation.

His house was at the edge of a grove on the side of a hill overlooking the village which he had come to regard with singular aflfection. The site was well chosen, but the house was hardly a fit abode for a man whose ideas were all in the superlative. It was a composite structure of a story and a half, built of odds and ends of lumber with regard rather to the limitations of the material than to any architectural design. The rooms were of unequal height, and the stairs approached the vertical. In the upper story there were three floor levels, two in a single room. There were half a dozen sizes of win- dows. By the door stood a clump of lilacs, and a large wild cherry tree shaded the yard. Below the house was a small orchard of apple trees, many of which defy identification. Pro- truding glacial boulders and tangled poison ivy gave evidence that the occupant of the place was concerned with other matters than appearances.

Here his wife and children visited him occasionally down to 1843, but he was never able to effect a complete reconcilia- tion. Of his domestic troubles he said "My bosom friend with whom I never had a moment of misunderstanding was enticed from me; and my beloved sons were carried away captive by

I Kelley, Hist, of th4 Settlement of Oregon, 21-2. Pickering was reporter of the Massftchusetts supreme judicial court, 1822-40. He was a son oiF the famous OAontl Timothy Pickering of Salem, who was quartermaster-general in the Revolution, postmaster-general, secretary of war, and secretary ot sute under Washington, and senator from Massachusetts.