Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/227



Hall Jackson Kelley 199

manner. The result was hardly more satisfactory, for we are told of ''the inattention and carelessness of youthful amanuenses." On account of his extreme debility and nervous irritation he was able to dictate "only in the fore part of the day, not every day, and not more than two or three hours in any day."** In the preface he attempted "to explain con- cerning inadvertent expressions, digressions, curtailed state- ments, sayings, and the abrigment of the book, and errors of composition with which it abounds. It is seldom that I can find a person able and ready to write ; at times the amanuensis is turned from me. For weeks, or months, no one can be found to serve me; and I am left without help. Portions of the manuscript prepared for the press, and supposed to have been sent to it, are wanting in the book. This mistake is owing in part, I think, to the inattention of the young and in- experienced amanuenses. These things have caused delay, "^ a delay of two years. In the body of the text is this interpella- tion:

"I am in haste to finish the dictation of this book, and to have it in print and before Congress the present session. . . . It was commenced more than a year and a half ago, and yet not 80 pages of it are in print. Constant vexations, 'troubles on every side' cause the delay; they enfeeble the pen and unfit my mouth for speech, of course for the dictating of the composition of the book. Persecutions and afflictions of forty years' continuance have nearly worn me out, and I may not last to see, in print, the Appendix, the most instructive as it regards my biography, and perhaps the most interesting por- tion of the book."*^

Yet he continued his labors through fifty more pages, con- cluding with the following paragraph:

"Here is the end of the book for the present. When it is in the hands of the Congressional Committee, to whom was referred the petition, should my life be spared, and should I

as SHtUment of Ortgon, x6. al P. iv. J7 Pp. 76-7.