Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/102

84 sense of public duty, distinctly American and distinctly Oregonian.

As Governor of Oregon, representing nearly a million inhabitants—I accept this present and sincerely thank you—Robert A. Booth, for your generosity.

Historians and romancers busy themselves with warriors and kings and uniforms and banners and martial music, and all the pageantry of war. Historians and romancers seldom discern the influence of the idealist, the poet and the prophet. It is likewise with the average man in business and industry. To him statesmen and politicians and all the machinery of the state are of supreme importance. For the thought of the average man is concerning higher wages, shorter hours of labor, better clothing and better houses; and he looks to the state and statesmen to provide all these.

The estimate which writers and business men have placed upon war and commerce have led the undiscerning to regard legislators and executives of the law as the principal promoters and functionaries of civilization; and to such undiscerning ones any eulogy of the Circuit Rider, a minister of the Gospel, is far-fetched and unreal. The undiscerning would speak of the Circuit Rider, if at all, in words condescending and patronizing. But William Watson sings truer lines when he says:

And Watson's lines are equally true if spoken of the Circuit Rider instead of the poet. He remains.

I am to speak today of the Circuit Rider as the frontier's first policeman, first librarian, first teacher, and at once the first board of health, board of hygiene, and