Page:Oregon Literature by Horner.djvu/59

Rh welcome guest in the most magnificent dwellings in the old world, a man whose attainments now entitle him to a welcome to any society he may enter, a man who had abandoned all to follow the bent of his genius and to live with the primitive surroundings of a pioneer, with wants as simple as those of a child.

A survey of the apartment revealed a pair of trousers and high-heeled boots suspended from nails driven in the wall, an ancient bureau in one corner, a horse-hide rug on the floor, and a straw hat banded with a scarlet ribbon ornamenting one of the high posts of the bed. Then the eye catches a number of folded papers tacked to the wall above the poet's head: these are letters received from distinguished literary persons. And, last, we were shown the photograph of an Indian maiden, daughter of Old John, chief of the Rogue Rivers, whose subjugation in 1856 cost many lives and two million dollars. There were no lamps, candles, or books to be seen. The poet rises with the birds, and with them he retires. He never burns "the midnight oil" and complains that there are too many books. He declares that men rely too much on books; and that they are valued by the number of books that they carry with them, whether or not they know anything of nature or of nature's God of whom books should speak.

Everything about the man is quaint, everything around him is curious. The rug on the floor is