Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/713

1864.]

never known, nor seen any person who did know, why Portland, the metropolis of Oregon, was founded on the Willamette River. I am unaware why the accent is on the penult, and not on the ultimate of Willamette. These thoughts perplexed me more than a well man would have suffered them, all the way from the Callapooya Mountains to Portland. I had been laid up in the backwoods of Oregon, in a district known as the Long-Tom Country,—(and certainly a longer or more tedious Tom never existed since the days of him additionally hight Aquinas,)—by a violent attack of pneumonia, which came near terminating my earthly with my Oregon pilgrimage. I had been saved by the indefatigable nursing of the best friend I ever travelled with,—by wet compresses, and the impossibility of sending for any doctor in the region. I had lived to pay San-Francisco hotel-prices for squatter-cabin accommodations in the rural residence of an Oregon landholder, whose tender mercies I fell into from my saddle when the disease had reached its height, and who explained his unusual charges on the ground that his wife had felt for me like a mother. In the Long-Tom Country maternal tenderness is a highly estimated virtue. It cost Bierstadt and myself sixty dollars, besides the reasonable charge for five days' board and attendance to a man who ate nothing and was not waited on, with the same amount against his well companion. We had suffered enough extortion before that to exhaust all our native grumblery. So we paid the bill, and entered on our notebooks the following

Mem. "In stopping with anybody in the Long-Tom Country, make a special contract for maternal tenderness, as it will invariably be included in the bill."

I had ridden on a straw-bed in the wagon of the man whose wife cultivated the maternal virtues, until I was once more able to go along by myself,—paying, you may be sure, maternal-virtue fare for my carriage. During the period that I jolted on the straw, I diversified the intervals between pulmonary spasms with a sick glance at the pages of Bulwer's "Devereux" and Lever's "Day's Ride." The nature of these works did not fail to attract the attention of my driver. It aroused in him serious concern for my spiritual welfare. He addressed me with gentle firmness,—

"D' ye think it's exackly the way for an immortal creatur' to be spendin' his time, to read them novels?"

"Why is it particularly out of the way for an immortal creature?"

"Because his higher interests don't give him no time for sich follies."

"How can an immortal creature be pressed for time?"

"Wal, you'll find out some day. G' lang, Jennie."

I thought I had left this excellent man in a metaphysical bog. But he had not discharged his duty, so he scrambled out and took new ground.

"Now say,—d' you think it's exackly a Christian way of spendin' time, yourself?"

"I know a worse way."

"Eh? What's that?"

"In the house of a Long-Tom settler who charges five dollars a day extra because his wife feels like a mother."

He did not continue the conversation. I myself did not close it in anger, but solely to avoid an extra charge, which in the light of experience seemed imminent, for concern about my spiritual welfare. On the maternal-tenderness scale of prices, an indulgence in this luxury would have cleaned out Bierstadt and myself before we effected junction with our drawers of exchange, and I was discourteous as a matter of economy.

We had enjoyed, from the summit of a hill twenty miles south of Salem, one of