INTRODUCTORY. TO A FRIEND. "What is a book? Let affection tell; A tongue to speak for those who absent dwell, A language uttered to the eye Which envious distance would in vain deny. "Formed to convey like an electric chain The mystic flashes, the lightning of the brain, And thrill at once to its remotest link The throb of passion by the printer's ink." Corvallis, July 7, 1899. JOHN BURNETT. PREFACE. Өн REGON has produced more genuine litera ture during the short period of her history, extending back only fifty years, than all the thirteen American colonies wrote in a century and half. Notwithstanding this fact, she is the oldest state in the Union that has not collated the best things written by her sons and daughters. This task has been delayed merely for want of time and inclination. No one did it, so I undertook it. This is the explanation. Kindly attribute the objectionable features of this pamphlet to the youngest printer in the office. J. B. H. Lib are Lockley srian 4-16-36 32074 Oregon Literature. Long ago the scholars of the East passed the lamp of learning from England westward to Boston, the front door of America. And from Boston the lamp lighted the way of the pioneer across mountain chains, mighty rivers, and far-reaching plains, till the radiance of its beams skirted the golden shores of our majestic ocean. Then it was that the song of the poet and the wisdom of the sage for the first time blended in beautiful harmony with the songs of the robin, the lark, and the linnet, of our valley. These symphonies floated along on zephyrs richly laden with aromas fresh from the field and flowers and forests, and were wafted heavenward with the prayers of the pioneer to mingle forever in adoration to the God of the land and the sea. This was the origin and the beginning of Oregon literature. INFLUENCE OF PIONEER LIFE. A fearless people among savages, the Oregon pioneers surmounted every obstacle, for they had graduated from the hard training school of the plains and had suffered severe discipline known only to the early settler. Hon. George H. Williams, attorney-general of President Grant's cabinet, said: "When the pioneers arrived here they found a land of marvelous beauty. They found extended prairies, with luxuriant verdure. They found grand and gloomy forests, majestic rivers, and mountains covered with eternal snow; but they found no friends to greet them, no homes to go to, nothing but the genial heavens and the generous earth to give them consolation and hope. I cannot tell how they lived; nor how they supplied their numerous wants of family life. All these things are mysteries to everyone, excepting to those who can give their solution from actual experience." But of this one thing be assured, under these trying circumstances, life with them grew to be real, earnest, and simple. They were fearless, yet God-fearing; no book save the Bible, Walker's dictionary, Pilgrim's Progress, and a few others of like sort; solid books, solid thought, solid men -three elements that enter into substantial literature. A recent number of the "Daily Oregonian" tells us that the original type of the Oregon pioneer began his career with the settlement of New England in 1620, and he ended it when he reached the Pacific. It took him about 250 years to conquer nature and the Indian from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Oregon pioneer in his deeds outran even the prophetic vision of the great American novelist who left him in Nebraska struggling on his way along the Platte, and today Nebraska is ten years younger in statehood than Oregon because |