LOUIS ALBERT BANKS.

What good can come out of Nazareth? has been answered again. From infancy to childhood, and from childhood to the boy preacher of 16, we find him in Oregon. Charles Parkhurst, the great divine and reformer, says of him: "Louis Albert Banks, after leaving Philomath college, commenced to preach the gospel in Washington territory, and many were converted. From 17 to 21, he taught school and studied law, being admitted to practice in the courts. He received his first regular appointment from Bishop Gilbert Haven, and was stationed in Portland, Oregon. Fearless as a reformer, in his pulpit, he has been shot down by the infuriated saloonist, and mobbed by the anti-Chinese rioters." He has occupied some of the wealthiest pulpits of the Methodist Episcopal church in the United States where he has met with remarkable success as a minister and as an author.

His principal books are Censor Echoes, the People's Christ, the Revival Giver, White Slaves, Common Folks' Religion, Honeycombs of Life, the Heavenly Tradewinds, the Christ Dream, Christ and His Friends, the Saloon Keeper's Ledger, Seven Times Around Jericho, the Hero Tales from Sacred History, an Oregon Boyhood, Sermon Stories for Boys and Girls, the Christ Brotherhood, Immortal Hymns and Their Story,

and he is under contract to write three other volumes at the present time.

Dr. Banks' popularity as an author is such that the great Reformer in writing an introduction to one of these books said, "To be invited to a place beside the author of the volume, and to present him to the reading public, is a delightful privilege."

Mr. Banks' books and sermons may fitly be termed "the Wild Flowers of Oregon," for he has culled the lambs' tongue, the rhododendron, the wild lilac, the field lily, the honeysuckle, and the wild grape, and taken this handful of wild flowers from the hills and valleys of Oregon and woven them into beautiful sermons and books-thus furnishing a delightful source of help to thousands of men and women on both continents. Indeed, his style may be defined as the wild flowers of Oregon so delicately transplanted from the mild atmosphere of the West into the conservatories of the rigid East that they have lost none of their original fragrance or beauty. Thus, through Dr. Banks our scenery has flowered out upon an eastern landscape and developed into a beautiful style which he may proudly call his own; and while the scholars of the East may notice the exotic elements in it they cannot resist the pleasure it gives them; therefore, they will encourage Dr. Banks in preserving his literary identity in the fast flowing stream of books he is pouring out upon the reading public.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

The story of literary greatness is sometimes a strange, but thrilling one. Genius has always its charms. Its language has never yet been fully written, its eloquence never been fully spoken. Schliepmann, uncovering the marble upon which Phidias and his followers carved out immortality for themselves, has wrought more effectually and more wonderfully than have some of the humbler men of genius in these modern days. Upon his canvas of stone, the unknown artist portrays for us Herod's temple with its outer courts and columns and its massive walls. Upon his canvas of immortal vision, all athrill with poetic beauty and inspiration, the obscure genius sometimes portrays pictures of living thought and life-pictures that forever glow in the radiant glory of unfading light.

Thus it is that since the earliest stars in the bright constellation of the western writers began to appear, the reading public have been eagerly scanning each new light conjecturing if perchance it might not be a new planet-a new luminary brighter and more enduring than the mere flash of a passing meteor or the dying spark of a falling star. But those were pioneer times, pioneer manners, and pioneer men-even the infusion from the East grew to be pioneer in strength of body, pioneer in vigor of intellect, and pioneer in passion

and fervor of imagination-so that the whole western life came to be that bold, daring, dashing, adventurous life, peculiar to the woodsman, the gold hunter, the Indian fighter, the Pacific coast pioneer. Hence it was but natural that there should arise amidst these wild mountain scenes a genius whose poetry is tropical in its profusion of color, eastern in the glowing heat of its impetuous passion, and western in its sincerity and wildness. Schooled in the lore of the miner's camp, and surrounded by scenes, wild, quaint and curious-the hill, the valley, the mountain gorge, the mighty river, the warm path of the deer, the elk, the panther, the bear, and the savage-poems of nature; exalted with visions of lofty firs, towering forests, and majestic mountains, whose music is softened and sweetened with the rhythm of the gurgling brook and the cadence of sighing boughs and mountain zephyrs-it is not surprising that a genius like Joaquin Miller should suddenly appear and attract attention on account of his strange background, rich coloring, gorgeous descriptions and gigantic scenery. Nature and Burns and Byron and Swinburne were his masters; and he learned from them a certain wild freedom and passion of song that have enriched his poems with truthfulness and an almost cloying sweetness of rhythm and rhyme. Of the latter-day poets whose works have become famous, the new world has produced its full share. Whittier, Bryant, Longfellow,