OREGON LITERATURE
All literature writes the character of the wise man.—Emerson.
The lamp of literature was a long time coming from Egypt to Oregon. Ages ago wise men passed the lamp from Egypt to Phoenicia, thence to Athens, thence to Rome, thence to London, thence to Boston; and before the close of the last century the Oregon Pilgrims brought it with them to the new land which the occupied and planted. Hence the rays from the Egyptian lamp of letters came to be traced in the literature of Phoenicia, of Greece, of Rome, of England, of New England and of Western America.
And the historic lamp shone so bright in the Far West that the makers of Oregon produced in half a century more standard literature than did all the Thirteen Colonies in their first half century. It is, therefore, but fair to conclude that the education of Oregon people—more particularly the teachers—is not complete without some knowledge of Oregon literature.
Furthermore, in Epoch I, mention was made of Indian Folk Lore as the highest type of literary and intellectual endeavor among the savages before the coming of the white man. It will be of historical value, therefore, to give a few glimpses of the literature of the present, in order that the reader may fully understand the remarkable transition that took place in Oregon under civilization. However, the authors selected for mention in the limited space allotted to Chapter XIV are but a few of those who caught the rays from the old Egyptian lamp of literature that dame by way of Greece and Rome to shine incandescent in Oregon.
