Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/397

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HARVEY W. SCOTT
359

among the greatest of his public beneficences, because these were through a widely-read newspaper, which, not only in what he wrote but in a general cultural tone, became a chronicle of the subjective lives of the people as well as their objective lives. That is what made the Oregonian, under his editorship, a great newspaper by the standards of any place or any time. To examine the old files is to do so with exultation that such a daily account could with so much journalistic interest reflect the dreams and aspirations of men as well as their practical economics and their sins. "Great old boy!" exclaimed William McKinley over the perfect order and adequacy of the memoranda left him by Grover Cleveland. A similar thrill if not a similar idiom of admiration comes to the one looking through the old volumes of the Oregonian edited by Harvey W. Scott.

In some ways he did not draw men warmly to him, but his personality, less magnetic than self-reliant and strong, had several engaging traits—generosity in giving credit to others for their work and his complete candor, both of which have been mentioned, and, corresponding to the latter, absence of artificial pose and airs; the reciprocal quality in his extreme individualism that let the other man go to the devil in his own way; his catholicity of interests; a habit of reading his editorials in manuscript to others, frequently to younger staff members, for their opinion; whimsicalities in his manner with friends and associates when he was in an unburdened mood; his love for books and study. It may be too broad a generalization to say that a liking for Shakespeare makes men likable—a recipe, at