Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/609

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now arrived at this very opportune moment, among them Bradshaw, who instantly knew that there was something wrong and made hasty inquiries. It was soon explained, and he decided the issue with his characteristic promptness by ordering the Indians to "puckpachu", a universal word on the plains "to leave". This they refused to do, when Brad shaw, who was a good boxer, told the men to stand by and knocked the young chief down, wheeled and knocked an other Indian down with his left hand, and pitched into the rest of them promiscuously. The young chief attempted to draw a knife, but Bradshaw sent him "to grass", as he termed it. The Indians who never can stand a fist fight, ig- nominiously fled and mounted their ponies and rode away, giving expression to some terrible language.

8 FREDERIC G. YOUNG

Professor Frederic G. Young was a little like Oliver Goldsmith in the difference between his writing and his speaking. He had a force, a grace, a fluency and often an eloquence of style which found easy outlet through his pen but which his vocal organs were not flexible enough to deliver. During a classroom lecture, sometimes his whole body would be in a gesticulatory strain, because back in his mind a sentence as perfect as one of Dr. Johnson's had been formed and was being blocked in its flow by his incapable tongue and palate. When it finally found a way out in segments and these parts were duly connected on the page of a student's notebook, it had a shining merit both of substance and of form. This forensic impediment, which was not stammering, did not keep him from being a great teacher. Many of the older graduates of the University of Oregon look back with warm appreciation to the friendliness, the intellectual stimulus and guidance, the contagion of his ever fresh curiosity and the gen erally broadened horizons they received from him.

He was born on a farm in Wisconsin on June 3, 1858. After graduating in 1878 from the State Normal School at Oshkosh, he was for six years a Wisconsin high school principal. He then spent three years in Johns Hopkins University, specializing in history and economics. In 1887 he was married to Mary Luella Packard, and the same year became vice-president and instructor in history and civics in the new South Dakota State Normal School at Madison.