Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/643

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

sonally acquainted with hundreds of people all over the state, who held him in warm affection. In addition to his articles and numerous addresses, he wrote the following books: Oregon Literature, 1899, 1902; Oregon: Her History, Her Great Men, Her Literature, 191 9; A Short History of Oregon, 1924; Days and Deeds in the Oregon Country, 1929; Oregon History and Early Literature, 1931.

Oregon's Most Prolific Author

From Oregon Literature, Second Edition, 1902

What good can come out of Nazareth? has been answered again. From infancy to childhood, and from childhood to the boy preacher of sixteen, we find him in Oregon. Charles Parkhurst, the great divine and reformer, says of him: "Louis Albert Banks, after leaving Philomath College, com menced to preach the gospel in Washington Territory, and many were converted. From seventeen to twenty-one, 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." . . .

Mr. Banks's 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 honey suckle, 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 frigid East that they have lost none of their original fra grance or beauty. . . .

From Oregon: Her History, Her Great Men, Her Literature, 1919

Louis Albert Banks, D. D., has written more books than any other Oregonian. He was born near Corvallis, Novem