Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/658

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Marguerite Wilkinson. The Dingbat of Arcady, New York, 1922.

Mrs. Marguerite Wilkinson was a 39-year-old poet and writer, who spent a winter in Oregon, “where, in one of the schools or col- leges, her husband had been teaching. In the spring, with text books closed, this couple, who seem to know every line of nature's lore, went to Albany and there in the shadow of a sawmill on the river's bank . . . the ‘Dingbat of Arcady', flat-bottomed and slow, came into being.” The trip down the Willamette from Albany consumed seven weeks. She was already the author of two books before she wrote this one out of her Oregon experiences, and has since written several others.

Harry Young. Hard Knocks—“A Life Story of the Vanishing West”—Portland, 1915.

The life described by him was spent in such romantic places as Dodge City, Fort Laramie, Cheyenne, Custer City, and Deadwood, and in association with such celebrities as Wild Bill; Kirt Gordon, the buffalo hunter; Calamity Jane; California Joe, the Black Hills guide; and Jim Duncan, the great wagonmaster. He came to Port- land in 1878 and secured a job as riding steward for the firm that had the contract to board the white men at work building the Northern Pacific Railroad—about 30 camps and about 6,000 men. Re- turning to Portland, he was in the baggage and transfer business for six years and was a traveling passenger agent for the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company for five years. In 1898 he joined the Alaska gold rush. After his return he lived for a while in Seattle, then came to Portland, where he wrote and published his book and brought the first buffalo to the city, the ancestors of the ones in the park now. There were two of these animals, for which he paid $1000 apiece. He sold both of them to the park bureau for $750.