feeling for childhood. Nothing so aroused him as reports of suffering on the part of children, especially if caused by somebody's cruelty.
There was a citizen of Portland, now dead;, whom Mr. Scott had known in the days when he was cutting wood for Tom Charman in Clackamas County. In this man, although they had little in common, Mr. Scott always cherished a profound interest. "What," I once asked him, "do you find in that man?" He replied: "One day forty years ago up Molalla way as I was passing a farm house, I was attracted by the screams of a child manifestly in pain. I rushed into the barnyard and there found a boy of perhaps fourteen triced up and under the merciless lash of a beast of a father. This man was that boy. I have never been able to get the incident out of my mind. To this day my pulse quickens and my gorge heaves when I think of it. To me he is always the little boy who was being cruelly flogged. I did at the time what the God of righteous vengeance required, then helped the lad to get away from home, and my interest has followed him from that day until now."
Some thirty years ago there appeared one morning in the Oregonian a pitiful story of a child abused by a brutal stepfather on a squalid scow-house up the river near the old pumping station. The little chap had been whipped with a strap to which a buckle was attached and it had cut into his flesh until he was gashed from head to foot. Mr. Baltimore[1] of the local staff had personally visited the scene and had helped rescue the victim of this cruelty, and he had made the account painfully graphic. Mr. Scott having read the report at home, came to the office in hot wrath. He was furiously impatient for Baltimore's arrival to have the story over again and with fuller details. Then he stalked forth in search of the man. What he would have done I do not know—I can only guess—
- ↑ John M. Baltimore crossed the plains in 1863 and grew to manhood near Salem. In the early 70s he became reporter on The Oregonian. Later he went to San Francisco where he became correspondent of the Western Associated Press. In 1883–5 he was reporter on The Oregonian and Evening Telegram and in 1888 became city editor of The Oregonian, succeeding Sam R. Fraser. In 1891 he quit The Oregonian and became special writer on the Evening Telegram. In 18g6 he went to Spokan* and later to Oakland, Gal. He died at San Francisco in January, 1912.
