A PIONEER LOVE FEAST. The exercises were appropriately introduced by an excellent and suggestive paper on "Woman's Part in the Drama of the Northwest," prepared and read by Mrs. C. H. Dye, of Oregon City. The evening meeting was truly a most enjoyable occasion. Here the pioneers felt themselves fully at home. It was down on the program as an experience meeting, interspersed with songs and music, informal in nature. It was admirably presided over by Hon. William Galloway, of Yamhill county, who seemed to know just what chord to touch in order to unfetter the tongues of those he called upon, and out of lives full of thrilling experiences they gave brief glimpses of the conditions incident to bringing a frontier state into life. How those old pioneers did enjoy it; what stories they told of early days, of their weary trip across the plains their sufferings, anxieties and sorrows. No one was allowed to talk over five minutes, and when time was up the drummer gave the signal on his drum. T. A. Wood was the first to relate his experience, but he had hardly got across the Missouri river in his narrative, when rat-a-ta-tat went the drum, and what he had to tell will probably never be known. An exception was made in the case of Courtney W. Meek, 1840, of Washington county, in consideration of his giving the greatly interested audience a genuine warwhoop. This he did in a most lifelike way, after recounting a number of incidents in his eventful life, among them references to occasions when a warwhoop was far from being a cheerful sound. Others followed in quick succession, all having some interesting or amusing experience to tell. The love feast lasted for two hours or more, and then the Twenty-Second Annual Reunion came to a close with the feeling on the part of all that this was one of the most thoroughly enjoyable meetings yet held. GEORGE H. HIMES, Secretary. |