JOHN MINTO
A TRIBUTE BY ONE WHO LOVED HIM
John Minto should have been his own biographer. Listen- ing to his charming description of old times in Clatsop, as we strolled over the downs beside the sea one summer's day in 1910, I earnestly besought him to write the story of his life complete with circumstance. He stopped in his walk, as was his manner when he would talk seriously, and expressed his astonishment and pleasure, that the story of his life could be of interest to anybody outside the small circle of his most intimate friends.
Fortunately he had already written much for the "QUAR- TERLY" and for many Oregon publications. We have, in these reminiscent papers, precious fragments of his wonderful story, told in his own simple, masterly fashion. It is for the very excellence his own hand imparted to his work that any other narrator must hesitate to attempt what he would have done so much better.
This is not intended as a story of his life, nor as an epitome of it. Something, rather, of recent fellowship with him, and recollections of incidents in my acquaintance with him, which was, to my regret, very limited, compared to that of hundreds of his own and later generations.
If one talked for a time with Mr. Minto he was certain to hear some reference to Robert Burns, or to some line from Burns' poems. He would tell you, if you asked about his "education", that the best of it was from the reading and knowledge and love of Burns. His first acquaintance with his favorite author was the finding in a ditch, when walking to his work, of a "signature" from the Poems, when John Minto was a lad. He shortly got a complete copy. Few men know Burns as he knew him. Nor was he wrong in attributing to Burns the greater part of his education.
