Essay Reviews 237 The cookhouse, laid out like a cafeteria with long benches, was immaculate. Why should this be so? I asked the “gut robber” (the head cook). “Well, in a logging camp,” said the old gentleman, “cooks are proud because they know their customers.” After supper, we sat and talked. The loggers recalled the old days. Condi tions were rough. Talking was not allowed at meals. There were shacks for bunkhouses. You packed your own bedroll and blankets. Youworked as long as it was light enough to work. Logging was hazardous and it was not considered unusual when a man was killed in the rigging—that was Haig-Brown’spoint. How, or why, I asked, did conditions change? Was it enlightened corporate interest? Government intervention, as in the New Deal? “Politicians, hell!”one man replied. “It was the union. The union changed conditions.”So old Slimwas right, after all. But perhaps the larger question I should ask now, as the great Northwest forests go down, iswhether society can ever find peace, healing and reconcilia tion within itself. Or must the lasttree followthe lastwhale, and then, asMelville wrote, the last man smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the last puff? I, for one, prefer to foresee the best, taking hope and heart from Emerson’soptimism and his beliefthat the human soul iscapable oftranscend ing the physical and material to achieve redemption. That is what Roderick Haig-Brown’swork and wayof life were all about. MICHAEL FROME Western Washington University Sharlot Herself: Selected Writings of Sharlot Hall. Edited by Nancy Kirkpatrick Wright. Introduction by Margaret F. Maxwell. Illustrations by Carlos Parra. (Prescott, Arizona: Sharlot Hall Museum Press, 1992. 105 pages, $11.95.) While of greatest appeal to the reader unacquainted with Hall, Sharlot HerselfvnW also be ofsome interest to scholars and students ofthe West because it contains material by the Arizona poet, essayist, historian, and photographer either unpublished, long out of print, “selected from”or only summarized in Margaret Maxwell’sdefinitive biography, A PassionforFreedom: TheLifeofSharlot Hall (University ofArizona Press, 1982). Wright’s “Preface,”however, may give the scholar pause. “I have taken the liberty,”the editor admits, “of making the changes I think she [Hall] would have made before sending these pieces to a publisher [in 1890 or 1990?]. Outdated [or flavorful?] grammatical construc tions, obsolete [or flavorful?] spellings, and irregularities of punctuation have been modified to fit today’saccepted practice and to avoid the distracting use of [sic] [[whyuse itatall?]]. Her spelling ofcanon, however, and a number ofsalty southwesternisms [not all?] have been retained for historical flavor.” Sharlot herself? we maywonder. We are provided a brief biographical introduction by Maxwell which em phasizes Sharlot’snoble traits, misfortunes, and achievements—mirroring con tents of the anthology. Helpful introductions and commentary by Wright pro vide contexts for eleven chapters ofwritings by Hall highlighting her life and times, from birth in Kansas in 1870 to death in Arizona in 1943. A concluding chapter contains writings about Hall byfriends and contemporaries. At her best, Hall isadetailed, evocative reporter and commentator. Despite a brutish, domineering, demanding, and disappointingly long-lived father, despite romantic frustrations, agonizing health problems (a spinal injury and psychosomatic illness—see demanding, domineering, long-lived brute, above), and despite back-breaking ranch work, Hall not only survived but also tri umphed over these personal problems as well as stifling public conceptions about acceptable roles for women. She was a leading contributor to Charles F. Lummis’s Land of Sunshine and Out West. She served as Arizona Territorial Historian, despite contentions her sex disqualified her from such a post, and travelled to Washington, D. C., as Arizona’s presidential elector for Coolidge. (Wright prints Hall’s hilarious recounting of how later attempts by Arizona Republicans to discipline her for being seen in the companyofa RooseveltNew Dealer backfired.) Almost singlehandedly, Hall preserved the Old Governor’s Mansion in Prescott, making it into the museum it is today. Wright has selected some ofHall’s best prose, which should move readers to reconnoiter Sharlot Hall on the Arizona Strip: A Diary of a Journey Through .Northern Arizona in 1911 (Northland Press, 1975) for further enjoyment. Strangely, however, Hall’sbest poetry is not presented...