The death of his body at 83 years is not reasonable cause of mourning; his nearest friends have had cause for sadness in the slow and gradual mental decay which was perceptible to them for many years before the final end. A change, slight and unperceived by ordinary observers, was noted by his intimate friends as far back as 1879, when a few lines in the annual address to the pioneers prepared by him but which he was unable to attend and deliver, and were well read by F. M. Bewley, seemed unlike the Rees of 1859. Yet in that address he characteristically goes to the very beginning of social free and easy interchange of personal views on the life of the times of 1845-6. This early social life expressed itself through an organization called the Pioneer Lyceum and Literary Club, and he thus speaks of it: "The following are the names Charlie Pickett had on the membership roll. They were at times widely scattered and are designated upon the roll as regular and visiting members: "John H. Couch, F. W. Pettygrove, J. M. Woir, A. L. Lovejoy, J. Applegate, S. W. Moss, Robert Newell, J. W. Nesmith, Ed Otie, H. A. G. Lee, F. Prigg, C. E. Pickett, Wm. C. Dement, Medorum Crawford, Hiram Strait, J. Wambaugh, Wm. Cushing, Philip Foster, Ransom Clark, H. H. Hide (Hyde?), John G. Campbell, Top McGruder, W. H. Rees, Mark Ford, Henry Saffren, Noyes Smith, Daniel Waldo, P. G. Stewart, Isaac W. Smith, Joseph Watt, Frank Ematinger, A. E. Wilson, Jacob Hoover, S. M. Holderness, John Minto, Barton Lee, General Husted, and John P. Brooks. "Perhaps a more congenial, easy-going, self-satisfying club has never since congregated in the old capital city and under changed condition of affairs, especially in fashions so strikingly different from the unique and richly colored costumes of that day, never will the good people of our spray-bedewed old city rest upon the like again." The names are given as history, the last quotation as a sample of Mr. Rees's quiet humor. Now an end of life by natural law is not a proper subject of mourning. Willard H. Rees did not so regard it, when his generous kindness led him to collect the most praiseworthy incidents of very earliest and most unlettered of the pioneers from those coming with Lewis and Clark and Astor's enterprise to those better informed who came after he himself was here. The contributions of Willard H. Rees, J. W. Nesmith, and M. P. Deady to the Oregon Pioneer Association publication would alone constitute no mean volume of the history of Oregon, beginning with retired Canadian hunters and trappers who by cultivating the soil of Oregon and creating a magazine of supplies to the American homebuilders unawares were cultivating the seeds of civilization aided and foreseen by the Applegates, Burnetts, Waldos, Nesmiths, Rees, and others who managed a bloodless victory over the pro-British occupation of Oregon. SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF JOSEPH HOLMAN.