_Dear Sir:_
I will give Whitman College fifty thousand dollars for endowment, provided friends of the College will raise one hundred and fifty thousand additional,
Yours, D. K. PEARSONS.
[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. S. B. L. PENROSE, PRESIDENT OF WHITMAN COLLEGE]
Some may say "Nothing strange in that. Dr. Pearsons had made large gifts to thirty-four different colleges." That is true. I one day asked him, "Did any one ever ask that gift to Whitman College?" He replied, "No; no one asked me for a dollar, and the president of the college evidently thought my proposition preposterous, for he never even replied to my letter." It was in the dark days of the college. President Eaton was a good man, but he had lost the strong faith of his predecessors, and soon after resigned. Just then the Yale Band of Missionaries invaded Washington, and Rev. S. B. L.
Penrose, a man of Eells faith and Whitman"s courage and perseverance, was chosen president. He at once visited Dr. Pearsons, thanked him for his generous offer, and set about his task of raising the money.
The difficulty was in getting a start. On June 20, 1895, the book "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon" was published in Chicago, and on the Fourth of July, Sunday, two weeks later, forty ministers in Chicago and neighboring places took Marcus Whitman as a patriotic text. Many of them took up collections for the memorial college, and the Congregational Club gave its check for one thousand dollars.
Virginia Dox, an eloquent and enthusiastic pleader, took up the work, carrying it through Michigan, along northern and central Ohio and all New England from Maine to Ma.s.sachusetts, and the one hundred and fifty thousand was raised, and the Doctor"s fifty thousand added. The Doctor, in the meanwhile has paid off the mortgage debt of thirteen thousand five hundred dollars. Everything looked brighter. But the buildings were poor and over-crowded, the campus of five acres too small. It was a good fortune which enabled the directors to buy eighteen acres adjoining, and admirably adapted for the purpose.
Dr. Pearsons then said, "You need a dormitory for young men, where they can be cheaply and comfortably fed and housed, and I will give fifty thousand dollars to erect a memorial building to Dr. and Mrs.
Whitman if others will erect the dormitory." Through the aid of Mrs.
Billings of New York (the largest giver), Billings and Memorial halls went up simultaneously. Then Dr. Pearsons said, the girls need a dormitory as well as the boys, let others build it, and I will give fifty thousand to endowment. It was done.
The people of Walla Walla, though possessed of no surplus wealth, came n.o.bly to the rescue and contributed several thousand dollars, and the poor professors and many students literally gave "all that they had, even all their living," in making up the required sum. And so it has been from the beginning a college built by faith and self-denial. It has still many great needs, but its friends still hope and believe that its wants will be supplied.
Some time ago the writer read the story of an orphan newsboy, a waif of the streets, but a manly little chap. He attended a mission Sunday school and became a Christian boy. Some weeks later, one of the smart young men half-sneeringly said to the boy, as he looked at his broken shoes and tattered garments, "Well, my boy, if I believed in G.o.d as you do, I would ask Him to tell some of those rich church people to give me some better shoes and nicer clothes." The little fellow looked troubled for a moment, and then replied, "I expect He did, but they forgot."
It was one of the great characteristics of the men and women of these pages, that they listened, heard, and never "forgot."
The world to-day, and in the generation to follow, is in need of strong men and n.o.ble women. Greater problems than the fathers have solved will the sons be called to solve. Be ready for them. Mistaken Christian teachers have sometimes used the words "Prepare to die."
Change them to read "Prepare to live," and may you live long and bless the world by your living. In this land of ours, the poorest can aspire to and reach out for grand achievements. The poor, half-orphan boy, conning his lessons by a pine knot fire in his grandfather Whitman"s old New England home, or as he went through his cla.s.sical course, and the study of his profession, then learned to be a millwright, and learned all about machinery, perhaps never dreamed of the great work he was to be called to do. He simply did it all well!
That is the key which unlocks the future good things of earth, and swings wide open the everlasting doors of the eternal world. You are here for work in a broad field, and while you toil, be happy, joyous, contented, and make others the same. The children of earth are in partnership with the Great Ruler of the universe in the moral government of this world. His great law is love. Love is the greatest word in the language. The Bible represents G.o.d"s love, as "like a flowing river." Drink deep of it, as have our heroes and heroines, and when taps are sounded, whether in the quiet of your homes or amid the yells of savage men, as befell our loved ones, you can say with St. Paul, even when the feet of his murderers echoed from the walls of his dungeon, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith, thenceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness." You can sing with Tennyson in his age:
"Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark; And may there be no sadness of farewell When I embark.
"And though from out the bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar."
THE END.