For many years we looked across the valley to see the smoke from the fire on the Mercer hearthstone winding skyward, for they were our only neighbors. Even for this, we were not so solitary, nor quite so lonely as we must have been with no human habitation in our view. And then we felt the kindly presence, sympathy we knew we could always claim, the cheerful greetings and friendly visits.
When his aged pastor, Rev. Daniel Bagley, with snowy locks, stood above his bier and a troop of silver-haired pioneers in tearful silence harkened, he told of fifty years of friendship; how they crossed the plains together, and of the quiet, steady, Christian life of Thomas Mercer.
He said, “Whatever other reasons may have been given, that he understood some Indians to say the reason they did not burn Mercer’s house during the war, was that Mercer was ‘klosh tum-tum,’ (kind, friendly, literally a good heart), and ‘he wawa-ed Sahale Tyee’ (prayed to the Heavenly Chief or Great Spirit). Thus did he let his light shine; even the savages beheld it.”
In closing a touching, suggestive and affectionate tribute, he quoted these lines:
“O what hath Jesus bought for me! Before my ravish’d eyes Rivers of life divine I see, And trees of Paradise; I see a world of spirits bright, Who taste the pleasures there; They all are robed in spotless white, And conqu’ring palms they bear.”
HESTER L. MERCER.
When a child I often visited this good pioneer woman—so faithful, cheerful, kind, self-forgetful.
With busy hands she toiled from morning to night, scarcely sitting down without some house-wifely task to occupy her while she chatted.
Of a very lively disposition, her laugh was frequent and merry.
A more generous, frank and warm-hearted nature was hard to find, the demands made upon it were many and such as to exhaust a shallow one. Her experiences were varied and thrilling, as the following account from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of November 13th, 1897, will show: