YOUNG MEN'S DORMITORY, WHITMAN COLLEGE.
Dr. Eells, like Whitman, was a very poor man. The people about them were poor. But they were rich in the kind of "Faith that removes mountains." To financiers of modern times who demand millions for schools the outlook for Whitman Seminary would not have been marked as "promising." Dr. Eells bought the great Whitman Mission farm from the American Board for one thousand dollars (on credit), and began work. He and his wife were then well along in years, but that did not count, and they had two sons of like mind who still live to tell the story. For six years he plowed, sowed, reaped, and preached a free Gospel up and down the valley; while the good wife made butter, raised chickens, spun and wove, and at the end of that time, they had accumulated six thousand dollars to start Whitman Seminary. The charter was granted, the foundations laid, and work begun. The time came, years later, when the seminary grew into a college, and Dr. Eells had such strong and able men to aid and advise him as Dr. Anderson, the first president, Dr. Atkinson, Dr. Lyman, Dr. Spalding, and many others. But the college, while it had from the outset a good reputation, was poor; there was no endowment, and the young men and women to be educated were poor. Dr. Eells devoted his time and life energies to his task, but in spite of all they had to place a mortgage of thirteen thousand five hundred dollars upon the property. One has to read the story in Dr. Eells' diary to know it in its completeness. In its darkest days, when the faith of others was small, his was still as strong as at the beginning. The last entries in his diary, just before his death, were prayers for the upbuilding and full success of Whitman College.
The Story of Long Ago, and its Sequel
The sacred word says, "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver!" Who can overestimate the power of a good word or a good act? Drop a stone in the middle of a placid lake and the circles begin and widen until they reach the farthest shore. So with good words and good acts, they go on and on into the great future, in ways we know not of.
Congressman Thurston was a Maine man—a fine type physically, intellectually, and morally. He had early immigrated to Oregon, and was the first congressman from that territory. It was too far to return to Oregon for his summer vacation, over the slow routes of that day, so he went up to Chicopee, Massachusetts, to spend the summers of 1848 and 1849. The house where he boarded was one of the old-fashioned New England double houses, with a wide porch across the entire front. It so happened that a young doctor and his wife occupied the other side of the house, and the front portico was the common retreat in the long summer evenings. He loved to tell of the majestic forests of fir and pine trees, fifteen feet in diameter and three hundred feet high, of the grand rivers, rich soil, and its great future. It was not until 1848 that word reached the States of the tragic disaster at Waiilatpui, and the death of his dear friends, Dr. and Mrs. Whitman. The incidents and heroism of their lives were told by the eloquent, earnest congressman, in a way that made a deep and lasting impression upon the young doctor and his good wife. They were seriously casting about for some wider field in life, and were almost persuaded to make Oregon their future home. Upon the homeward journey to Oregon in 1850, Congressman Thurston lost his life in a great ocean disaster upon the Pacific. The writer was in Oregon at the time, and well remembers the wave of sorrow that spread throughout the territory. After the death of Thurston, the young doctor gave up the Far Western journey, but he still had "the western fever," removed to Illinois, and bought a small farm. Prospecting through that state, Wisconsin and Michigan, he made up his mind that there was money in pine land, and beginning in a small way, marketed the timber, and made money. He at once invested all his money in pine timberland, bought and sold, and ever bought more pine, and the time came when he could readily sell for four times the cost of it. He was an observant man, and his success in locating and selling, by his straightforward way of doing business, soon attracted the attention of capitalists, and they persuaded him to settle in Chicago and buy and sell for them. Soon an immense business was in his hands, which continued for years, and left him with a fortune. He wearied with the years of intense business activity, retired, and said to himself, here is a snug little fortune, what is to be done with it? In the language of a notable address, delivered by the doctor before a great audience at Battle Creek, when he said, "These dead hands can carry nothing out! What, gentlemen, are you going to do with your money?" He soon settled upon a plan to spend his, and that was to use it through deserving struggling Colleges, to give to poor young men and women an intellectual, moral, and religious training. He believed that every institution for its permanency and security should have a healthy, interested, money-giving constituency about it, and so he gave in a way to induce others to give, and aids no institution where the Bible and moral training are neglected. I scarcely need tell my intelligent readers this person is D. K. Pearsons, M.D., LL.D., of Chicago, now eighty-six years old.
I have given, in brief, a sketch of his work in this connection, first because of his direct association with it, and secondly, because it pointedly marks what we have tried to show from historic facts in all the chapters—that Power higher than man's power can be traced and studied.
We often speak of all such as "accidental happenings." Were they? Did the four Flathead chiefs accidentally, in 1831-32, appear in the streets of St. Louis upon their strange mission and there meet their old friend the great red-head chief? Were Drs. Whitman and Spalding and their wives accidentally in Oregon? Was his heroic ride to save Oregon in 1842 an accident? Was it accidental that he was on the border in 1843 to lead that great immigration to Oregon in safety? The Oregon of to-day was dependent upon the safety of that great company in 1843. Was it all accidental that Congressman Thurston met Dr. Pearsons in 1848-49 at Chicopee, Massachusetts, and by "words fitly spoken," that forty-five years after he had rested in his watery grave were found to be "apples of gold in pictures of silver"?
We all view such events from different standpoints, and I do not stop to argue, only to state facts historically accurate. There are accidents in the physical world from violated laws certainly, but in the moral uplift of the race there seems to be an invisible hand, and an agency greater than man's power. Wise as the race has grown, we cannot understand and explain the mysteries that surround us. I see the poor young Doctor in 1848 struggling to master his professional work, and I see him again in 1894, old and rich, and in January of that year, he sat musing by the fire in his winter home in Georgia, and he took his pen and wrote:
Lithia Springs, Georgia, January, 1894.
To the President of Whitman College, Walla Walla,
Washington:—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.