Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/201



The young American loves to read of Paul Revere. He dwells with thrilling interest upon the ride of the boy Archie Gillespie, who saw the great dam breaking, and at the risk of his life rode down 179 the valley of the Conemaugh to Johnstown, shouting, "Flee for your lives, the flood, the flood!" The people fled and two minutes behind the boy rolled the mighty flood of annihilation. How painter, and poet, and patriot, lingers over the ride of the gallant Sheridan "from Winchester, twenty miles away." All the honor is deserved; he saved an army and turned a defeat into victory.

But how do all these compare with the ride of Whitman? It, too, was a ride for life or death. Over snow-capped mountains, along ravines, traveled only by savage beasts and savage men. It was a plunge through icy rivers, tired, hungry, cold, and yet he rode on and on, until he stood before the President, four thousand miles away! Let us hope and believe that the time will come when Whitman, standing before President Tyler and Secretary Webster, in his buckskin breeches and a dress as we have shown, which was never woven in loom, will be the subject of some great painting. It would be grandly historical and tell a story that a patriotic people should never forget.

Alice Wellington Rollins wrote the following poem, which was published in the New York Independent,