Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/265

 Station in Oregon, these 241 hard lessons of his earlier years seem to have been, in the best sense of the word, educational.

With but little help, he opened up and cultivated a great farm, and built a grist-mill and a saw-mill, and when his grist-mill was burned, built another, and, at the same time, attended to his professional duties that covered a wide district. It was the wonder of every visitor to the Mission how one man, with so few helpers, accomplished so much. At the time of the massacre, the main building of the Mission was one hundred feet in the front, with an L running back seventy feet, and part of it two stories high. Every visitor remarked on the cleanliness and comfort and thrift which everywhere appeared.

There are men who, with great incentives, have accomplished great things, but were utter failures when it came to practical, every-day duties. Dr. Whitman, with a genius to conceive, and the will and energy to carry out the most difficult and daring undertaking, was just as faithful and efficient in the little things that made up the comforts of his wilderness home. Seeing these grand results—the commodious house, the increase in the herds and the stacks of grain—seems to have only angered his lazy, thriftless Indians, and they began to make demands for a division of his wealth.