Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/287

 261

"Lo, I am this day four score and five years old. As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me; as my strength was then, even so is my strength now for war, both to go out and to come in. Now, therefore, give me this mountain whereof the Lord spoke in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and fenced. If so be, the Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out as the Lord said."

Noble, unselfish old Caleb! And how wonderfully like him was our hero thirty-four and a half centuries later. It mattered not that he had saved a great country, twice as large as New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois combined, or thirty-two times as large as Massachusetts. It mattered not that it was accomplished through great peril and trials and sufferings that no man can over-estimate, he never once asked a reward. "Give me this mountain," and he went back to his mission, and resumed his heavy burden, and let others gather the harvest, and "the clusters of purple grapes." There he was found at his post of duty, and met death on that fatal November the 29th, 1847.

When a generous people have made the endowment complete, and built the grand Memorial Hall, they should build a monument at the "Great Grave" at Waiilatpui. Americans are patriotic.