Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/73

 fidelity? Having accomplished a feat unparalleled for its heroism and without a break in its grand success, 61 he makes no report of it to any state or national organization, but while he talked freely with his friends of his work it is only now, after he has rested for forty-seven and more years, that this modest letter written to his wife's father at the time, strongly reveals his motives.

Having accomplished his great undertaking, he was still the missionary and friend of the Indians, and at once dropped back to his work, and the drudgery of his Indian mission.

Again we find him enlarging his field of work, teaching his savage friends, not only Christianity, but how to sow, and plant, and reap, and build houses, and prepare for civilization. He took no part in the new political life which he had made possible. He was a stranger to all things except those which concerned the work he was called to do. In his letter he speaks of earnestly desiring to return East and bring out the second company of immigrants the coming Spring, but the needs of his mission, his wasted fields, and his mill burned during his absence, seemed to demand his presence at home.

The world speaks of this event and that, as "It so happened." They will refer to the advent of the Flathead Indians in St. Louis in 1832, as "It so happened." The more thoughtful readers