Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/167

 CORRESPONDENCE 155 After preaching on Sab., I presented in brief the claims of the Home Mission Soc. and took up a collection of $9.00. Respectfully yours, EZRA FISHER. Received April 29, 1853. Oregon City, March 17, 1853. Rev. Benjamin M. Hill, Cor. Sec. A. B. H. M. Soc. Dear Brother: I wrote you about six weeks since, giving the reasons of Br. Chandler's removal from this place as near as I could. Be assured we have no designs to keep the affairs of the school a secret. I feel that it has been a serious msfortune to the school that Br. Chandler left it. The two last quarters the school has been in the hands of men interested in making a living for themselves, who went into the school till they could find a more lucrative employment. The school has not numbered more than fifteen, and in its most prosperous condition eighteen scholars. The second man, a graduate of Brown's University, left the school in the middle of the term. Had he continued, he would have lost all his school. We have now put the school into the hands of Professor Shat- tuck,3 l6 the principal of the female seminary of this place, and think we shall make no more changes till we can get a man to take charge of the school and identify his interests with the prosperity of it. The school has just opened and scholars are beginning to return, but it will require at least a quarter to bring the school to 25. Business is beginning to increase in town and I have no doubt but by next winter the school will pay a man a fair living. We need just such a man as you represent Br. Post to be and, were he here, he would, in his appropriate work, do more for the general in- fluence of the Bap. cause than any one minister can while 316 This was E. D. Shattuck, a native of Vermont, and a graduate of the University of Vermont, who was later prominent as a judge, and as a member of the Republican party. Hist, of Portland, ed. by H. W. Scott, p. 514.