Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/168

 156 REVEREND EZRA FISHER we leave the school in other hands. I wish with all my heart I could say to Br. Post, Come out and I will pay the passage for you and family and ensure you a salary of $1500 the first year. But I am poor in available means and cannot do anything till after the meeting of the Association in June. Then we hope to have our educational interest canvassed and it may be that we can secure a denominational pledge. I dare not hope for great things, but I will try and do what I can, by God's grace, for this as well as for every other interest connected with the advancement of the cause of Christ and humanity in Oregon. I sometimes almost wish I could be permitted to plead the cause of education and religion in Oregon before a thousand of our wealthy brethren in our old churches and, heaven approving, I would have the money to send a teacher to Oregon and furnish him his tools to do his work to the credit of the cause of Christ in Oregon. But duty calls me to labor on here under all the embarrassments incident to a new country, and I will try and do it as to Christ. Yours, EZRA FISHER. N. B. Some of our brethren here want me to obtain per- mission to return to the States andi present the claims of Oregon as a missionary field and at the same time do what I can for our school. But I have no desire on this subject aside from duty. Oregon is my home and I expect to do what little I do in the cause of Christ principally for this field. I have no curiosity to gratify and wish not to multiply labors to no effect. E. FISHER. Received April 29, 1853. Oregon City, Oregon Ten, Apr. 1, 1853. Rev. Benjamin M. Hill, Cor. Sec. of Am. Bap. Home Mission Soc. Herein I send you my report of labor as general itinerant under the appointment of the Home Mission Society for the