Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/171

 CORRESPONDENCE 159 we can get a permanent teacher who will identify himself with the school. But we cannot see the school entirely run down, or, what is worse, let it slide out of our hands into others, which may be the case unless we keep a good man teacher in the school. We cannot, as a Board, pledge a certain definite salary to a teacher. We do not know how to do this while a very few men in the denomination will assume responsibilities. Brs. Johnson, Chandler and myself will have to meet most of the responsibilities, should the effort prove a failure, and we are all poor and; have sacrificed hundreds of dollars each to keep the school alive. We however intend to lay the whole business of the school before the friends of education next month at the annual meeting of the Associa- tion and see what we can do by way of bringing the school more immediately under the control of the denomination. We now want to commit the denomination more directly to the cause of the school. More than two-thirds of the funds which have been raised for the school have been raised out of the denomination. The school must languish, or its whole pros- perity must rest on a very few men of energy, till the Baptists of Oregon become committed to the cause. We are amply able to carry on the work, if we can call out the surplus means, but we are a new people and not much accustomed to systematic work and; systematic responsibility. Our town has received a new impulse in business this spring and will probably in- crease in numbers and in wealth gradually from this time. We shall have four or five wholesale houses in the place in four or five weeks and about fifteen retail drygoods stores, and all the relative branches of business are fast moving for- ward, such as steamboat building, foundries, tinners', smiths/ carpenters/ millers*, bakers', butchers', watch makers', lawyers', clerks', physicians', etc. I wish you would still have the good- ness to look out for a teacher. I have no doubt but I could support my family by the school the first year, should the Lord direct my labor to that employment, and now is the time for us to commence, with the present permanent increase