Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/258

242 forbid the veneration of that which moves or touches the human heart. Could even divine power prevent the veneration of the graves of our ancestors, our relatives, our friends, and those of the world's great men and women?

This statue symbolizes and immortalizes in a remarkable way the Oregon pioneer and his qualities—his courage, his determination, his instincts and his high ideals and those of the race or of the people of which the Oregon pioneer is a fine specimen and example. Let everyone, and especially the young men and young women who are now and who will be students of this university, observe and study well this statue, and thus earn and appreciate what the Oregon pioneers—the founders of Oregon—were and are. Let them strive to emulate the qualities and virtues of the Oregon pioneers and to respect and to venerate what they hoped, what they dared, what they wrought, and what they accomplished.