Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/20

14 and in the course of an individual's thought there are resting places or substantive parts and places of flight or transitive parts. The Lewis and Clark exploration has been singled out by the people of Oregon from among the historic achievements of their past as that substantive part upon which their attention should rest and to which their thought should be made to recur unceasingly for a period of half a dozen years—for they made this particular event the historical basis for their first community effort in the form of a Centennial Exposition and "Western World's Fair."

Most fortunate is it if there is such higher significance in this event and in its setting that shall make this long focusing upon it in this impressionable mood of the popular mind not a cold blank stare, but a period of elation. Because of richness and warmth of suggestion of this event it shall enkindle and unify, raising the public to a higher order of life. That it has such epical character, and that it bears effluence and inspiration of biblical quality to the head and hearts of the people who with full understanding commemorate it, is the claim made for it.

This event easily bears the emphasis of a centennial celebration on its objective side because of its paramount influence in the train of events through which the Oregon Country was won for the American people. It has prominence, too, in that longer line of achievements through which the position of this nation was gained as "Arbiter of the New World." The Louisiana purchase probably holds over it as a larger step in effecting the rise of the United States to a world power. But to the importance that the Lewis and Clark exploration thus has, objectively considered, must be added that grand scheme of life purposes of Thomas Jefferson of which it was an integral part