Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/269

Rh of that year. Passing through Mexico, he reached New York in May, 1844. Thence he went again directly to Washington to urge once more upon the Government the necessity of terminating the joint occupation of Oregon and of establishing quickly and definitely the sovereignty of the United States. But Jason Lee was never to see Oregon again. Conferences with his missionary board, and work of preparation for larger efforts in Oregon, occupied him during the remainder of the year 1844. But his arduous labors, the privations, and sacrifices of more than ten years had broken his constitution, and in March, 1845, his mortal part passed from earth. But his spirit is here, and the work he set in motion is a possession here forever. It is fit that Oregon should recover his dust and that her soil should hold it, as the life of her people holds his spirit. Yet human glory was not his aim. His object was a higher one, and he achieved it. His name lives; yet of such mould was he that, assured as he was that the Almighty Judge could not forget, even the oblivion of man could have been no matter to him.

He was still young—not yet 42 years of age; but "virtue, not length of days, the mind matures"; and, "that life is long which answers life's great end."

A great nature is a seed. The spirit of life and of action which springs from it grows and will grow among men forever. Thus it is that man is the only being that can not die. The poet tells us in mournful cadence that the path of glory leads but to the grave. But this is true only in a superficial sense. The path of true glory does not end in the grave. It passes through it, to larger opportunities of service—into a spirit that it stimulates and feeds, and into the spirit that survives it, in men's minds forever.

Not long remembered would Jason Lee have been—we may suppose—but for the fortune of opportunity that sent him to Oregon. With all men of action it is so. But for