Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/174



166 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

other favors. I shall answer this letter before long. We re- ceived a bundle of 100 volumes of new Sunday school books from the Juvenile Soc. of the Sunday school in the Stanton Street Baptist Church. I shall answer Br. Cowan's letter as soon as time will permit. We received a package of new- Sunday school books, containing 300 volumes, and we regret to say we found no name nor bill attached to them, as we should be pleased to respond to the donors direct. We know they were obtained through your influence in the City. We regard them a valuable acquisition, especially as we have been obliged to sustain our school in this place with so few volumes of the A. Tract Soc.'s publications and other books less adapted to the capacities of children. We have been waiting and praying a whole year for just such an auxiliary. May the blessings of these ends of the earth come on the donors in the great day of the Lord! The periodicals, espe- cially of 1846 and 1847, were most gratefully received and we are still feasting richly upon their contents, whenever we have an hour of leisure, and we feast not alone. All our neighbors, and especially our Christian friends, find much to entertain them. The annual reports are all valuable, and we only regret that we have no more, as we have frequent occasions to meet prejudices surly through these matters of fact. You speak of procuring and forwarding a box of school books. Next to sustaining the gospel, you will render us the most essential service in a work of this kind. It is very much to be desired that the present system of popular school books in the States be introduced into all our schools in Oregon. And while so much effort is being made in the old states in behalf of pouplar education in the Mississippi valley, I trust a voice will be lifted up in behalf of the Pacific borders. Would to God that we had a Slade 152 " 8 to plead our cause on this subject in our Atlantic cities and towns. The importance of this subject is daily increasing our responsibilities and the rage of the gold mania is diminishing public sympathy for

152-3 Gov. William L. Slade, of Vermont, President of the National Board of Popular Education. Geo. H. Himes, Asst. Sec. O. H. S.