Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/456



448 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

a large county, is it reasonable to expect that everything will be done with the promptness and precision with which busi- ness is transacted in well organized churches in the midst of compact cities?

And then your missionaries, unlike our missionaries in the foreign field's, have been compelled to divide their energies between the interests of the churches and the recurring ur- gent wants of rising families. During the last three years the extravagant prices of all the articles of family consump- tion, together with the rage for gold which pervaded 1 almost the entire community, precluded all reasonable hope that the Missionary Society and the scattered churches would give the families of your missionaries a bare sustenance. With this state of things we are fully convinced that your Board have been disposed to exercise a laudable (I might perhaps say unwarrantable) forbearance. But this policy has been fruitful in evil consequences. Our necessities have diverted our time and care to a lamentable extent from our appropri- ate work. While we have been fast wearing out our lives in hard labor directed to the best of our wisdom, we feel a la- mentable conviction that the feeble cause of Christ has been neglected and our Christian graces have been gradually de- clining. In the midst of these embarrassing circumstances we have labored and under the blessing of God we have brought a school into existence. In the assumption of the necessary responsibilities, Brother Johnson has involved himself in pecuniary liabilities from which it is doubtful whether he will ever be able to recover. The school fur- nished me a living while at the same time it consumed all my available means and confines me for years to the place in or- der to secure a permanent site for a literary institution for the denomination in Oregon. But times and prospects have greatly changed in a few months. The prices of most of the ordinary articles of family consumption are materially re- duced. Still the labor of man and beast is high. Butter is still 75 cents a pound, so we use none of that article; fresh