Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/487



CORRESPONDENCE 479

year must have been worth something like $600 or $700. It must have averaged about 25 scholars at $6.00, $8.00 and $10.00 per quarter. The average price was a fraction short of $8 per quarter. I think we may safely calculate that, by the time our teacher will be ready to enter the school, the school will be worth as much the first year as it was last, and from that time forward we hope for a gradual increase.

All practical business men in Oregon give their opinion that Oregon City must become one of the few important places in Oregon. I have no doubt but a good professional teacher, with a small family, would be able to sustain his family from the school, with a prospect of a gradual increase of salary, and find himself admirably situated to exert a general influence on the formation of the civil and religious character of one of the most important future states in the whole union. If we could pay the passage of Br. Post's fam- ily out and give him the school when he arrives in the place, we would gladly do it. But it strikes me that this is beyond our power. We have but eleven or twelve feeble churches in the territory and they together number less than 200 mem- bers men, women and children gathered from all parts of the western states, a few from the old states, but mostly from Missouri. It is no strange thing to me that many of them cannot see clearly what relation our school bears to the future destinies of the cause of Christ in Oregon, in the world. Besides, we must raise $300 or $400 the coming summer to glaze our house and thus secure it from the weather, and finish another room or two (and I know of no man who will do this work but myself, and this must be done so as not to interfere with my appropriate duties as your agent and missionary) and most of this must come from men not connected with our denomination, as I inci- dentally fall in with them to spend an hour or a night. If the country was a little older or the churches had a few more efficient pastors, this money might be raised. Since Brother Chandler left the school, we have made temporary arrangements for teaching and intend the school shall be