Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/80



72 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

have written Br. Malcom on that subject. Oregon is in perish- ing need of this very kind of instrumentality. Will not our eastern Baptists give this Ter. the first colporter, with his supply of books adapted to every age and condition of man in the formation of a moral and religious character? You may think me enthusiastic. Well, be it so, I am quite sure you could not be less so, were you here to see and feel our wants as I do. We must have the Psalmist 137 here ; a few dozen would sell and these would prepare the way for hundreds more. Yours respectfully,

EZRA FISHER. Received May 6, 1848.

Clatsop Plains, March the 8th, 1848. Dear Br. Hill:

The last communications I received from you were under date of October 2nd and 31st and Nov. 13th, 1846, per Bark Whiton, and I reported by the same bark up to November 1st, 1847. I also saw a letter to Br. Johnson, which I think was brought through by the immigration of 1847, in which was stated the fact that the* Executive Board had voted to increase our salary to $200 each, which fact I acknowledged in my last. The Bibles and Testaments appropriated by the City Bible Society have been of essential service in supplying the destitute and relieving the wants of our Sabbath schools and Bible class. The tracts have been earnestly sought and read with much interest, both by parents and children, and no doubt they have been blessed of God as an efficient auxiliary to the ministry of the Word and Sabbath school instruction. My portion of this stock of tracts is more than half gone and I have promised Brother Vincent Snelling some. By the bless- ing of the All Wise, I propose spending about two months of the approaching summer in the Willamette Valley. I am there- fore using them sparingly that I may take a package along with me. I earnestly hope you will not fail to have more forwarded,

1 37 The "Psalmist" was a Baptist Hymnal by Baron Stow and S F. Smith. McCHntock and Strong, Cyc. of Bibl. Theol. and Eccl. Lit. VIII, 745.