Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/108



80 ROBERT MOULTON GATKE

Shepard was thirty-six years of age, is described as a tall, handsome, pleasant appearing young man, who gave the im- pression of having plenty of strength of character, but not of physical health. The readings of his journal reveals a man who was a great lover of nature and keen to observe all of its changing phases. It also strengthens the impression that he was cast in the mold of a religious mystic. His aspirations impressed themselves upon almost every page of the record of his daily life. Its expression was that of his day, for we find that despite the hardships of the journey across the plains, and despite his physical weakness, he continued to observe regu- lar days of fasting. His great periods of uplift were times when he was able to withdraw from the camp to some quiet nook and alone spend hours in prayer and meditation. Re- gardless of the excessive weariness due to his hard life and ill health, he always found time for Bible study. He even added the reading of the life of Mrs. Judson, the missionary, and one or more books on philosophy. Nature had endowed him with the tastes of a scholar, even if his circumstances had prevented their full exercise.

In the work of the mission school no small amount of the labor fell upon him, and yet in spite of all the wearying drudg- ery and the abiding condition of ill health he kept cheerful, and if perchance the strain occasionally proved too much and he yielded to the feeling of irritation, none could be more quick than he to seek humbly to make amends.

The brightest hours of Shepard's life in Oregon are con- nected with the little home that he established at the mission at the time of his marriage to Susan Downing who came to Oregon with the first reinforcement of the mission in 1837. She had been one of his co-laborers in the work of the Sab- bath school at Lynn, and they were engaged to be married before he left for Oregon. She was a noble and sympathetic helpmate, and the few years spent together were happy ones. Beside his interests in the school and its home, and in the In- dians of the valley, he found enjoyment in his garden, which produced the vegetables needed for the table of the mission family beside the loved old-fashioned flowers of New England.