Page:Whitman's Ride through Savage Lands.djvu/217

Rh went up to Chicopee, Massachusetts, to spend the summers of 1848 and 1849. The house where he boarded was one of the old-fashioned New England double houses, with a wide porch across the entire front. It so happened that a young doctor and his wife occupied the other side of the house, and the front portico was the common retreat in the long summer evenings. He loved to tell of the majestic forests of fir and pine trees, fifteen feet in diameter and three hundred feet high, of the grand rivers, rich soil, and its great future. It was not until 1848 that word reached the States of the tragic disaster at Waiilatpui, and the death of his dear friends, Dr. and Mrs. Whitman. The incidents and heroism of their lives were told by the eloquent, earnest congressman, in a way that made a deep and lasting impression upon the young doctor and his good wife. They were seriously casting about for some wider field in life, and were almost persuaded to make Oregon their future home. Upon the homeward journey to Oregon in 1850, Congressman Thurston lost his life in a great ocean disaster upon the Pacific. The writer was in Oregon at the time, and well remembers the wave of sorrow that spread throughout the territory. After the death of Thurston, the young doctor gave up the Far Western journey, but he still had "the western fever," removed to Illinois,