Page:Whitman's Ride through Savage Lands.djvu/220

182 were found to be "apples of gold in pictures of silver"?

We all view such events from different standpoints, and I do not stop to argue, only to state facts historically accurate. There are accidents in the physical world from violated laws certainly, but in the moral uplift of the race there seems to be an invisible hand, and an agency greater than man's power. Wise as the race has grown, we cannot understand and explain the mysteries that surround us. I see the poor young Doctor in 1848 struggling to master his professional work, and I see him again in 1894, old and rich, and in January of that year, he sat musing by the fire in his winter home in Georgia, and he took his pen and wrote:

January, 1894.

Some may say "Nothing strange in that. Dr. Pearsons had made large gifts to thirty-four different colleges." That is true. I one day asked him, "Did any one ever ask that gift to Whitman College?" He replied, "No; no one asked me for a