Page:Whitman's Ride through Savage Lands.djvu/215

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
The Memorials to Whitman
177

dorsed the work, and in a closing minute said, "The Whitman Seminary is in memory of the noble deeds and great work of the late lamented Dr. Whitman and his noble wife."

Dr. Eells, like Whitman, was a very poor man. The people about them were poor. But they were rich in the kind of "Faith that removes mountains." To financiers of modern times who demand millions for schools the outlook for Whitman Seminary would not have been marked as "promising." Dr. Eells bought the great Whitman Mission farm from the American Board for one thousand dollars (on credit), and began work. He and his wife were then well along in years, but that did not count, and they had two sons of like mind who still live to tell the story. For six years he plowed, sowed, reaped, and preached a free Gospel up and down the valley; while the good wife made butter, raised chickens, spun and wove, and at the end of that time, they had accumulated six thousand dollars to start Whitman Seminary. The charter was granted, the foundations laid, and work begun. The time came, years later, when the seminary grew into a college, and Dr. Eells had such strong and able men to aid and advise him as Dr. Anderson, the first president, Dr. Atkinson, Dr. Lyman, Dr. Spalding, and many others. But the college, while