Mrs. Whitman wanted to keep the girls, but she did not care for the boys. Dr. Dagan went on the Willamette valley and left us there. Doctor Whitman finally concluded he would keep the whole seven of us and took us in charge. We lived there three years. I might say something of the home incidents. The first thing Mrs. Whitman did was to cut our hair, wash and scrub us, as we were very much in need of a cleaning up; then she gave us something to eat and the bread seemed very dark to us--it was unbolted flour. Mrs. Eads, who had been caring for my baby sister, five months old, arrived three days later and then Mrs. Whitman took the motherless little one in charge and she grew to be a fine baby. Everything was so different from what we had been used to. The Whitmans were New England people and we were taken into their home and they began the routine of teaching and disciplining us in the old Puritan way of raising and training children--very different to the way of the plains. They hired a teacher and the immigrant families all had the privilege of sending their children to this school during the winter months. We had a church and Sunday school every Sabbath and we had our family worship every morning and evening. We had certain things to do at a certain hour. We never had anything but corn meal mush and milk for our suppers and they were very particular in our being very regular in all our habits of eating and sleeping. When the spring came all the immigrants left and went on down to the Willamette valley--the families who had wintered at the Mission leaving the Sager children behind with the big-hearted Dr. and Mrs. Whitman. We had our different kinds of work to do. We had to plant all the gardens and raise vegetables for the immigrants who came in for supplies. We got up early in the morning and we each had our piece of garden to weed and tend. We had to wipe the dishes and mop the floors. We had verses of scripture to learn each morning which we had to repeat at the family worship. The seven verses would be our Sunday school lesson. We took turns in giving our passages of Scripture. Everything was done in routine. Sometimes we had to walk in the afternoon. Mrs. Whitman would go with us; we would gather specimens and she would teach us botany. During the summer when the Indians went to the buffalo grounds, we were alone and we looked forward to the coming of the immigrants as one of the great events of our life. Sometimes in the summer we went bathing in the river. We would get the Indian girls to teach us to swim. Once, Missionary and Mrs. Eels came down from Walker's Prairie, having with them a girl by the name of Emma Hobson, and the latter went in bathing with us children; she could not swim and the current swept her down the river. She caught on an overhanging bush and an Indian took her out of the river and put a blanket around her. Mrs. Eels gave the alarm. We always called that "Emma's place." We cut water melons in two and