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 dollar, and the president of the college evidently thought my proposition preposterous, for he never even replied to my letter." It was in the dark days of the college. President Eaton was a good man, but he had lost the strong faith of his predecessors, and soon after resigned. Just then the Yale Band of Missionaries invaded Washington, and Rev. S. B. L. Penrose, a man of Eells faith and Whitman's courage and perseverance, was chosen president. He at once visited Dr. Pearsons, thanked him for his generous offer, and set about his task of raising the money. The difficulty was in getting a start. On June 20, 1895, the book "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon" was published in Chicago, and on the Fourth of July, Sunday, two weeks later, forty ministers in Chicago and neighboring places took Marcus Whitman as a patriotic text. Many of them took up collections for the memorial college, and the Congregational Club gave its check for one thousand dollars. Virginia Dox, an eloquent and enthusiastic pleader, took up the work, carrying it through Michigan, along northern and central Ohio and all New England from Maine to Massachusetts, and the one hundred and fifty thousand was raised, and the Doctor's fifty thousand added. The Doctor, in the meanwhile has paid off the mortgage debt of thirteen thousand five hundred dollars. Everything looked brighter. But the buildings were poor and over-crowded, the campus of five acres too small. It was a good fortune which enabled the directors to buy eighteen acres adjoining, and admirably adapted for the purpose. Dr. Pearsons then said, "You need a dormitory for young men, where they can be cheaply and comfortably fed and housed, and I will give fifty thousand dollars to erect a memorial building to Dr. and Mrs. Whitman if others will erect the dormitory." Through the aid of Mrs. Billings of New York (the largest giver), Billings and Memorial halls went up simultaneously. Then Dr. Pearsons said, the girls need a dormitory as well as the boys, let others build it, and I will give fifty thousand to endowment. It was done. The people of Walla Walla, though possessed of no surplus wealth, came nobly to the rescue and contributed several thousand dollars, and the poor professors and many students literally gave "all that they had, even all their living," in making up the required sum. And so it has been from the beginning a college built by faith and self-denial. It has still many great needs, but its friends still hope and believe that its wants will be supplied.