es were relieved, my health
steadily improved. Several times I preached to the Indians, and these
occasions were among the most interesting of my experiences. The squaws
invariably brought their babies with them, but they had a simple and
effective method of relieving themselves of the care of the infants
as soon as they reached the church. The papooses, who were strapped to
their boards, were hung like a garment on the back wall of the building
by a hole in the top of the board, which projected above their heads.
Each papoose usually had a bit of fat pork tied to the end of a string
fastened to its wrist, and with these sources of nourishment the
infants occupied themselves pleasantly while the sermon was in progress.
Frequently the pork slipped down the throat of the papoose, but the
struggle of the child and the jerking of its hands in the strangulation
that followed pulled the piece safely out again. As I faced the
congregation I also faced the papooses, to whom the indifferent backs
of their mothers were presented; it seemed to me there was never a time
when some papoose was not choking, but no matter how much excitement or
discomfort was going on among the babies, not one squaw turned her head
to look back at them. In that assemblage the emotions were not allowed
to interrupt the calm intellectual enjoyment of the sermon.

My most dramatic experience during this period occurred in the summer of
1874, when I went to a Northern lumber-camp to preach in the pulpit of
a minister who was away on his honeymoon. The stage took me within
twenty-two miles of my destination, to a place called Seberwing. To my
dismay, however, when I arrived at Seberwing, Saturday evening, I found
that the rest of the journey lay through a dense woods, and that I could
reach my pulpit in time the next morning only by having some one drive
me through the woods that night. It was not a pleasant prospect, for
I had heard appalling tales of the stockades in this region and of the
women who were kept prisoners there. But to miss the engagement was not
to be thought of, and when, after I had made several vain efforts to
find a driver, a man appeared in a two-seated wagon and offered to take
me to my destination, I felt that I had to go with him, though I did not
like his appearance. He was a huge, muscular person, with a protruding
jaw and a singularly evasive eye; but I reflected that his forbidding
expression might be due, in part at least, to th