of them very ignorant, and, so far as he was able to
discover, there was not a single book of any kind in the cabin. He
invited the children to Sunday-school, where, like Robert Raikes, he
teaches reading and spelling as well as the Bible, but the mother
indignantly refused, saying that she "didn't let her children go to
school with Niggers!"

There are many evidences of heroic sacrifice on the part of the people
among whom we labor, that one runs across in such a trip as this. Here
is one: A small church in Alabama has recently voted to pay fifty
dollars per month of their pastor's salary, that they may become
self-supporting, and so let the funds which they have received go to
other more needy fields. There are seventy-five persons in this church
who might be termed paying members; of all these, the pastor informed
me, not more than fifteen receive over a dollar per day; sixty receive
less than this. They pay, on an average, ten dollars per month for rent;
there are twenty-six working-days to the month, and they often lose at
least five of these, on account of weather or lack of work, making an
income of only twenty-one dollars per month. Ten dollars going for rent,
leaves but eleven dollars for the support of the family. Pretty heroic
economy that!

The Annual Meeting of the Dakota Mission, the Convention of missionaries
who are at work in the Indian field under the direction of this
Association, gathered at Santee Agency, Nebraska, Saturday, June 15, and
was full of interest. Sessions were held for three days, and continued
late into the night. Thrilling incidents of exposure on the prairie
during winter, swimming swollen and chilly streams, breaking through the
ice when crossing, which, in one case, resulted in the drowning of a
team of horses, seemed to be every-day incidents in the life of these
heroic missionaries, who are carrying on this noble work among the
Indians. The two Riggs brothers, whose heredity as well as personal
consecration fit them for large usefulness in the Indian work, were
especially rich in experience and inspiring in conference. One thing,
especially, impressed me in this Indian work, and that was, the
difference in character between the average teacher employed by the
Government and those employed by this Association and other missionary
bodies. Many noble men and women are at work under the Government in
teaching the Indians, but the purpose of the Government-school at the
best is simp