poken, is fragmentary and
of doubtful import in all except the commonest matters of speech. And at
such boarding-schools there is danger of the real misfortune and
drawback of natives growing up to live their lives amongst natives,
ignorant of the native tongue. There is no quick and easy way of
stamping out a language, thank God; there is no quick and easy way of
imparting instruction in a foreign language. By and by all the Alaskan
natives will be more or less bilingual, but the intimate speech and the
most clearly understood speech will still be the mother tongue. The
singing done, there was preaching through an interpreter, and then each
individual present "gave testimony," which consisted for the most part
in the recitation of a text of Scripture. Then there were individual
prayers by one and another of the congregation, and then some more
singing. The only hymn I could find in the book that I knew was the fine
old hymn, "How Firm a Foundation," and that was sung heartily to the
"Adeste Fideles." They are naturally a musical race, picking up airs
with great facility, and they thoroughly enjoy singing.

[Sidenote: THE "DOUBLE STANDARD"]

After the service the missionary confided some of his troubles to me. He
had lately learned through his interpreter that the burden of most of
the individual prayers was that the supplicator might "catch plenty
skins" and be more successful in hunting than his fellows; and though he
had done his best to impress upon them the superior importance of making
request for spiritual benefit, he was afraid they had made no change.
"Our people 'outside,'" he said, "don't understand these folk, and I'm
not sure that I thoroughly understand them myself." "They're all
'converted,'" he said; "they all claim to have experienced a change of
heart, but some of them I know are not living like converted people, and
sometimes I have my doubts about most of them." My sympathy went out to
him in his loneliness and his earnestness and his disappointments. I
pointed out that the emotional response to emotional preaching was
comparatively easy to get from any primitive people, but that to change
their whole lives, to uproot old customs of sensual indulgence, to
engraft new ideas of virtue and chastity was a long, slow process
anywhere in the world. It was chiefly in the matter of sexual morality
that his doubts and difficulties lay, and I was able to assure him that
his experience was but the common exper