e far dearer to him than anything that earth could offer.

Sometimes, while thus at work, he was visited by learned men, who
desired to know what literary undertaking Mr. Eliot had in hand. They,
like himself, had been bred in the studious cloisters of a university,
and were supposed to possess all the erudition which mankind has hoarded
up from age to age. Greek and Latin were as familiar to them as the
bab-ble of their childhood. Hebrew was like their mother tongue. They
had grown gray in study; their eyes were bleared with poring over print
and manuscript by the light of the midnight lamp.

And yet, how much had they left unlearned! Mr. Eliot would put into
their hands some of the pages which he had been writing; and behold! the
gray-headed men stammered over the long, strange words, like a little
child in his first attempts to read. Then would the apostle call to him
an Indian boy, one of his scholars, and show him the manuscript which
had so puzzled the learned Englishmen.

"Read this, my child," would he say; "these are some brethren of mine,
who would fain hear the sound of thy native tongue."

Then would the Indian boy cast his eyes over the mysterious page, and
read it so skilfully that it sounded like wild music. It seemed as if
the forest leaves were singing in the ears of his auditors, and as the
roar of distant streams were poured through the young Indian's voice.
Such were the sounds amid which the language of the red man had been
formed; and they were still heard to echo in it.

The lesson being over, Mr. Eliot would give the Indian boy an apple or
a cake, and bid him leap forth into the open air which his free nature
loved. The Apostle was kind to children, and even shared in their sports
sometimes. And when his visitors had bidden him farewell, the good man
turned patiently to his toil again.

No other Englishman had ever understood the Indian character so well,
nor possessed so great an influence over the New England tribes, as the
apostle did. His advice and assistance must often have been valuable
to his countrymen in their transactions with the Indians. Occasionally,
perhaps, the governor and some of the councillors came to visit Mr.
Eliot. Perchance they were seeking some method to circumvent the forest
people. They inquired, it may be, how they could obtain possession of
such and such a tract of their rich land. Or they talked of making
the Indians their servants; as if God had destined them