128 Snapshots from the North Pacife.

candidates for school, baptism, and confirmation, and dear,
dirty little things they are—raw productions of nature.
There is policy as well as kindness in all this, because if
you can win the children, they are so naturally disobedient
that the parents will not be able to restrain them from
coming, and where they go their seniors follow. After
singing to them a little I went for a short walk, they
toddling after me, and the two biggest, following my example,
gathered flowers.

“ Ag soon as the ships were unloaded I went down to the
tired workers and asked if they were too weary to come to a
service. At once the big store, which was full of boxes
and bales, was roughly arranged, and two lamps lighted.
All crowded in, Indians and whites. I stood inside jue
counter, and drew from under it an open box of soap to
kneel on. The light was so poor that I did not see the
treacle spilt on the counter and dripping from it on my
soap-box. Before I could read a Lesson I had to wipe the
treacle from my Bible on a bale of bear-skins beside me.
The light was so religiously dim that my congregation could
not read from the hymn-books I had lent them, so that I
had to sing two solos, which appears to have pleased the In-
dians immensely. though they could not understand a word.

“By the following Sunday I had made many friends,
among them a ten-year-old half-breed. He had picked up
some English by running about among the gold-miners, and
became useful in telling me the names of things in the new
language. He was more dressed than his confréres, and a
leading spirit among them. He had a bright face and a pair
of eyes sparkling with intelligence, mischief, and fun, under
the shadow of a felt hat whose brims slouched nearly to his
shoulders. The coat was man’s size, matching the trousers,
which were docked just below the knee. His boots, if laid
aside, will fit him seven years hence. No laces! There was
real cleverness in preventing all but his hat from slipping
from his shoulders to his feet. When on a visit he was pro-
priety itself, especially as to his boots. At other times,