y up the hill. I unhitched the horses,
tramped the snow down so they could stand, drove them out and around
perhaps forty rods, and then took in the situation. There was the sled
half way up the hill. To pull it up was impossible; to turn it round the
same, to back it down by hand the same. The only thing left was to haul
it down. Here is where a picket line is the best kind of a missionary.
It will often help a man out of a hard place, or unto a hard place, as
in this case. Making a turn of a rope around the sled and hitching the
team on forty feet down the hill we were soon on solid ground. After
eleven hours of hard work I reached Black Pipe Creek, where our
Northfield Station is situated. In ordinary weather the trip would take
five or six hours and not worry a team. But the longest road generally
leads to a warm house and the coldest drive is forgotten when your team
is in a warm stable and the prospects are good for a hot supper.

Spotted Bear, who is the native teacher and preacher at Northfield
Station, has gone to work with earnestness and enthusiasm. Here is a
large community, perhaps fifty houses, heathen to the core. Reuben Quick
Bear, a Carlisle student, lives here. Beyond him few know anything of
Christianity. Spotted Bear has an evening school of twenty or more young
men. He teaches Dakota, and as much English as he can. A few can read.
These he puts into a Bible class. The New Testament is the text book. On
Sunday he holds two or three services, and the house is always full. A
larger room is needed at once. To build this will be my first spring
work. The value of just such work as this cannot be overestimated.
Spotted Bear himself got his education in just such a school. As soon as
Mrs. Ellen Spotted Bear had given me a supper, cooked as carefully and
nicely as any woman could, and served on neat dishes, figured, and with
plated knives, forks and spoons, Spotted Bear asks me for the _Iapi
Oaye_--the news and religious paper published in Dakota. He opens the
paper and he and his wife read it. One item of news is the change of
Government in Brazil. He asks me just where Brazil is; why they change
the Government. He reads of the fire in Boston and Lynn. He inquires
where Lynn is. Being a Congregationalist he knows Boston as a Jew knows
Jerusalem and a Mohammedan knows Mecca. Then he reads the church and
Y.M.C.A. news.

Here is a man, who by his life is denying what nine out of every ten men
in the United S