win offered to take Elizabeth, Ellen and me across the
river to Cherry Creek, so that I gained rather than lost.

THE DANCE.

As we drew near the dance-house I could hear the monotonous yet rythmic
beat of the drum, and get glimpses through the door-way of the feathered
heads moving in time to the music. Outside there was a crowd of women,
girls, and young men, the young men wrapped in white sheets under which
they carry off, and make love to, the dusky maidens. This is the way a
Titon "makes love." As a recent writer describes this dance, bringing
before one only its poetry, and that which may be perhaps really
beautiful, it does not seem shocking or revolting in the least; but the
reality is simply dreadful. Not so much in itself, perhaps, though that
is bad enough, as in its influence, its consequences, all that it means
and all that it leads to.

THE CONTRAST.

Just beyond the dance house is the mission station where Clarence Ward
and his wife are; a civilized Christian family in the midst of this
heathenism.

Sunday was to be the eventful day, and as early as half past nine the
congregation began to arrive. When the bell rang for service, the
school-room was filled almost immediately. Everything possible was
utilized for seats; trunks, boxes, wagon-seats, kegs, and those who
could not be provided with seats sat on the floor. There were probably a
hundred in all. The weight of so many people on the floor was too much
for the sleepers. Some of them gave way, and the floor settled somewhat,
but the audience was not "nervous" and was only amused. As I sat at the
organ, a group outside the door attracted my attention; several bright
faced girls, their shawls drawn over their heads with a grace a white
girl might envy, but could not hope to attain, and beyond them a face
that would pass on the most perfectly appointed stage for one of
Macbeth's witches, without being "made-up." The faces of some of the men
were as wooden and expressionless as the figures in front of a tobacco
shop, but these are they into whose lives the power of the Gospel of the
Son of God has not come. After this service came the church meeting, and
a Cheyenne River branch church was established which still has
connection with the mother church at Oahe.

The school-room being too small for the afternoon communion service,
this was held out of doors. There must have been a hundred and fifty
present, perhaps more. First came a marriage ceremony,