anation the work of memorising the characters
began.

A, E, Oo, Ah. It was just like a lot of little children in a primary
school beginning with A, B, C. Over, and over again, we repeated them,
one after the other, until my mixed audience became familiarised with
the sounds. Thus we studied them for hours. At first the interest in
the work was very great, and from the old men of eighty, to the boys and
girls of six or eight the best of attention was paid. They seemed to
vie with one another in their efforts to see which could master them
most quickly.

After a time the interest flagged considerably, especially among the
older men, as to them, these characters alone, were as yet, unmeaning
sounds. Some of them got up and lit their pipes, and moving around,
divided their time between the lesson and the smoking. Of course I had
to let them smoke. I might have found it a difficult matter to have
stopped them if I had been so foolish as to have tried. So I told them
some pleasant stories, as we toiled on at our lesson, it was not many
hours before a number of my undisciplined pupils had a fairly good idea
of the names of the characters. Knowing that I could arouse the
interest of the most apathetic among them when I began to combine the
characters into words, I asked for their earnest attention while I
proceeded in my work.

I marked out some simple words such as: (pa-pa,) (ma-ma,)
(Oo-me-me,)--(English: pigeon.) I showed them how thus to combine these
signs into words. This very much interested them; but the climax came,
when with the burnt stick I marked (Maneto,--English: God, or the Great
Spirit.) Great indeed was the excitement among them. They could hardly
believe their own eyes that before them was Maneto, the Great Spirit.
He whom they had heard in the thunder and the storm, whose power they
had seen in the lightning flash, about whom, with reverence and awe,
they had talked in their wigwams, and at their camp-fires--"Maneto!"
Here, made by a burnt stick on a rock visible to their eyes, was that
name: _God on the Rock_! It was indeed a revelation. Something that
filled, and thrilled them, as I have never before or since seen Indians
thrilled.

For a time I could only keep quiet and look on, and rejoice as I studied
them. Some of them in their amazement were doubtful of their own
senses. They acted as though they could not believe their own eyes; so
they appealed to those nearest to them, and sa