In ke-bau-diz-ze, which is an equivalent for raca, there is a personal pronominal prefix, and an objective pronominal suffix.  The radix, in baud, has thus the second person thou in ke; and the objective inflection, iz-ze, means a person in a general sense.  This reveals two forms of the Chippewa substantive, which are applicable to all words, and leaves nothing superfluous or without “significance.”  In fact, the whole language is susceptible of the most clear and exact analysis.  This language is one of the most pure, clear, and comprehensive forms of the Algonquin.

May 20th.  The Rev. Robert McMurtrie Laird, of Princess Anne, Maryland, but now temporarily at Detroit, writes to me in a spirit of affectionate kindness and Christian solicitude.  The history of this pious man’s labors on the remotest frontiers of Michigan is probably recorded where it will be known and acknowledged, in hymns of gladness, when this feeble and frail memorial of ink and paper has long perished.

Late in the autumn of 1823, he came, an unheralded stranger, to St. Mary’s.  No power but God’s, it would seem, could have directed his footsteps there.  There was everything to render them repulsive.  The Indian wabene drum, proclaiming the forest tribes to be under the influence of their native diviners and jossakeeds, was nightly sending forth its monotonous sounds.  But he did not come to them.  His object was the soldiery and settlement, to whom he could utter truths in the English tongue.  He was assigned quarters in the cantonment, where an entire battalion of infantry-was then stationed.  To all these, but one single family, it may be said that his preaching was received as “sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”  Certainly, there were the elements of almost everything else there but religion.  And, while occupying a room in the fort, his fervent and holy spirit was often tried

     “By most unseemly mirth and wassail rife.”

He came to see me, at my office and at my lodgings, frequently during the season, and never came when he did not appear to me to be one of the purest and most devoted, yet gentle and most unostentatious, of human beings.  It is hoped his labors were not without some witness to the truths which he so faithfully taught.  But, as soon as the straits were relieved from the icy fetters of winter, he went away, never, perhaps, to see us more.  He now writes to apprise me of the spread of a rumor respecting my personal interest in the theme of his labors, which had, without permission from his lips, reached the ears of some of my friends at Detroit.  Blessed sensitiveness to rumor, how few possess it!