10th.  A young gentleman (Mr. W. Fred. Williams) spent a few days at my house, at Michilimackinack, much to our gratification, and, it seems from a kind letter of this date, written from Buffalo, also to his own.  He sends me a box of geological specimens, and a Chinese idol, and some sticks of frankincense—­just received by him from a relative, who is a missionary in Canton, as an offering of remembrance.  The heart is gratified with friendly little interchanges of respect, and it is a false sense of human dignity that prevents their instant acknowledgment.  We study, read, investigate, compare, experiment, judge as philosophers, but we live as men—­as common men.  Facts move or startle the judgment; but such little things as the gift of even an apple, or a smiling friendly countenance, appeal to the heart.

13th.  My article for the Theological Review was well received.  “It was in time,” says the editor, “for the March number, and you will receive it in a few days.  I read it, and so did the committee, with the highest satisfaction.  It contains much new information relating to the superstitions of the Indians, and is well calculated to have the effect you designed, of awakening the interest of the Christian community in behalf of our aborigines.  I was particularly gratified with the coincidence of your judgment with the opinion I have entertained for some years, respecting the reality of Satanic influence at the present time.  We intend shortly to publish on this point.”

This is a point incidentally brought out, in the examination of the aged converted jossakeed, or prophet of the Ottawa nation, called Chusco.  He insisted, and could not be made, to waver from the point, that Satanic influences alone helped him to perform his tricks of jugglery, particularly the often noted one of shaking and agitating the tight-wound pyramidal, oracular lodge.  No cross-questioning could make him give up this explanation.  He avowed, that, aside of his incantations, he had no part in the matter, and never put his hands to the poles.  It resulted, as the only conclusion to be drawn from this instance of his art, that the Satanic influence, although invisible, was veritably present, adapting itself to the devices of the Indian priesthood, for the purpose of deceiving the tribe.  I reported this to his pastor who had admitted his evidences of faith, who replied, on reflection, that this was the Gospel doctrine, which was everywhere disclosed by the New Testament, which depicts the “Prince of the Power of the Air” as really present and free to act in the deception of men and nations, the world over.  If so, we should no longer wonder at human crime and folly.  Murders and robberies of the blackest dye become intelligible.  And every plan of false prophecy, from the Arabian, who has enslaved half Asia, to the simple performer of forest juggling on the banks of Lakes Huron and Michigan, is explained as with beams of light.