April 21st.  Missionary labor requires an energy and will that surmount aft obstacles and brave all climates and all risks.  A feeble constitution, a liability to take colds on every slight change of temperature, a sick wife who fears to put her feet on the ground, are the very last things to bring on to the frontiers.  The risks must be run; the determined mind makes a way for everything.  To ponder and doubt on a thousand points which may occur on such a subject, is something in effect like asking a bond of the Lord, in addition to his promises, that he will preserve the man and his family in all scenes of sickness and dangers, in the forest and out of the forest, scathless.  Such a man has no call clearly for the work; but he may yet labor efficiently at home.  There is a species of moral heroism required for the true missionary, such as Brainerd and Henry Martin felt.

These feelings result from a letter of this date, written by a reverend gentleman of Phillipsburg, N.Y., whose mind has been directed to the Mackinack field.  He puts too many questions respecting the phenomena of temperature, the liability to colds, and the general diseases of the country, for one who has fearlessly “put on the whole armor of God,” to invade the heathen wilderness.  The truth is, in relation to this position, the climate is generally dry, and has no causes of disease in it.  The air is a perfect restorative to invalids, and never fails to provoke appetite and health.  It is already a partial resort for persons out of health, and cannot fail to be appreciated as a watering place in the summer months as the country increases in population.  To Chicago, St. Louis, Natchez, and New Orleans, as well as Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Buffalo, I should suppose it to be a perfect Montpelier in the summer season.

May 6th.  In the scenes of domestic and social and moral significancy, which have rendered the island a place of delight to many persons during the seclusion of the winter, no one has entered with a more pleasing zeal into the area than a young man whose birth, I think, was not far from the Rock of Plymouth.  I shall call him Otwin.  I invited him to pass the winter as a guest in my house, where his conversation, manners, and deep enthusiastic and poetic feeling, and just discrimination of the moral obligation in men, rendered him an agreeable inmate.  He had a saying and a text for almost everybody, but uttered all he said in such a pleasing spirit as to give offence to none.  He was ever in the midst of those who came together to sing and pray, and was quite a favorite with the soldiers of the garrison.  He wrote during the season some poetic sketches of Bible scenes, which he sent by a friend to New York in the hope that they might merit publication.  Dr. Ives, of N.Y., to whom I wrote in relation to them, put the manuscript into the hands of the Sabbath School Publishing Committee, which appeared to be a judicious disposition.  It was, probably, thought to require something more than moral didactic dialogues to justify the experiment of printing them.  Otwin himself went into the missionary field of Lake Superior.