After the opening of service, I first married the three couples, (one of these consisted of an old man and woman nearly seventy years old, both of them gray-headed).  The applicants for Christian fellowship were asked to give some public expression of their faith and were received into membership and baptized together with the infants.  We, also, at the close of the service elected a deacon, who holds office for two years, and then I talked to them regarding the duties of another year.  When dismissed, all went to their homes.  I, too, went to a house near by and drank some coffee, for by this time I was quite faint.  After this I rode home, reaching there just as the family were separating from the tea-table.

It seems odd to speak of men and their wives coming to be married—­it is meant that they are husbands and wives after the Dakota custom.  When they come to understand Christian marriage, and especially if they desire to unite with the church, they ask to have the marriage solemnized in a Christian manner.  Sometimes a man and woman who have several children, perhaps a baby in arms, present themselves for marriage.

It is required of married candidates for admission to the church, that they be married in a Christian way.  This sometimes seems hard, as in a case which has been before our Oahe church for some time.  A woman of fine character whom we believe to be a sincere Christian, desires to unite with the church.  Her husband, who is a veritable heathen, refuses to marry her.  He says he never has had another wife and does not intend to take one, but he is a Dakota and does not wish to adopt white people’s ways.  They have a large family of children, and the wife does not feel that it is best to separate from her husband, though she really desires to do her whole Christian duty.  In such cases, this regulation seems hard, but in the early days of the Dakota Mission, anything else brought confusion and trouble into the church, and this method of action was decided upon.

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WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT IT?

MISS M.C.  COLLINS, FORT YATES, DAK.

There is a time in our work, if it progresses as we would like, when it seems to go beyond us.  The work here now is at that point.  When I came here the people were beggars.  Their acquaintance with the Agency people and the Army people had been such as to cause them to think that white people were all wealthy, and that one had only to ask for a thing to receive it.  I have labored diligently to induce them to earn what they have.  It is very seldom now that any one begs, but I am over-run with applications for work.  Each individual is jealous of another, if I give one work and refuse another.  If I hire a woman to wash, I must hire another to iron, another to bring in my wood, another to wash the floor and still another to clean up my yard.  If I hire a