There was one girl, coarse enough in fiber, heavy enough in build, gross enough in appearance, who came out to one of our commencements, and went back with the arrow in her heart, saying, “I would give all the world if I had it, if I could write a piece and git up thar and read it like them.”  She went home determined she would go to college.  She was a large girl, fifteen years old, yet did not know a single letter.  She walked fifty miles nearly, and came and said to the college president that she wanted to work for her board, so that she could enter the school.  What could she do?  He found that really she was incapacitated for doing anything; but she said, “I can hoe corn like a nigger.”  Finally she was set at some sort of work, and that girl, after three or four years, went out as a school teacher into a district where young men dared not go, where her eyes were blistered with the sights she saw—­men shot down before her face and eyes by the whisky distillers—­and she was asked to organize a Sunday-school there.  When any one starts a Sunday-school he is expected to preach, and so that girl had to become a preacher, and to-day she is preaching the gospel of God and spreading the work there.  And yet she came from one of the very humblest classes.

There is a peaceful invasion of this people by themselves.  This mission of the people to themselves is one of the most hopeful things about this work.  And when they realize that they have a mission, Pauline in spirit, unto their own people, then victory shall come to us.

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ADDRESS OF REV.  ADDISON P. FOSTER, D.D.

This Indian problem has been largely settled on its civil side.  For many years the friends of the Indians have been consulting together, and have done their utmost to influence public opinion.  And the Government has heeded the call—­as it always does—­of a widely extended and wise public sentiment; and, in consequence, our policy with regard to the Indian has been very largely re-shaped.  To-day, by reason of the Dawes Bill, land is open to the Indians in severalty.  There is a fair degree of law secured for the Indians.  The great questions pertaining to their outward circumstances are under happy prospect of adjustment.

But, this being the fact, it simply increases the necessity laid upon us to meet the requirements of the present day.  The door is open for the Indian to become a citizen; and in this land, whenever any man receives the privileges of citizenship, it is incumbent upon us to see to it that he is fitted for that sacred obligation by the church and by the school.

This is a necessity of our republic which we have recognized from our earliest day.  When our fathers came to this land, they located side by side the school house and the church; and, wherever we have sought to open the privileges of the suffrage, and the dignities, and honors, and joys of citizenship, to any class of people among us, we have always felt it to be an imperative necessity to see to it that they had both these sacred training schools, the educational institution and the religious institution, side by side.