THE MEETING OF THE WOMAN'S AUXILIARY IS OVER

have her way, saying: "I am very thankful. I am very thankful."

Now for just a few figures:

There are about 25,000 Indians in South Dakota. More than 10,000 of them are baptized members of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

There are now ninety Indian congregations joining weekly in the worship of the Church as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. The greater part of the Prayer Book, as well as many of the Church's hymns, has been translated into the Dakota tongue.

There are now eighteen Indian clergymen and sixty-two Indian catechists and helpers.

The Indian congregations last year gave $9,574 for their own support and for missionary work.

Over 100 boys and girls are being trained in our two schools.

I thus have tried to give some glimpses of the Indian mission just as it is. Is it not worth sustaining? If it is, pray for

it, work for it, give to it. The Board of Missions is responsible for its support. Send your gifts to George C. Thomas, Treasurer, 281 Fourth Avenue, New York.

B

THE GIFT OF LIFE

ISHOP HARE and his helpers

are the best friends the Dakotas have ever had. No work has been too laborious, no sacrifice too great. For many years Bishop Hare drove over the wide-reaching South Dakota prairies, ministering to the scattered Indians by day and at night sleeping under his wagon or in the little army tent he sometimes carried with him. Among those who have worked with him, we may remember especially at this time the Rev. W. J. Cleveland, who preceded the bishop in South Dakota by about a year, and Miss Mary V. Francis, who gave the best thirty years of her life to St. Elizabeth's. Both are now, unfortunately, invalided and unable to continue the work they love.

But the affectionate loyalty of their Indian friends and the gratitude of the Church follow them. The Rev. H. Burt, the Rev. A. B. Clark and the Rev. Edward Ashley are among others who have served for years and are still at work.

like a floating town, whose streets are water ways and whose only conveyances are canoes, flat-boats and small barges. The willow poles driven down to keep these islands from drifting about have taken root and grown into tall trees which cast a pleasant shade over the placid avenues of water.

I doubt if any city boulevard, with its fine equipages, offers a gayer or livelier scene than do these garden-bordered water ways of Xochimilco, with their passing flotillas laden with fruits, vege

them in aquatic sports. The most prominent figure is Mr. Thomas Phillips, warden of Christ Church, Mexico City, who is very fond of these island people, and is godfather to many of their children.

But these lake-dwellers are not all gardeners. It we should cross over to another village, Xochitenco, where we have a congregation and a church, and where the Rev. J. V. Hernandez is our missionary, we should find many of the people engaged in fishing; not for fish (though they do catch a few fish too),

tables and flowers and their picturesque boatmen. And such boatmen as they are! Think of standing up in the stern of a dugout, that is only sixteen inches wide and as many feet long, and propelling and steering it with a single paddle. I can as easily think of myself walking a tight rope. And yet it is as natural as walking to these chinampa boys.

In the background of the picture which shows some of these lake-dwellers, there are several of our Church people from the city, who often journey out to the floating gardens to give the people and themselves a good time by engaging

but for flies! Yes, these men with fine meshed nets over their shoulders are going out on the lake to seine for flies. And they make a very good living at it, too. For these infant flies which are bred so abundantly in these waters are ground into a paste, wrapped in corn husk and sold for food. And when dried they are also sold at a good price for bird food. The people gather also the myriads of flies' eggs deposited on the rushes near the shore; and of these they make cakes or cheeses that look like yellow brick-bats; which are very good eating, they say, and are sold in the mar

197

kets to-day just as was done when Cortez came and tortured their king for his gold, nearly four hundred years ago.

Yes, Mexico is certainly a land of mang strange sights, curious customs and interesting people. But the more I study of the conditions and character of the common people here, and the effects which have been wrought upon them by the ecclesiastical system that has dominated their lives for the past four centuries, the gladder I am, and the more thankful, too, that I was born under the Stars and Stripes, and nurtured in the arms of our own Church.

And I am still more devoutly thankful when I think by what a mere chance -no, merciful Providence!-it was that our own dear land was saved from the sad fate of this country. For it was just the passing flight of a flock of birds, perhaps you remember, that turned Columbus from his course and so prevented him and the Spanish conquerors who later followed him, from discovering our part of the American continent, and colonizing it with a Spanish Roman Catholic population. When Columbus was approaching this yet undiscovered continent, his little fleet was holding to a northwesterly course, which would have carried him probably to the Virginia or Carolina shore.

But on an eventful evening a flock of parrots is seen flying across their path in a southerly direction. And Pinzon, thinking very reasonably that the birds. were on their way to land to roost for the night, remarked to the admiral: "It seems to me like an inspiration that my heart dictates to me that we ought to steer in a different direction." O blessed inspiration! The fleet's course is changed -and with it the destiny of our unborn nation. "Never," writes Washington Irving, "has a flight of birds been attended with more important results."

And when we trace some of these "results," as they are shown in the tragic and pathetic history of those lands, Cuba, Mexico and Central America, toward which those homing birds diverted the

greedy course of Spanish conquest, and see, too, the degraded condition in which the native masses in these same lands are lingering to-day, we shall be the better prepared to thank God for our own happier lot. For it is only upon such a dark background and by such contrast that our inherited privileges and blessings, civil, social and religious, stand out in their full relief. And it is only so, too, that we can rightly measure the responsibilities we bear toward these people.

THE

་

HE Dean Gray Seminary is the Church's school for boys in Mexico -and the only one. Restricted quarters sadly hamper its work. The Rev. L. M. A. Haughwout, who is in charge, says: "We have barely room for fifteen boys, but there are seventeen in residence. We can have as many more as the Church is generous enough to provide for. There are many others, like the Roman Catholic mother, who brought her two boys last week, asking that they be brought up in the Church's faith; but there was no room and we had to turn them away."