On one of my canoe trips years ago around Burrard Inlet, when there was only one sawmill where now a beautiful city (Vancouver) and a number of thriving villages are situated, a white man, who had made me welcome to his home and treated me to dinner, said, as I was getting into my canoe, while a number of white men stood by, “Do you know what I was thinking, Mr. Crosby? That if you would put a blanket on and get into the canoe and commence to talk, nobody would know you from an Indian.” I said, “I beg your pardon, sir; I didn’t know that I looked so much like an Indian.” “Oh!” he replied, “I didn’t mean that; I meant to say, you speak the language so well that we could not tell you from an Indian speaking.” AMUSING MISTAKES. There are amusing sides to this matter of acquiring a language. In my early efforts in the use of the native tongue, while I was preaching one Sunday on the riches that are in Christ, and the poverty and misery which sin brings, I noticed when I spoke of poverty that a group of young men on one side could not contain themselves for laughter. They tried to straighten up, for they were usually very respectful in the services. After repeating the word again and seeing the same behaviour, I concluded I must have made some mistake, and turning to the young men I said, “Now, young men, I see by your actions that I said something which has caused you amusement; perhaps some word of yours which I do not know very well. Tell me what it is.” They hung their heads with shame. But I pressed them for reply, saying: “If you were endeavoring to speak English you would wish to be corrected if you had made a mistake.” So pressed, young Quin-nom, one of their number, said: “Yes, Mr. Crosby, you speak our language very well, almost as well as an Indian, but to-day you made a mistake. Our word for poor is ‘sel-la-wa,’ and when you were speaking of sin making us poor you said ‘sel-la-we-a,’ which is a woman’s name who lives away down the Coast about sixty miles, and so we could not help laughing.” Thus our readers may see some of the difficulties we labored under, when only a slight change in the tone of voice might change the meaning of a whole sentence--difficulties, however, that every student of a new and unwritten language has to contend with. NO SWEARING IN INDIAN. Speaking of the peculiarities of the language, it may be remarked that the Indian languages have no words properly to express abstract qualities, no words to express the ideas of love, peace, pardon, repentance, etc., as we understand them. So that one of our first tasks was to explain to them as best we could by illustration and otherwise the meaning of such words.