A part of the plan of our new community was a mission boarding-school. Almost from the beginning, we had been making trial of educating Dakota children in our own families. Mary had a little girl given her the first fall after we came to Lac-qui-parle; she was the daughter of Eagle Help, my Bible reader; but after she had washed and dressed her up she stayed only a month, and then ran away. The Messrs. Pond raised one or two in their families. Dr. Williamson had several Dakota children when at Kaposia, and afterward at Pay-zhe-hoo-ta-ze. Mr. Adams had at one time a boarding-school of a half-dozen at Lac-qui-parle, and we had two or three in our family. Now the work was to be attempted on a larger scale. The Hazelwood boarding-school was for a while cared for by Miss Ruth Pettijohn, and afterward by Mr. and Mrs. H. D. Cunningham. Counting those in Dr. Williamson's family and our own, the boarding scholars amounted to twenty. This was the extent of our ambition in that line at that time. A large boarding-school demands a large outlay for buildings, as well as for its continual support. The necessities of our mission work did not then demand the outlay, nor could it have been easily obtained from the funds of the Board. Connected with this school, as teachers, were Mrs. Annie B. Ackley and Miss Eliza Huggins and Isabella B. Riggs. * * * * * We had reached the time, in 1854, when it became necessary to enter upon some plan to educate our children beyond what we could give them in our Indian home. Three years before this, Alfred had been at school in Illinois, but that was only a temporary arrangement; now he was seventeen years old and prepared to enter college. Mary and I often discussed the question of ways and means. It was our desire to give our children as good an education as we possessed ourselves--at least, to give them a chance of obtaining such an education. We did not feel that our position as missionaries should make this impossible, and yet how it was to be accomplished we could not see. We had neither of us any patrimony. In this respect we were on an equality. She received $100 from her father's estate, and I but a little more than that, and we did not know of any rich friends to whom we could apply for aid. Our salary had been small from the beginning. We entered the mission work at a time when the Board was cutting down everywhere. So that we started on a salary or allowance of about $250, and for the first quarter of a century it did not materially differ from the basis of a Methodist circuit rider in the West of olden times; that is, $100 apiece, and $50 for each child. At this time, when our family numbered eight, we had an allowance of $500. We were both close calculators, and we never ran in debt. We could live comfortably with our children at home, each doing something to carry the burdens of life. But how could we support one or more away at school? A third of the whole