1869-1870.--Home Desolate.--At the General Assembly.--Summer Campaign.--A. L. Riggs.--His Story of Early Life.--Inside View of Missions.--Why Missionaries' Children Become Missionaries.--No Constraint Laid on Them.--A. L. Riggs Visits the Missouri Sioux.--Up the River.--The Brules.--Cheyenne and Grand River.--Starting for Fort Wadsworth.--Sun Eclipsed.--Sisseton Reserve.--Deciding to Build There.--In the Autumn Assembly.--My Mother's Home.--Winter Visit to Santee.--Julia La Framboise. As Abraham, a stranger and sojourner in the land of the children of Heth, bought of them the cave of Machpelah wherein to bury Sarah, so it seemed to me that I had come to Beloit to make a last resting-place for the remains of Mary. The house seemed desolate. Sooner or later, it involved the breaking-up of the family. Indeed it commenced very soon. Robert went up to Minnesota to spend a year at Martha's. In the meantime, Anna had become mistress of the home, and had with her Mary Cooley, an invalid cousin. That year of 1869 I was commissioner from the Dakota Presbytery to the General Assembly, which met in New York City. It was an assembly of more than ordinary interest, as at that meeting, and the one that followed in the autumn, the two branches of the Presbyterian Church North were again united. During this stay in New York City I was the guest of Hon. Wm. E. Dodge. That was quite a contrast to living among the Dakotas. But at the close of the assembly I hastened westward to join Dr. Williamson at St. Peter. He had procured a small double wagon and a pony team, with which we together should make our summer campaign. Having fitted ourselves out, as we always did, with tent and camping materials, our first objective point was Sioux City, where we had arranged to meet and take in Alfred L. Riggs. Since a little previous to the outbreak in 1862, he had been preaching to white people; first at Lockport, Ill., where he was ordained and continued with the church five years, and then for a year at Centre, Wis., and now at Woodstock, Ill. But all this time he seemed to be only waiting for the Dakota work to assume such a shape as to invite his assistance. For some time he had been especially acquainting himself with the most approved methods of education, that he might fill a place which, year by year, was becoming more manifestly important to be filled. As in the progress of modern missions a large and increasing share of the new recruits are the children of missionaries, it will be interesting to know, from one of themselves, how they grow up _in_ and _into_ the Missionary Kingdom.