"My first serious impression of life was that I was living under a great weight of something; and as I began to discern more clearly, I found this weight to be the all-surrounding, overwhelming presence of heathenism, and all the instincts of my birth and all the culture of a Christian home set me at antagonism to it at every point. The filthy savages, indecently clad, lazily lounging about the stove of our sitting-room, or flattening their dirty noses on the window-pane, caused such a disgust for everything Indian that it took the better thought of many years to overcome the repugnance thus aroused. Without doubt, our mothers felt it all as keenly as we, their children, but they had a sustaining ambition for souls, which we had not yet gained. "This feeling of disgust was often accompanied with, and heightened by, fear. The very air seemed to breathe dangers. At times violence stalked abroad unchallenged, and dark, lowering faces skulked around. Even in times when we felt no personal danger, this incubus of savage life all around weighed on our hearts. Thus it was, day and night. Even those hours of twilight, which brood with sweet influences over so many lives, bore to us on the evening air only the weird cadences of the heathen dance or the chill thrill of the war-whoop. "Yet our childhood was not destitute of joy. Babes prattle beside the dead. So, too, the children of the mission had their plays like other children. But it was lonesome indeed when the missionary band was divided, to occupy other stations, and the playmates were separated. Once it was my privilege to go one hundred and twenty miles--to the nearest station--to have a play-spell of a week, and a happy week it was. "Notwithstanding our play-spells, ours was a serious life. The serious earnestness of our parents in the pursuit of their work could not fail to fall in some degree on the children. The main purpose of Christianizing that people was felt in everything. It was like garrison life in time of war. But this seriousness was not ascetical or morose. Far from it. Those Christian missionary homes were full of gladness. With all the disadvantages of such a childhood was the rich privilege of understanding the meaning of cheerful earnestness in Christian life. Speaking of peculiar privileges, I must say that I do not believe any other homes can be as precious as ours. It is true every one thinks his is the best mother in the world, and she is to him; but I mean more than this; I mean that our missionary homes are in reality better than others. And there is reason for it. By reason of the surrounding heathenism, the light and power of Christianity is more centred and confined in the home. And then, again, its power is developed by its antagonism to the darkness and wickedness around it. For either its light must ever shine clearer, or grow more dim until it expires.