"My first use of the pen since the peculiar manifestation of God's loving kindness we have so recently experienced shall be for you, my dear parents. That you will with us bless the Lord, as did the Psalmist in one of my favorite Psalms, the 103d, we do not doubt; for I am sure you will regard my being able so soon to write as a proof of God's tender mercy. I have been very comfortable most of the time during the past week. As our little one cries, and I am now his chief nurse, I must lay aside my pen and paper and attend to his wants, for Mr. Riggs is absent, procuring, with Dr. W. and Mr. Pond, the translation of Mark, from Mr. Renville." "Dec. 28. "Yesterday our dear little babe was three weeks old. I washed with as little fatigue as I could expect; still, I should have thought it right to have employed some one, was there any one to be employed who could be trusted. But the Dakota women, besides not knowing how to wash, need constant and vigilant watching. Poor creatures, thieves from habit, and from a kind of necessity, though one of their own creating!" "Jan. 10. "The Dakota tent is formed of buffalo-skins, stretched on long poles placed on the ground in a circle, and meeting at the top, where a hole is left from which the smoke of the fire in the centre issues. Others are made of bark tied to the poles placed in a similar manner. A small place is left for a door of skin stretched on sticks and hinged with strings at the top, so that the person entering raises it from the bottom and crawls in. At this season of the year the door is protected by a covered passage formed by stakes driven into the ground several feet apart, and thatched with grass. Here they keep their wood, which the women cut this cold weather, the thermometer at eighteen to twenty degrees below zero. And should you lift the little door, you would find a cold, smoky lodge about twelve feet in diameter, a mother and her child, a blanket or two, or a skin, a kettle, and possibly in some of them a sack of corn." "Thursday Eve., Jan. 11.