The question of republication is sometimes talked of, but no steps have been taken yet to accomplish the object. While, as the years have gone by, and the book has been tested by Dakota scholars and found to be all that was ever claimed for it, yet, in case of a republication, some valuable additions can be made to the sixteen thousand words which it contains. The language itself is growing. Never, probably, in its whole history, has it grown so much in any quarter of a century as it has in the twenty-five years since the dictionary was published. Besides, we have recently been learning more of the Teeton dialect, which is spoken by more than half of the whole Sioux nation. And, as the translation of the Bible has progressed, thoughts and images have been brought in, which have given the language an unction and power unknown to it before.[4] [4] A revised edition will soon be published. While we were in the East, several offers were made in regard to taking one of our children. These offers came from the best families, where a child would have enjoyed all the comforts and many of the luxuries of life, more than could be had in our Indian home. It was a question that had often claimed our thought, and sometimes had been very favorably considered; but when the opportunity came, we decided to keep our children with us for the present. The circumstances of our home-life had changed somewhat; home education could be carried on to better advantage and with less drawbacks than in the first years of our missionary life. And so in the month of June, when the Philadelphia market was red with its best strawberries, we started westward, bringing the two children with us. It had been a profitable year to Isabella. The mother and children had spent a couple of the last months with relatives and friends in Brooklyn, and now we made a little stop in the Quaker City, and visited Girard College, Fairmount, and other places of interest. It was September when we had gathered all our six children together and were making the trip across the prairie to Lac-qui-parle. This time we had with us the Misses Lucy and Mary Spooner of Kentucky,--since Mrs. Drake and Mrs. Worcester. They came out to spend two years in the mission. Miss Lucy's teaching in music, vocal and instrumental, as well as other branches, was of singular advantage to our own children, as well as to the Indians. Miss Mary went into the family of Mr. Adams, who had gathered a little boarding-school of Dakota children. This might be called the first effort in this line made among the Dakotas.