I have never been able to join in the reproach of superciliousness so often applied to the lines of that noblest of missionary hymns in which Bishop Heber asks, "Can we, whose souls are lighted with wisdom from on high, Can we, to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?" If that be superciliousness, it is an essential superciliousness of Christianity itself, for the question lies at the very core of our religion and will not cease to be asked so long as the world contains those who believe with all their hearts, and those who do not believe because they have not heard. I never listen to that hymn without emotion, it can still "shake me like a cry Of trumpets going by." But the question that seems to stir the souls of some missionaries and most school-teachers, "Can we deny to these unfortunate heathen our millinery, our 'Old Oaken Bucket,' our Mr. and our Mrs.," leaves me quite cold. Here was the weekly afternoon routine at this mission, only the mornings being devoted to books and classes: On Monday the children brought their soiled clothes of the week to the schoolroom and washed them; on Tuesday they were dried and ironed; on Wednesday they were mended; on Thursday a juvenile "society" did some sort of work for another mission; on Friday every child in the village had a hot bath. Now, let a routine of that sort be kept up, week after week, month after month, year after year, during the whole school life of a child, and it is bound to leave its mark; and there is no other way in which the same mark may be made. At the Allakaket is fine example of what, I think, is the best rule in the world for the inferior races--the absolute rule of a devoted, intelligent, capable gentlewoman. We are but now writing the indentures of their apprenticeship to self-government in the elective village councils we have set up; it is good for them to serve it under this loving and unquestioned despotism. [Sidenote: MATTERS METEOROLOGICAL] During all that Christmas season the temperature was subject to such violent fluctuations that a chart of them would look like the picture showing the comparative heights of mountains, that used to be presented under "The World in Hemispheres" in the school geographies. A minimum of 52° below zero and a maximum of 10° below, was followed by a minimum of 53° below and a maximum of 18° below, and that by a minimum of 56° below and a maximum of 14° below, while on Christmas Day itself we registered a minimum of 58° below zero and a maximum of 1° above, a range of 59° in less than twelve hours. At a time of the year when the sun has scarcely any effect upon the temperature such tremendous changes point to corresponding atmospheric disturbances, and each rise was caused by the irruption of clouds upon a clear sky and was followed by a fall of snow.