He loved the prayer-meeting, and while temporarily living at Seabeck, a short time before his death, where he was at work, thirty miles from home, he returned to Skokomish to spend the holidays, and remained an additional week so that he might be present at the daily meetings of the Week of Prayer. He constantly took part in the prayer-meetings, and with the other older male members of the church took his turn in leading them. He had no children of his own, but brought up his wife’s two sisters. When he united with the church, he said: “Now I want my wife to become a Christian,” and he lived to see her and her two sisters unite with the church. The elder of them married, and her child, Leila Spar, was the first Indian child who received the rite of infant baptism, July 4, 1880. He was killed instantly at Seabeck, February 2, 1881, while at work at the saw-mill, having been accidentally knocked off from a platform, and striking on his head among short sharp-cornered refuse lumber and slabs about ten feet below. The side of his head was crushed in, and after he was picked up he never spoke, and only breathed a few times. He was far in advance of his tribe, and has left an influence which will be felt for many years to come. It was a pleasure once for me to hear a rough, swearing white man, in speaking of him, say: “John Palmer is a gentleman!” [Illustration: MILTON FISHER.] XXIX. M----F----. He was a full-blooded Twana Indian, but from his earliest infancy lived with his step-father, who was a white man. A part of the time he lived very near to the reservation, and afterward about thirty miles from it. The region where he lived was entirely destitute of schools and church privileges. His step-father, however, when he realized that the responsibility of the moral and Christian training of his children rested wholly upon himself, took up the work quite well. His own early religious training, which had been as seed long buried, now came back to him, and he gave his children some good instruction which had excellent effect on M. Still when he was twenty-two years of age he had never been to church, school, Sabbath-school, or a prayer-meeting. He was a steady, industrious young man, had learned to farm, log, build boats,--being of a mechanical turn of mind,--and had built for himself a good sloop. When he was twenty-one he had learned something of the value of an education from his lack of it, for he could barely read and write in a very slow way, and was tired of counting his fingers when he traded and attended to business. Therefore he saved his money until he had about two hundred dollars, and when he was twenty-two he requested the privilege of coming to the reservation and going to school. It was granted, not like other Indian children, for they were boarded and clothed at government expense, but because his step-father was a white man he was required to board and clothe himself, his tuition being free. He willingly did his part.