In August, 1879, with my wife and three babies, and three Indians, I was coming home from a month’s tour among the Clallams, in a canoe. One evening from five o’clock until nine the rain poured down, as it sometimes does on Puget Sound. With all that we could do it was impossible to keep dry. Oilcloth, umbrellas, and blankets would not keep the rain out of the bottom of the canoe, or from reaching some of our bedding. At nine o’clock we reached an old deserted house with half the roof off, and we crawled into it. The roof was off where the fire-place was situated, so we tried to dry ourselves, keep warm, and dry some bedding, while holding umbrellas over us, in order that every thing should not get wet as fast as it was dried. As soon as a few clothes got dry, we rolled up a baby and he was soon asleep; and so on for three hours we packed one after another away, until I was the only one left. But the rest had all of the dry bedding. There was one pair of blankets left, and they were soaked through. I knew that if I attempted to dry them I might as well calculate to sit up until morning. So I warmed them a little, got close to the warm places, pulled on two or three more wet things, pulled up a box on one side to help keep warm, leaned up my head slantingwise against a perpendicular wall for a pillow, and went to sleep. Some writers say that a person must not sleep in one position all night; if he does he will die. I did not suffer from that danger during that night. The next morning we had to start about five o’clock because of the tide, without any breakfast. When about eight o’clock we reached a farm-house, and warmed up, where the people spent most of the forenoon getting a good warm breakfast for us, free of all charges, we did wish that they could receive the blessing forty times over mentioned in the verse about the cup of cold water, for it was worth a hundred cups of _cold_ water that morning. No one of us, however, took cold on that night.