It has been, however, and still is, somewhat difficult to cultivate in many of them a taste for reading, so as to continue to use it when older. This is not because of a want of intellectual capacity, but for three other reasons. First, as soon as they leave school and go back among the uneducated Indians, there is no stimulus to induce them to read. The natural influence is the other way, to cause them to drop their books. Second, like white people who remain in one place continually, they are but little interested in what is going on in the outside world. Third, in most books and papers there are just enough large difficult words which they do not understand to spoil the sense, and thus the interest in the story is destroyed. Yet notwithstanding these discouragements, the present success together with the prospect that it will be much greater in the future, as more of them become educated, is such as to make us feel that it pays. XXXVI. BIBLE PICTURES. It is very plain that Indians who can not read, and even some who can read, but only a little, need something besides the Bible to help them remember it. Were white people to hear the Bible explained once or twice a week only, with no opportunity to read it, they would be very slow to acquire its truths. It hence became very plain that some good Scripture illustrations would be very valuable. I could not, however, afford to give them to the Indians, nor did I think it best, as generally that which costs nothing is good for nothing. But to live three thousand miles from the publishing-houses and find what was wanted was difficult, for it was necessary that they should be of good size, attractive, and cheap. For eight years I failed to find what was a real success. Fanciful Bible-texts are abundant, but they convey no Bible instruction to older Indians. Small Bible pictures, three or four by four or six inches are furnished by Nelson & Sons, and others, but they were too small to hang over the walls of their houses and they did not care to buy them. I often put them into my pocket, when visiting, and explained them to the Indians, and so made them quite useful. The same company furnished larger ones, about twelve by eighteen inches, which were good pictures. The retail price was fifty cents. I obtained them by the quantity at about thirty-seven cents and sold them for twenty-five, but they were not very popular. It took too much money to make much of a show. The Providence Lithograph Company publish large lithographs, thirty by forty-four inches, for the International Sabbath-school Lessons, which were somewhat useful. I obtained quite a number, second-hand, at half-price, eight for a dollar, and often used them as the text of my pulpit preaching, but when I was done with them I generally had to give them away. They were colored and showy but too indefinite to be attractive enough to the Indians to induce them to pay even that small price for them.