So Kingsley entitles one of his books; and we may give the name to all those influences which help in preparing the bread of life for this people, or in preparing them to receive it. First comes the article itself; we have been furnishing them with it to make wholesome bread. Their Indian way of preparing flour, is to fry soggy dough in a panful of grease over a fire made of sticks in the centre of the lodge. Any one who goes back with longing memories to the old days of open fireplace cookery, may enjoy it to his heart’s content without the least contamination with modern conveniences in, a Ree or Gros Ventres or Mandan earth-covered lodge in this place, a journey of only two or three days by railroad and steamboat from Minneapolis. The Indians, however, take kindly to cooking-stoves when our “Uncle” furnishes them; and we are trying, as the first requisite of household health, to teach them to make good bread. Our first step was to create a desire for it, by giving them good bread. But the preference for “white man’s bread” has been created, and the cry for yeast to make it has been daily heard at our door this summer. Lately, we have said, “no more yeast,” but “go and pick hops, and we will teach you how to make yeast”; and specimens of gathered hops are exhibited. It is a great gain to have the people eating wholesome food, for the want of which, in their changed condition of life, and the absence of the former abundance of game, they are dying off. It is greater gain to have them beginning in any way to make home more comfortable, attractive, decent; to have the women improving in cooking, and tidiness of home management; the men drawn to an interest in building better houses; the family to have an ambition for doors and windows and bedsteads, and cups and saucers and tables, and cupboards made of old boxes with calico curtains. But chiefly is it gain to get through such work the confidence and the hearts of the people, that we may lead them to Christ; and if yeast will set the leaven at work by which we may leaven the whole lump, we say, _Amen_! Flowers. We have not limited ourselves to yeast. On Friday afternoons we have given the children who attended regularly, a good meal at a table, with all the accessories of a Christian board, including grace. Other little means of attracting the people to higher things have been beautiful clusters of scarlet blossoms, blooming all the season on the fence, and handsome dahlias and zinnias and four o’clocks, by the house. Groups of little Indians stand open-mouthed before them, or some old woman, with her willow-basket full of corn or squashes on her back, is attracted and cheered by these beauties—gifts of God’s love. That they do notice the flowers at all is a hopeful sign. Early in the spring, I picked a bluebell, and spoke of its beauty to an Indian man who was helping me set fence posts. He said, with a scornful expression at my ignorance: “That isn’t anything, it isn’t good to eat.”