“One bright spring morning I had just dressed my fair girl-baby in her first short dress, then carefully placing her upon the bed, stood back, mother-like, to admire. The outer door of my room was wide open, and I saw approaching what seemed to me then the most miserable-looking squaw I had yet seen. On she came with the grace and tread of an elephant; and oh, how revolting she looked as she stood in the doorway! Her hair was cut short and hung over her forehead to her eyes. Her face, neck and breast were painted in narrow stripes of different colors. About her waist was fastened a short skirt made of a part of a buffalo robe. She saw my darling, and before I knew what she intended she had her in her arms. What did I do? Why, I sprang forward, saying, ‘You horrid, dirty thing,’ and took my baby into my own arms. The poor miserable woman looked at me in the most pitiful manner, and then gathering up the corner of her blanket, she held it in her arms as one would hold a sick infant, and at the same time with a mournful cry, she made a sign that her baby had died; and to show how great her grief had been, she held up her hand so that I could see she had cut off her little finger, which is one of the extreme mourning customs of the Kiowas, and she also pointed to the deep scars on her breast and arms. Tears ran down her cheeks, and my sympathies were so moved that almost unconsciously I placed my baby back in her arms. How carefully she handled her, and how tenderly she passed her hands over her plump limbs. After some minutes she handed her back to me, and with a grateful look and smile, giving me a hearty hand-shake, she departed. In a week she came again, and placed in my lap about a peck of ripe wild plums, which ripen there in the early spring. They had been freshly washed, and were brought to me in a piece of new pink calico. Again she held the baby, and this time with signs asked permission, and got it, to kiss our darling, for she was no longer disgusting to me. She left me as before, and in another week she came again, this time bringing two buffalo tongues. All she wanted in return was the pleasure of holding baby. This was her last visit. Where she came from or where she went, I never knew. She came and went alone.” * * * * * BLACK MISSIONARIES FOR AFRICA—THE BISHOP CROWTHER PLAN. REV. G. D. PIKE, D.D.