But what has chiefly contributed to make the lieutenant’s work easy for him is his knowledge of the sign language, with which the different tribes, though speaking different languages, can communicate one with the other. He is said to speak this more correctly and fluently than any other officer in the army, and perhaps any other white man. It is a very curious language. It is not at all like the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, which is an alphabet, and is not pretty to watch. It is just what its name implies--a language of signs. The first time I saw the lieutenant speaking it, I confess I thought, having heard of his skill at Fort Reno, that he was only doing it because he could do it, as young men who speak French prefer to order their American dinners in that language when the waiter can understand English quite as well as themselves. I regarded it as a pleasing weakness, and was quite sure that the lieutenant was going to meet the Indian back of the canteen and say it over again in plain every-day words. In this I wronged him; but it was not until I had watched his Irish sergeant converse in this silent language for two long hours with half a dozen Indians of different tribes, and had seen them all laugh heartily at his witticisms delivered in semaphoric gestures, that I really believed in it. It seems that what the lieutenant said was, “Tell the first sergeant that I wish to see the soldiers drill at one o’clock, and, after that, go to the store and ask Madeira if there is to be a beef issue to-day.” It is very difficult to describe in writing how he did this; and as it is a really pretty thing to watch, it seems a pity to spoil it. As well as I remember it, he did something like this. He first drew his hand over his sleeve to mark the sergeant’s stripes; then he held his fingers upright in front of him, and moved them forward to signify soldiers; by holding them in still another position, he represented soldiers drilling; then he made a spy-glass out of his thumb and first finger, and looked up through it at the sky--this represented the sun at one o’clock. “After that” was a quick cut in the air; the “store” was an interlacing of the fingers, to signify a place where one thing met or was exchanged for another; “Madeira” he named; beef was a turning up of the fingers, to represent horns; and how he represented issue I have no idea. It is a most curious thing to watch, for they change from one sign to the other with the greatest rapidity. I always regarded it with great interest as a sort of game, and tried to guess what the different gestures might mean. Some of the signs are very old, and their origin is as much in dispute as some of the lines in the first folios of Shakespeare, and have nearly as many commentators. All the Indians know these signs, but very few of them can tell how they came to mean what they do. “To go to war,” for instance, is shown by sweeping the right arm out with the