THE
PI ;TFRITE. VoL . IX .
OCTOBER, 1888 .
No . 76 and 77.
MISSIONARY NEWS .—Continued. O feed my band of students is sometimes more perplexing than to teach them . We have no shops . We are occasionally reduced to salt venison, which is less appetising than corned mutton . At other times out larder is overflowing . Like books on Arctic Exploration, my letter cannot exclude commissariat topics . To the savage this is of the first importance, and when we are separated from the conveniences of civilization we recede towards our savage ancestors and begin to conform to their ways . Drop a city arab, one of the latest products of civilization, into the primeval forest, and he would starve, unless he met with a savage to teach him the primitive laws of life. Did you ever see Landseer ' s picture of Bolton Abbey in the olden time? The scene is often here repeated, only amid less refined surroundings . A canoe is just beached at my garden gate . I buy ten deer, six halibuts, a number of wild geese, ducks, teal, grouse, and smaller birds, or nearly two tons of the hunter ' s spoil ! But then there are no hares to complete this picture of our modern time. One youth is told off in turn to cook for the rest during a week. The weekly scrubbing of the dormitories is also by rotation, but each washes his own clothing and bedding . They are a healthy and hardy set of lads . After tubbing in the open air by lamplight it is not unusual to see them scurrying about their great yard like so many unreclaimed savages, as their greatgrandfathers were . It would make you shiver too much to be amused under such circumstances. A new and perplexing difficulty has lately arisen . My little boys have grown into young men, and two of them have fallen into that awkward hallucination curiously called love . Even the juniors, to my certain knowledge, have been writing amatory epistles to the fairies. Discipline suffered . One poor stupid fellow even absented himself from evening prayers to keep an engagement with a fellow student's sister . At bed time I entered the dormitory with my black-thorn and
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