Should the foregoing amuse the Protestant reader, the following may be
of interest to the Roman Catholic. One winter, while halting at a
certain Hudson's Bay post, I met a Protestant clergyman, who having
spent a number of years as a missionary among the natives on the coast
of Hudson Bay excited my interest as to his work among the Indians.
That night, after supper, I questioned him as to his spiritual work
among the "barbarians" of the forest, and in the presence of the
Hudson's Bay trader, he turned to me and, with the air of being
intensely bored by the subject, he replied: "Mr. Heming . . . the only
interest I ever take in the Indian . . . is when I bury him."

But while I have cited two types of clergymen I have known--the name of
the priest being, of course, fictitious--merely to point out the kind
of missionaries that should never be sent among the Indians, I not only
wish to state that they are very much the exception to the rule, but I
also want to make known my unbounded respect and admiration for that
host of splendid men--and women--of all denominations, who have devoted
their lives to the spiritual welfare of the people of the wilderness,
and some of whom have already left behind them hallowed names of
imperishable memory.

But the lot of the missionary among the Indians is not altogether a
joyous one. In his distant and isolated outpost there are privations
to endure and hardships to suffer. Frequently, too, it happens that he
is placed in a position exceedingly embarrassing to a man of gentle
breeding and kindly spirit.

A well-known Canadian priest was being entertained by an Indian family.
The hospitable old grandmother undertook to prepare a meal for him.
Determined to set before the "black-robe" a really dainty