AT Fort Smith, Ark., is Mrs. Edith M. Degen. She knows a great deal about Mr. “In.” If you will write her a letter saying you want to know something more about him, and if you will put in your letter a postal card addressed to yourself, it will soon get back to you with writing on the other side which you will like to read. Try it.

Now this man is really Mr. Lewis F. Hadley of Massachusetts. He has been many years among the Indians, studying their Sign Language.

You see the different tribes of Indians have different mouth or spoken languages, as do white people. To understand each other’s speech they must have an interpreter to give its meaning; but they all seem to have about the same sign speech; by using this the different tribes can understand each other when they meet.

You know the deaf and dumb talk with their hands. So with the Indians of different tribes when they can’t understand each other’s speech.

Here is a specimen of the sign language:

Well, Mr. Hadley has been mastering these signs, and now, after many years’ hard study, you see he can write it.

“What for?”

To spread knowledge among the Indians. To give them the Gospel—the blessed good news about the Lord who came and died for them.

“But has not the Bible been put into Indian for them to read, and don’t the missionaries preach to them in their own language?”

Yes, indeed; but don’t you see that for each one of the many tribes it may be necessary to have just the Bible and missionary that each can understand? But if all the tribes now know this one Sign Talk, then all can read the Lord’s Prayer, and any other part of the Bible, if put in this sign talk. And all the more so because every one can understand a thing better if he can see the language as well as hear it.

Now to do this good work Mr. H—— lived among the Indians. He is a missionary unlike any other. He has suffered much living as the Indians do to learn this language. Read what Mrs. Degen says: “Would you like to go out to dine where all the family kneel on an earth floor around the tin dish-pan in which the dinner has been cooked, and grab for ‘a little white meat,’ or ‘a little dark meat,’ or a ‘little of both, if you please’? Would you like to see your fellow diners throw the bones they have picked back into the pan? Or would you like to have your food brought to you in a wash-basin?”

Now you can see something of what Mr. Hadley bears. He is a hero. You can help him. So write to Mrs. Degen.

L.