(Read at the Daughters of Zion meeting, April, 1911.)

A Confessional.

(There is a tide in the confidences of children, which, taken at the flood, leads on to full confession.)

For some time I had been unable to find the can opener. I knew that spoons and knives had sometimes disappeared and later returned from a sojourn in the back yard, all covered with rust; and I thought the can opener might possibly have suffered a like fate. But no one remembered having used it outdoors.

One evening just before dark, as I was all alone in the house, the eight-year-old boy came in, and in a half-sheepish, half-triumphant manner held up the missing utensil.

"I found it down by that stove I made out of an old oil-can," he explained.

"That tells the story," I said, somewhat severely, pointing to the rust-covered surface.

"Y-yes," he stammered, "I was scared to bring it to you at first. I'most decided to throw it over the fence so nobody'd ever find it."

I took the little lad's face, bright with its confession, between my hands, and kissed the plump cheeks. "Don't you ever be scared to tell mamma anything, no matter how bad," I said. "I want to know the very worst things you can tell me."

He laughed and went out to do his chores; and I heard him whistling about with a light heart.

Presently he came in and stood beside the piano. "It makes me awful happy 'cause I told you," he began, after a moment of silence. Then he absently drummed a little tune, while I waited, perceiving that the fountains of confession were about to be broken up.

In a moment the flood came. "There's some other things I ought to tell you too. Sometimes I swear." At this I sat down and took his hand. I was not shocked yet, but only prepared myself to be; for I had learned that little children do not always discriminate between swearing and slang.

"What do you say?" I asked.

"Well," hesitatingly, "sometimes, all by myself, I say naming an innocent but rather vulgar word.

":

"And what else?" I persisted in a tone of encouragement. "Oh, sometimes I say darn and fool and sometimes I put them both together; and sometimes I say this" (rattling off in a low, shamed tone a silly jingle with a reference to the devil in the last line). "Walter says things like that sometimes, and that's why I don't like to go and play with him very often."

"Well, dear," I said, drawing him close, "those words are not swearing, and you ought not to say that anyone swears who uses them. But it is rough, vulgar language; and, when those words want to come into your mind, just think of something good and pure, or do something to busy your mind and tongue. Swearing is disobeying the third commandment, using God's name in a careless or needless or wicked way; but a manly, honorable boy will not habitually use even coarse words like those you mentioned. And-" this incidentally, for I thought I detected a bit of Pharisaism- "I wouldn't hesitate to go to Walter's house on that account, not a mite. Walter is a very nice boy; and if he has learned to say some things that are not right for a little boy to say, perhaps that is all the more reason why you should play with him. You are older than he and by being manly and pure in all your language you can help him a great deal."

There was silence for some time as I went back to my work, broken presently by the little piano melody again. It was quicker time now; and as it ended in a little note of triumph, the clear, confident, happy, boyish voice rang out

"There ain't anything more to tell, mamma." And my heart was glad. Selected.

Memories.--By Ivy C. Fisher.

I wonder if ever when daylight wanes
Sweet thoughts of the old days come;
Thoughts of the days of our childhood free,
Of the days when we were young.

Do you ever see, in fancy dim,

The old cottage on the hill,

The mother busy with household tasks,
The little ones by the sill?

The cherry tree by the meadow's slope
With black fruit, juicy and sweet;
Do you see it loaded with cherries ripe
Our eager, bright eyes to greet?

Sometimes, in fancy, do you recall
The rambles in fragrant wood;
The lesson of love from a mother's lips,
Taught us for our lasting good?

How oft to me comes the memory
Of the sweet hours, golden, gay,

When we were an unbroken little band
In the cottage old and grey.

What the Government has Done and is Doing for the Indian.--By Sadie Burke. When the first white men came to our shores, they found the country thinly inhabited by the people Columbus had named Indians. They had copper colored skin, coarse, jet black hair, high cheek bones, thick lips, small eyes, and no whiskers. For a long time it was believed that in their wars with the whites, they had become greatly reduced in numbers. But this is not the case. There are quite as many living in the United States to-day as then lived in the same territory.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, the Indians were scattered all

over the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Now few dwell east of the Mississippi River. The great mass is far to the west of it. They all have greatly changed their mode of life, and many have learned to live as the white man.

Most of the great nations of the world have, either in their own territory or among their colonies, various barbarous tribes. Such tribes can not justly be said to own the land over which they only roam and hunt. They have no right, therefore, to prevent settlers who will use the land from coming to it. But, on the other hand, the Indians have certain rights which deserve consideration. The proper treatment of these rights is one of the most difficult problems.

It is the duty of the Government to give the same treatment to the Indians within its borders that it gives to other men. They protect them in the rights which they have in common with all men. They afford suitable education to their children, that they may adapt themselves to the change of life which civilization brings. The civilized Indians acquire independent property as the white men do, and upon proper qualification they ought to be given a share in the Government.

There are more than a quarter of a million Indians mostly in the Western States, Indiana and other territories, and in Alaska, with whom our Government has had peculiar relations.

Most of these Indians have had assigned to them reservations or other tracts of land. Sometimes they have been removed to these places by our armies, or the reservations have been secured by peaceful treaty on the part of our Government. The Government has also promised money or rations to support the Indians or pay them for giving up lands which the white people wanted to settle upon. Thus the Indians have been pushed farther west, and have been confined within narrower limits.

The Government has appointed, through the office of the Secretary of Interior, agents for the reservations, to furnish supplies and to look after the interests of the Indians as if they were wards of the nation. White persons were forbidden to settle upon the reservation or to trade with the Indians.

Our Government meant to do justice, and to make the Indians comfortable. But the reservation system made them miserable paupers. They came to depend upon the Government. They were often given very poor land, which they could not cultivate, and no individual had any land of his own. If they had anything to sell, they were shut away by the boundary of the reservation from bringing it to market. If they were wronged, they could not go to court to obtain justice as citizens, or even as foreigners may.

The Government has been greatly changed in several directions. As I said before, many schools have been established in which to educate the Indian children in different industries. The reservations have been divided, and given to them as private ownership, such as we enjoy. There will be no need of reservations as fast as this is done. The Indians can go with their products to market, can buy and sell like others, and they can vote and be citizens on the

some conditions as others. There will be no tribes or chiefs any longer, but the Indians like the negroes in the South, will become a part of the nation.

America and the Book of Mormon.

At the time of the tower of Babel the Lord scattered the people "upon the face of all the earth." (Genesis 11: 8.) Then some of them came to America. Paul says God made all nations of men "to dwell on all the face of the earth." (Acts 17: 26.) Then some were to dwell in America. God said, My flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth. (Ezekiel 34: 6.) Then some of them were in America.

But

The Book of Mormon claims that a body of people, led by a man named Jared, came here from the tower of Babel; they became very prosperous, and from Central America, their landing place, they spread all over North America. They became very numerous. later on, after turning away from God, civil war broke out among them, and they were all destroyed, except one man, Coriantumr, after living there sixteen hundred and sixty-one years. They are called the Jaredites. When they were slain, their flocks and herds, composed of all kinds of animals, were left to roam at will in all the valleys and on all the hills.

The second colony came from Jerusalem 600 B. C., during the reign of Zedekiah, led by a man named Lehi, a descendant of Manasseh, a son of Joseph, of whom it was said, his "branches run over the wall." (Genesis 49: 22.) His descendants were to go over the sea to America. It was also said to Joseph, "The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessing of my progenitors, unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills" (Verse 26). The utmost bounds, from Egypt, where Joseph was, brings us to America. The blessings of Jacob's progenitors, Abraham and Isaac, had been limited to Canaan, but Jacob's blessing placed upon Joseph was above that, extending to the "utmost. bound of the everlasting hills," America.

In Deuteronomy 33: 13, we read of Joseph's land-America. "Blessed of the Lord be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath, and for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon, and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills, and for the precious things of the earth and the fullness thereof, and for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush."

All these blessings were to be found in Joseph's land-America. It was to be blessed for "the precious things of heaven." What are those precious things? Visions, revelations, spiritual dreams, the gospel, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, angels' visits. This land was to be blessed of these things. "And for the deep that coucheth beneath." What is it that is couched beneath the great deep, the ocean. Is it our mackerel which we raise in abundance? Is it the