XXXVI. BIBLE PICTURES.

IT is very plain that Indians who can not read, and even some who can read, but only a little, need something besides the Bible to help them remember it. Were white people to hear the Bible explained once or twice a week only, with no opportunity to read it, they would be very slow to acquire its truths. It hence became very plain that some good Scripture illustrations would be very valuable. I could not, however, afford to give them to the Indians, nor did I think it best, as generally that which costs nothing is good for nothing. But to live three thousand miles from the publishing-houses and find what was wanted was difficult, for it was necessary that they should be of good size, attractive, and cheap. For eight years I failed to find what was a real success. Fanciful Bible-texts are abundant, but they convey no Bible instruction to older Indians. Small Bible pictures, three or four by four or six inches are furnished by Nelson & Sons, and others, but they were too small to hang over the walls of their houses and they did not care to buy them. I often put them into my pocket, when visiting, and explained them to the Indians, and so made them quite useful. The same company furnished larger ones, about twelve by eighteen inches, which were good pictures. The retail price was fifty cents. I obtained them by the quantity at about thirty-seven cents and sold them for twenty-five, but they were not very popular. It took too much money to make much of a show. The Providence Lithograph Company publish large lithographs, thirty by forty-four inches, for the International Sabbath-school Lessons, which were somewhat useful. I obtained quite a number, second-hand, at half-price, eight for a dollar, and often used them as the text of my pulpit preaching, but when I was done with them I generally had to give them away. They were colored and showy but too indefinite to be attractive enough to the Indians to induce them to pay even that small price for them.

At last I came across some large charts, on rollers, highly colored, published by Haasis & Lubrecht, of New York. They were twenty-eight by thirty-five inches, and I could sell them for twenty-five cents each, and they were very popular. They went like hot cakes—were often wanted faster than I could get them, although I procured from twenty to forty and sometimes more at once. Protestant and Catholic Indians, Christians and medicine-men, those off the reservation and on other reservations as well as at Skokomish, were equally pleased with them, so that I sold four hundred and fifty in twenty-one months. They were large, showy, cheap, and good, care being used not to obtain some purely Catholic pictures which they publish.

“The Story of the Bible,” “Story of the Gospel,” and “First Steps for Little Feet in Gospel Paths,” also have proved very useful for those who can read a little but can not understand all the hard words in the Bible. Their numerous pictures are attractive, and the words are easy to be understood.