preparing to receive the same favor. My companion, Reverend Father Verreydt, lately visited a village belonging to the mission, where they promised to let him baptize all the little children.
The feast that we have just been celebrating in honor of the assumption of the glorious queen of heaven will never be forgotten in this mission; it was celebrated in a poor wooden church, but I can assure you that no place in the world ever offered a more consoling spectacle nor one more agreeable to the Almighty and his most holy mother.
In the afternoon of that day I baptized eleven adults and a little Indian girl who was sick. Three of these adults had already reached their fiftieth year; five were twenty, and three about fifteen years old. All exhibited during the ceremony a great deal of piety and fervor. Afterward we sang together several canticles to, praise and bless the Lord's mercies. At the close of the ceremony, four couples received the nuptial benediction according to the Catholic rite. All who were present were so touched with what they had seen and heard that, yielding to the grace of the Holy Spirit, they demanded urgently to be instructed. Among this number was an old Indian woman belonging to the great medicine band, who, as soon as she reached home, immediately destroyed her medicine bundle. Going toward evening to visit a newly converted family, we were agreeably surprised and edified to find all the adults and several others besides assembled to recite in common the most fervent prayers, and to thank the Lord for the signal favors that he had granted them that day. I cannot conceal from you, dear Father, that in no circumstances of my life have I ever felt, myself, more joy and consolation than in this happy moment.