January 16, 1880

Rev. McLean

Steubenville Ohio

Dear Friend,

Will you not ask the ladies of your church to write to me asking any questions they wish answered about the work that they have shewn so much interest in.

My own interesting school of eighteen fine looking women grows more interesting each day. It is not a boarding S. for they are all wives but two & live in their little homes. [illegible] of them are wives of my Sisters men that are trying very hard to be wise as well as their husbands. Oh, they do study so hard in their little red testaments (the only books they have) keeping their place with a pin or little stick, almost afraid to wink lest they loose their place. Rachel, Enochs wife was the only one that knew her letters when school began. She now reads quite well & translates into Nez Perce. She will make a good teacher. Her husband is one of five prospective preachers in Sisters School. My women all wear dresses. Some of them did not enter until last week for William had to go to Lewiston (75 miles) for the dress. My Sister does not allow a blanket to enter her S. room & perhaps she thought the short slips would be objectionable to me. I must not fail to mention the four children in daily attendance, two of the infants carried in their ticashes strapped on their mothers back.

I have never had an interpreter in S room after they learn their letters & spell a little from the few charts I have. The next step (great as it is) is into the testament. I study hard & keep the only two little books they have in their language close by & after they spell & read a verse in the English we translate into Nez Perce. How I wish sometime the Ohio ladies could see their beaming faces when they understand a verse. They commit the very precious ones. (Or could have seen their faces when I explain to them that the bible was God’s letter to them & that I had been sent by women to them to untie the string & open it for them.) The string had surely touched the floor when the tears were in their eyes & "Ah Ah" was uttered. What a fervent prayer went up that evening from that little S. room for the women of Ohio for these can all pray it they cannot read.

I watch them as they go so happy from the S room & say from the hard working slaves that you have been this is the first you have known of happy S. days & they are the one wife of one husband & feel as one of then said she felt now married until death & her heart was at rest now.