136 PRIEST AND PAGAN. [1638-40. 



the fallacy of this notion was made apparent, their 

 zeal cooled. Their only amusements consisted of 

 feasts, dances, and games, many of which were, to 

 a greater or less degree, of a superstitious charac- 

 ter ; and as the Fathers could rarely prove to their 

 own satisfaction the absence of the diabolic element 

 in any one of them, they proscribed the whole in- 

 discriminately, to the extreme disgust of the neo- 

 phyte. His countrymen, too, beset him with dismal 

 prognostics : as, " You will kill no more game/' 

 — " All your hair will come out before spring," 

 and so forth. Various doubts also assailed him 

 with regard to the substantial advantages of his 

 new profession; and several converts were filled 

 with anxiety in view of the probable want of 

 tobacco in Heaven, saying that they could not do 

 without it.^ Nor was it pleasant to these incipient 

 Christians, as they sat in class listening to the 

 instructions of their teacher, to find themselves and 

 him suddenly made the targets of a shower of 

 sticks, snowballs, corn-cobs, and other rubbish, 

 flung at them by a screeching rabble of vagabond 

 boys.^ 



Yet, while most of the neophytes demanded an 

 anxious and diligent cultivation, there were a few 

 of excellent promise ; and of one or two especially, 

 the Fathers, in the fulness of their satisfaction, 

 assure us again and again " that they were savage 

 only in name."^ 



1 Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1639, 80. 



2 Ibid., 78. 



3 From June, 1689, to June, 1640, about a thousand persons were 

 baptized. Of these, two hundred and sixty were infants, and many more 



