engaged in this pious work that the mint-master gave him our great
chair. His toil needed it and deserved it."

"O Grandfather, tell us all about that Indian Bible!" exclaimed
Laurence. "I have seen it in the library of the Athenaeum; and the tears
came into my eyes to think that there were no Indians left to read it."



CHAPTER VIII.

THE INDIAN BIBLE.

As Grandfather was a great admirer of the apostle Eliot, he was glad to
comply with the earnest request which Laurence had made at the close of
the last chapter. So he proceeded to describe how good Mr. Eliot
labored, while he was at work upon the Indian Bible.

My dear children, what a task would you think it, even with a long
lifetime before you, were you bidden to copy every chapter, and verse,
and word, in yonder family Bible! Would not this be a heavy toil? But if
the task were, not to write off the English Bible, but to learn a
language utterly unlike all other tongues, a language which hitherto had
never been learned, except by the Indians themselves, from their
mothers' lips,--a language never written, and the strange words of which
seemed inexpressible by letters,--if the task were, first to learn this
new variety of speech, and then to translate the Bible into it, and to
do it so carefully that not one idea throughout the holy book should be
changed,--what would induce you to undertake this toil? Yet this was
what the apostle Eliot did.