DR. RAND AT His LIFE-WORK

ET has been the writer’s privilege to gain possession of Dr. Rand’s ‘_9 private diary, through the kindness of his daughter Hattie; and, after a great deal of labour, the rare privilege is ours of being able to see the struggles and successes of this great undertaking from the standpoint of the one upon whose shoulders the full weight of the burden always pressed,—the one, too, who had the first and fullest share in the rewards that ever follow faithful service for mankind.

The diary was hastily written—often with a poor pen and poorer ink, besides other inconveniences, as he moved from place to place, carrying on the work of the Mission, but the difficulties one meets in reading the volumes are banished by the pleasure of learning, as fully as may be, the details and the leading events in that remark- able work. But there are difficulties which are not at all due to the condition of the manuscript; and the student, if he be in any way ambitious to test his powers as a linguist, is here presented with per- haps the best opportunity that man ever had,——for here are whole volumes written in Latin and French, with pages of Micmac and Maliseet, and Greek, interspered amongst the more solid matter; while Hebrew words occur occasionally, and prove very “Shibbol- eths” to one who has become assured that the Maritime Provinces, like Omm‘a Gal/27a, are still divided into three parts. There are, perhaps a thousand pages written in Pitman’s method of shorthand, and Dr. Rand also used and published in a phonetic method which