at can
be stiller than an Indian camp when stillness is re quired, I do not know where it is. Here was a camp made up mostly of children, and what is usually called the most garrulous half of mankind, and yet all was so still that the deer often walked stately and un conscious into our midst.
No mention was made of my going away or re maining. I was permitted as far as the Indians were concerned to forget my existence, and so I dreamed along for a month or two and began to get strong and active in mind and body.
I had dreamed a long dream, and now began to waken and think of active life. I began to hunt and take part with the Indians, and enter into their de lights and their sorrows.
Did the world ever stop to consider how an Indian who has no theatre, no saloon, no whisky shop, no parties, no newspaper, not one of all our hundreds of ways and means of amusement, spends his evening ? Think of this ! He is a human being, full of passion and of poetry. His soul must find some expression ; his heart some utterance. The long, long nights of darkness, without any lighted city to walk about in, or books to read. Think of that! Well, all this mind, or thought, or soul, or whatever it may be, which we scatter in so many directions, and on so many things, they centre on one or two.
What if I told you that they talk more of the future and know more of the unknown than the Christian ? That would shock you. Truth is a great galvanic battery.
