Portrait of a Lady

Elsie has just got back from an expedition to the Sea Islands. She had
had her eye on those islands for a long time, she tells me. They lie off
the coast of South Carolina, out of the way of all traffic, and they
looked to her like a good hunting ground for African folk-lore. Her
ethnological field-work is always taking her off to such places. I
suppose that that Englishman, Selous, used to go around studying maps,
and questioning natives about the best jungles for lions, in much the
same way that Elsie constantly studies our continent, looking for some
corner of it that might interest an intelligent person. The parts that
are civilization to us, are mere jungle to her: the houses and street
cars are like underbrush that she must push through, to get to the
places where her quarry is, and where she really wakes up. In between,
she lives in New York with us,--she has to,--and conforms to our ways,
or to most of them anyhow, just as Stefansson does with the Eskimos: she
wears the usual tribal adornments, and beadwork, and skins; she's as
dazzling as any other beauty, in her box at the opera; and she sleeps
and eats in the family's big stone igloo near Fifth Avenue. An
unobservant citizen might almost suppose she was one of us. But every
now and then her neglect of some small ceremonial sets our whole tribe
to chattering about her, and eyeing her closely, and nodding their hairy
coiffures or their tall shiny hats, whispering around their lodge-fires,
evenings, that Elsie is queer.

When she went south this time, she first placed herself "in the hands of
the whites," as she detachedly puts it: that is to say, she became the
guest of a white family on one of the more civilized islands. This was a
mistake. They were interested in her plans, and they didn't in the least
mean to block them, but they felt it was necessary for them to go around
with her everywhere. They wanted to be sure nothing happened,--and Elsie
wanted to be sure something did. "They guarded me," she exclaimed, over
and over, when she told me this part of it. I got an impression of her
tramping off into the wilds, after breakfast, to look around for what
she was after, in her business-like way; and of worried hostesses
panting along, following her,--in spite of the cold looks they got.

There were also a number of small difficulties. Her smoking, for
instance. Her hostesses didn't mind--much; but they had a brother, a
clergyman, just b