ss which the English-speaking race seems determined to
impose on the world. If I could, I would civilize only to the
extent of making life easier and happier--the religious
beliefs, the songs, the native dress--all these things I would
retain. What is life for, if not for this?

"My artist friends as a rule agree with me in these matters,
and that is another reason why your unsympathetic attitude
surprises and grieves me. I know your home-life has been such
as would prejudice you against the redman, but your training in
Paris should have changed all that. You consider the Tetongs
'good material'--if you come to know them as I do you will find
they are _folks_, just like anybody else, with the same rights
to the earth that we have. Of course, they _are_ crude and
unlovely--and sometimes they are cruel; but they have an
astonishing power over those who come to know them well.

"Pardon this long letter. You may call me a crank or any hard
name you please, but I am anxious to have you on the right side
in this struggle, for it is a struggle to the death. The
tragedy of their certain extinction overwhelms me at times. I
found a little scrap of canvas with a sketch of Peta on it--may
I keep it? My sister is quite well and deep in 'the work.' She
often speaks of you and we are both hoping to see you next
year."

It was foolish for him to expect an immediate reply to this epistle, but
he did--he counted the days which lay between its posting and a
possible date for return mail. Perhaps, had he been in Washington,
diverted by Congress, cheered by the Army and Navy Club, and entertained
by his friends, he would not have surrendered so completely to the
domination of that imperious girl-face; but in the dead of winter,
surrounded by ragged, smoky squaws and their impatient, complaining
husbands, with no companionship but his sister and Wilson, the love-sick
clerk, his thought in every moment of relaxation went back to the
moments he had spent in Elsie's company. Nature cried out, "It is not
good for man to be alone," but the iron ring of circumstance held him a
prisoner in a land where delicate women were as alien as orange blossoms
or tea-roses.

Outwardly composed, indefatigable, stern in discipline and judicial of
report, he was inwardly filled with a mighty longing to see again that
slim young girl with the big, b