eaming it and bending it; and could pitch camp
with all the native comforts and amenities as quickly as anybody I ever
saw. He spoke the naked truth, and was so gentle and unobtrusive in
manner that he was a welcome guest at the table of any mission we
visited. Miss Farthing at Nenana had laid her mark deep upon him in the
one year he was with her.

[Sidenote: THE HALF-BREED]

Before he came to me I had another half-breed for two years, and before
that there had been a series of full-blooded native boys. I found the
half-breed greatly preferable. With full command of the native language,
with such insight into the native mind as few white men ever attain, he
combines the white man's quickness of apprehension and desire for
knowledge; and the companionship had been pleasant and profitable. Both
these boys had picked up quickly and efficiently, without the slightest
previous experience, the running and the care of the four-cylinder
gasoline engine of the mission launch, and took a great and intelligent
interest in all machinery. As an interpreter the half-breed is far
superior to most full-bloods; he takes one's purport immediately; his
mind seems to leap with the speaker's mind, not only to follow
faithfully but to anticipate. And the further his English progresses, so
much the more excellent interpreter does he become.

My heart goes out to the large and rapidly increasing number of these
youths of mixed blood in Alaska. It is common to hear them spoken of
slightingly and contemptuously. There is what my mind always regards as
a damnable epigram current in the country to the effect that the
half-breed inherits the vices of both races and the virtues of neither.
The white man who utters this saying with a chuckle at his second-hand
wit has generally not much virtue to transmit, were virtue heritable.
But to thoughtful men nowadays this talk of the inheritance of virtues
and vices is mere folly. The half-breed in Alaska, as elsewhere, is the
product of his environment. Often without legitimate father--although in
an Indian community, where nothing is secret, his parentage is usually
well known--he is left for some native woman to support with the aid of
her native husband. He is reared with the full-blooded offspring of the
couple in the frankness that knows no reserve and the intimacy that
knows no restraint, of Indian life. The full extent of that frankness
and intimacy shocks even the loosest-living white man when he