"
The chief smoked in meditative silence. "You go too often to the
dwelling of the Wild Rose, my daughter."
"Ah, yes; but to-night her pink face is dewy wet, I know, and she is
alone. The Moon-in-a-black-cloud has gone to the home of her people."
"Then let her seek consolation in the slow moving sun. The pale-faced
nation are not fit associates for an Algonquin maiden. Mother Earth
has no love for them; they are quick to wash away her lightest
finger-touch upon them. They are pale and lifeless as a rock over
which the stream washes continually. Their men are afraid of the rain;
their women of the sunshine."
"It is even so. The Wild Rose covers her head, and even her hands,
when she leaves the house."
At this mournful assent the chief warmed to his task of depreciation.
"They are degraded, these pale faces, they are poor-spirited, mean,
contemptible; unable to cope with the wild beasts of the forest, they
settle down in weak resignation to grow vegetables; nothing stirs them
from their state of ignoble content except the call to battle, and
that is responded to not in defence of the lives of their fathers,
their wives and children, but merely to settle some petty quarrel
between the chiefs of their nations.
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