"I agree with you," said Mr. Page. "It is a _very_ bad job."
"I tell you," said the boy, "there are three kinds of Indians who come from those schools. One is ashamed of his people and will not live with them any longer. There is not much for him to do anywhere, so he rambles about from place to place. The whites despise him; for his own people he has lost all his good heart. He dies after awhile, always a sot and a thief. There is another kind of Indian. He is discontented because he has been out in the world that does not want him. He comes back and remains with his people; but what he has seen and done when away makes him not content with his home. Always there is sorrow in his heart while he lives. If they had not taken him away from his home he would have remained content. Do I not say right--according to your belief?"
"And there is still another kind--the lazy one who comes home and sneers at everything, and yet is too lazy to go away and look for something better. Pretty soon he gets lower than those at whom he laughs and sneers. He lives on the labor of his women--his mother, a sister, or wife, when he gets one--until he dies. You cannot change the Indian; if you attempt it you spoil him."
Mr. Page was surprised at the extraordinary good sense of the young man.
"You have a wise head on your shoulders," he said. "I do not wonder that with very good intentions, perhaps, they selected you for Carlisle. At any rate, they have taught you to reason."
"To reason!" echoed Dionysio, with a flash of the eye and contemptuous curl of the lip that betrayed the latent deep Indian nature. "The Indian could reason long before he ever saw the face of the white man--and can do it to-day better than his teachers. I am not very old, but that much I have seen and I know."
"I believe you are right again," said Mr. Page. "I should like to talk with you some other time."
"Thank you," said Dionysio. "It will also give me pleasure."
That evening the children took a walk with their father and mother in search of eggs. They were directed to a dilapidated brush-house at some distance from their camping place. It was said the eggs there were particularly large and fresh. They could not find it at first and went considerably out of their way. At length they came to the place, the most forlorn-looking dwelling they had yet seen. It was quite extensive, however, open on three sides, and with a hole in the roof for ascending smoke from a bare fireplace. Two heaps of ragged and dirty bed-clothing lay close to the smouldering coals. A little farther away, almost out of sight, was a cot. An old man lay on one heap of rags, an old woman crouched near the fire. A little girl, very pretty but very dirty, with beautiful large brown eyes and long black hair, sat near the old woman, still as a statue. They all seemed to be asleep.
