upward to the sky, would flash a zigzag lightning across the heavens.
With this dream of vent for a long-pent consciousness, I walked again
amid the crowds.

At last, one weary day in the schoolroom, a new idea presented itself to
me. It was a new way of solving the problem of my inner self. I liked
it. Thus I resigned my position as teacher; and now I am in an Eastern
city, following the long course of study I have set for myself. Now, as
I look back upon the recent past, I see it from a distance, as a whole.
I remember how, from morning till evening, many specimens of civilized
peoples visited the Indian school. The city folks with canes and
eyeglasses, the countrymen with sunburnt cheeks and clumsy feet, forgot
their relative social ranks in an ignorant curiosity. Both sorts of
these Christian palefaces were alike astounded at seeing the children of
savage warriors so docile and industrious.

As answers to their shallow inquiries they received the students' sample
work to look upon. Examining the neatly figured pages, and gazing upon
the Indian girls and boys bending over their books, the white visitors
walked out of the schoolhouse well satisfied: they were educating the
children of the red man! They were paying a liberal fee to the
government employees in whose able hands lay the small forest of Indian
timber.

In this fashion many have passed idly through the Indian schools during
the last decade, afterward to boast of their charity to the North
American Indian. But few there are who have paused to question whether
real life or long-lasting death lies beneath this semblance of
civilization.