which the Reverend Archibald was sitting, where he stood for some
moments looking down on his opponent with an almost amused expression
of contempt.

"You are an interesting little beast," he drawled, "and I've seen a
lot of your kind in my time. Here you preach every Sunday, to whomever
will listen to you, certain cut-and-dried doctrines you don't believe
practically in the least. Here for the first time you have had a
chance to apply them literally, and you hide behind a lot of words.
And while you're about it you may as well hear what I have to say
about your kind. I've had a pretty wide experience in the North, and I
know what I'm talking about. Your work here among the Indians is rot,
and every sensible man knows it. You coop them up in your log-built
houses, you force on them clothes to which they are unaccustomed until
they die of consumption. Under your little tin-steepled imitation of
civilization, for which they are not fitted, they learn to beg, to
steal, to lie. I have travelled far, but I have yet to discover what
your kind are allowed on earth for. You are narrow-minded, bigoted,
intolerant, and without a scrap of real humanity to ornament your mock
religion. When you find you can't meddle with other people's affairs
enough at home you get sent where you can get right in the
business--and earn salvation for doing it. I don't know just why I
should say this to you, but it sort of does me good to tell it. Once I
heard one of your kind tell a sorrowing mother that her little child
had gone to hell because it had died before he--the smug
hypocrite--had sprinkled its little body with a handful of water.
There's humanity for you! It may interest you to know that I thrashed
that man then and there. You are all alike; I know the breed. When
there is found a real man among you--and there are such--he is so
different in everything, including his religion, as to be really of