Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/162



148 "A MAN FOR BREAKFAST.

lands and coins, are all in the world he has. When he dies these will all remain and the world will lose nothing whatever. His death will not make even a ripple in the tide of life. His family, whom he has taught to worship gold, will forget him in their new estates. In their hearts they will be glad that he is gone. They will barter and haggle with the stone-cutter toiling for his bread, and for a starve-to-death price they will lift a marble shaft above his head with an iron fence around it typical, cold, and soulless !

Poor man, since he took nothing away that one could miss, what a beggar he must have been ! The poor and unhappy never heard of him : the world has not lost a thought. Not a note missed, not a word was lost in the grand, sweet song of the universe when he died.

Save us from such men. America is full of them. She boils over with them in a sort of annual eruption. She throws them over the sea into abbeys, and sacred places, with their hats on; they are howling, hoarser than jackals, up and down the Nile and over and away towards Jerusalem.

It was remarkable how suddenly the Indian children sprung up with the summer. No one could have recognized in this neat, modest, sensitive girl, and this silent, savage-looking boy, who sometimes looked almost a man, the two starved, naked little creatures of half a year before.

There was a little lake belted by wild red roses