Night closes on the sorrows of yesterday. Dawn is radiant with the promise of a better day.
Our friend, “Slippery Jim,” tried to believe all this, and to look with hope towards the future, but he kept much to himself. He would take long walks into the woods.
It disturbed me to see him so slow to take the boys into his confidence.
“I never see you reading with the other men in the evening,” I told him. “Men who love solitude are either very good or very bad.”
“I will try to do better,” he answered, “but for so many years I have been used to being by myself.”
“Still one has to live in the world—and our world here is rather small,” I said. “Cheerfulness is a duty one owes to his own soul.”
“And to others,” he added.
“Yes, and to others,” I replied.
"I am inclined to view lightly my duty to others. I owed a debt—a great debt once—to others, and I have paid it. They measured it out of my life, the payment they demanded. I have paid it—paid it in tears and wretchedness—paid it out of my heart and soul. Now I prefer to live apart.... The Indians, so the poet says, when on the march, leave their old and sick alone to die. I am a sick savage, and as such, I ask my rights."
“Do you believe in the Great Spirit and the Happy Hunting Grounds?” I asked gently, for I knew he had no Indian blood in his veins.