“Kit, there’s some dark scheme afloat in that fair head of yours. Out with it!”
“Just for a beginning of things—this: There was a family came to the Fort to-day. The father is a skilled wood-carver. He is not over strong and his wife is frailer than he. They have a lot of little children and he must earn money. It has cost them more than they expected to get as far as this, even, and they should not go farther. Yet he is a man, a master workman. It would be an insult to offer him money. But give him work and you feed his soul as well as his body.”
“How, my love? Who that dwells in a log cabin needs fine carvings or would appreciate them if they had them?”
“Educate them to want and appreciate them. Open a school for just that branch. I myself will be his pupil. I remember with what delight I used to mould Mercy’s butter. Well, I’ve been moulding something ever since.”
“Your husband, for instance.”
“He’s a little difficult material; but time will improve him! Then there are the Doctor’s botanical treatises and specimens. Open a school. If you have to begin with a few only, still begin. Lay the seed. From our little workroom and classroom may grow one of those mighty colleges that have made Englishmen great and are making Americans their equals.”
“Hello there, child! Hold on a bit. Their equals? And you a soldier’s daughter!”
“Since I am a soldier’s daughter, I can afford to be just, and even generous. It is all nonsense, because we have gained our independence, to say we are better than our fathers were. For they were our fathers, surely; and they had had time in their rich country, with their ages of instruction, to grow learned and great. But we Americans are their children, and, just as is already proving, each generation is wiser than the one which went before. So presently we shall be able to do even better than they——”
“Give them another dose of Yankee Doodle?”
“If they require it, yes. But come back to just right here in this little town. Besides the schools for white children, can’t we have those for the Indians?”