“The Armstrongs, I think I have heard my father say, first went to Britain and settled there, then across the sea to America, and fought against you during the War of Independence. But that has nothing whatever to do with me. My parents have been very, very good to me, and my education has been quite up to the Boston standard. Only when I reached the advanced age of seventeen—I am now two and twenty—I began to grow reckless. Civilization was not good enough for me. It was too much in the same groove. I determined therefore to shake the dust of Chicago off my shoes—there is a good deal of dust in Chicago—and find my way into regions remote, where, if the people were not rich, they were at least honest. My sister’s wild entreaties, my mother’s tears, prevailed not against my headstrong self.
“My adventures among the Rocky Mountains and forests of the Far West would fill a book. I thought seriously of living in the wilds for life, and marrying the daughter of a chief.
“He was ugly enough to have stopped a clock, but a splendid warrior, and his braves were all that braves should be. Cheena, the daughter, was but a child of twelve. But she interested and amused me, and perhaps captivated me with her beauty and her innocent ways. One of these innocent ways was to play with snakes. She even taught me to boldly touch and handle the rattler.
“No wild beast would harm Cheena, and she went fearlessly into the dens of even grizzly bears, and played with their puppies as if they had been dolls.
“I lived in the wilds with this wandering tribe for nearly three happy years. Cheena knew English, and I taught her more. Shakespeare was my constant companion. Better perhaps had it been my Bible. But Cheena and I played many a scene together in glades of the beautiful forest.
“I must hurry over all this, though.
“Well, one day, with three men and two tame wolves, I went away on a big shoot. When we returned, I found that a warlike tribe had attacked the chief’s camp, and that he and his braves had been defeated and scattered.
“I never saw him again, nor poor Cheena, though I wandered about in search of them for three long, dreary months.
“Then one day I returned to my father’s house. It was late at night, but I climbed up into my own old bedroom, just as I used to do when a lad.
“Nothing was changed. Everything had been kept sacred as a temple.