But after the orations were delivered a deeper burn awaited me.  There, before that vast ocean of eyes, some college rowdies threw out a large white flag, with a drawing of a most forlorn Indian girl on it.  Under this they had printed in bold black letters words that ridiculed the college which was represented by a “squaw.”  Such worse than barbarian rudeness embittered me.  While we waited for the verdict of the judges, I gleamed fiercely upon the throngs of palefaces.  My teeth were hard set, as I saw the white flag still floating insolently in the air.

Then anxiously we watched the man carry toward the stage the envelope containing the final decision.

There were two prizes given, that night, and one of them was mine!

The evil spirit laughed within me when the white flag dropped out of sight, and the hands which hurled it hung limp in defeat.

Leaving the crowd as quickly as possible, I was soon in my room.  The rest of the night I sat in an armchair and gazed into the crackling fire.  I laughed no more in triumph when thus alone.  The little taste of victory did not satisfy a hunger in my heart.  In my mind I saw my mother far away on the Western plains, and she was holding a charge against me.

AN INDIAN TEACHER AMONG INDIANS

I.

My first day.

Though an illness left me unable to continue my college course, my pride kept me from returning to my mother.  Had she known of my worn condition, she would have said the white man’s papers were not worth the freedom and health I had lost by them.  Such a rebuke from my mother would have been unbearable, and as I felt then it would be far too true to be comfortable.

Since the winter when I had my first dreams about red apples I had been traveling slowly toward the morning horizon.  There had been no doubt about the direction in which I wished to go to spend my energies in a work for the Indian race.  Thus I had written my mother briefly, saying my plan for the year was to teach in an Eastern Indian school.  Sending this message to her in the West, I started at once eastward.

Thus I found myself, tired and hot, in a black veiling of car smoke, as I stood wearily on a street corner of an old-fashioned town, waiting for a car.  In a few moments more I should be on the school grounds, where a new work was ready for my inexperienced hands.

Upon entering the school campus, I was surprised at the thickly clustered buildings which made it a quaint little village, much more interesting than the town itself.  The large trees among the houses gave the place a cool, refreshing shade, and the grass a deeper green.  Within this large court of grass and trees stood a low green pump.  The queer boxlike case had a revolving handle on its side, which clanked and creaked constantly.