“The churches tell us we must have faith to be saved, but the great minds of the present age are not satisfied, any more than many of the great minds of the past were satisfied, to admit as a matter of faith the whole foundation of the Christian religion.”

“People want to be shown.  They are not willing to rely upon poorly authenticated stories of what occurred several thousand years ago.  The question presents itself to us:  Is the world better, for its present beliefs than it formerly was, when religion was a matter of statute People may not be as religious as they once were, but they are certainly more humane.  Women are no longer slaves, chattels, with unfeeling husbands.  Slavery itself no longer exists in any civilized nation.  Polygamy is not practiced to the extent that it was in Biblical days.  The world progressed as fear ceased to rule the human mind.”

“But, pardon me,” he added with infinite grace and a charming wave of. his hand, “you see your question has aroused in me the failing of the pedagogue.  I have said more than I had intended.”

“How do your people,” I asked, “look upon the material progress of the age?” “They are astounded,” he answered.  “Since the Modoc War many of my people have prospered.  You have seen their farms, their houses, and noted their occupations.  They are rich in lands and stock, and even in money.  They have many comforts and even many luxuries in their homes.  Some of them have traveled extensively, and they come back filled with awe and admiration with what the white man has done and is doing.  I read the modern press, and many scientific works, and I am satisfied that man will fly in a few years more.  Already the automobile is displacing the domestic animals.  The telephone was a great triumph of science, next in importance to steam locomotion.  But, are your people as happy with your modern methods, your crowded cities, your strenuous existence, as your forefathers were, who led the simple life?  And where is this mad scramble, not for wealth alone, not for power but for mere existence, nothing more, that the human race is engaged in, going to end?  Can you tell me?  Take America, one of the newest civilized lands of the earth, how long will it be before her coal measures are exhausted?  Her iron ores exhausted?  Her forests will soon be a thing of the past.  Already you hear complaints that her fertile lands are not yielding as they once did, and your population is constantly increasing.  With coal gone, with iron gone, with the land poverty stricken to a point where profitable production of cereals can no longer be had, what is to become of your teeming millions?”

The Awakening.

I assured him I could not answer these questions.  That I had asked myself the same things a thousand times, and no answer came to me.  I handed the professor another cigar.  He lit it.  Just then an old Indian woman clad in a calico wrapper, but bareheaded and barefooted, came down the road towards us.  She stopped some fifty feet away, and in a shy, low voice, but in good English, she called him.  “Papa, did you catch me a fish for dinner?” The professor turned his head, and seeing her, said to me, “Ah, here is my guardian angel, my wife,” and then to her, holding up his trout, he said, “Yes, I have it.  I am coming now.”