MflH 
 
 Spampton Sketches 
 
 hV 
 
 fi 
 
 A Change of Bas 
 
 E. 2j. OIi|trI)*0trr 
 
 GJtjp 3lnBtttutp PrrBB 
 Hampton, Utrgtnta 
 1311 
 
 1 
 
I 
 
 v» 
 
 THIS SKETCH HAS APPEARED IN 
 THE CHRISTIAN INTELLIGENCER'' 
 AND THE ' SOUTHERN WORKMAN” 
 
JLcWVrl £ TB./v.S 
 
 3 \ ^ 
 
 V\- 
 
 A CHANGE OF BASE 
 
 BY EDWARD L. CHICHESTER 
 
 TT is hard to define just what it was 
 that attracted me to Peters. He was 
 tall and black, with those long hands 
 and feet and the thin calves one sees in 
 the photographs of African savages. 
 These characteristics came out strongly 
 on the ball field at Hampton, where I first 
 caught sight of him. His fingers seemed 
 to rake the sky when the ball came 
 in his direction, and the way he doubled 
 and twisted himself in pitching, or steal¬ 
 ing a base, made us laugh. 
 
 But with these “shines on the ball field” 
 the trifling and comic in Peters came to 
 an end The real man was dignified. Back 
 of the black mask was a reticent soul, and 
 as you looked into his searching eyes 
 you felt the presence of a self-contained, 
 self-controlled nature He rarely smiled, 
 and when he did the sudden gleam of 
 white teeth expressed no abandonment 
 of mirth but only a passing sense of 
 the humorous that would scarcely 
 have been noticed if his face had been a 
 white one and the contrast between 
 teeth and skin less marked. 
 
You felt that the boy had had an ex¬ 
 perience. He had made some kind of a 
 fight. He had learned something in the 
 school of life, and grown restrained and 
 wary as we all do after we have measur¬ 
 ed our wills with circumstances, and 
 realized that every victory is dearly 
 bought and far from complete. 
 
 Peters’ story was a common one, 
 hardly worth telling from the stand¬ 
 point of events. He was brought up in 
 New York on the upper west side, one 
 of the 65,000 Negroes whose presence in 
 the city is giving the metropolis its 
 tangible Negro problem. I don’t know 
 much about his people. His mother 
 probably worked, as so many Negro 
 wives and mothers do in the Northern 
 cities, while their men folk, and es¬ 
 pecially their growing sons, trifle. 
 
 Added to the inconsequential ways of 
 youth, making it hard to settle down to 
 anything with steadiness and persist¬ 
 ence, the Negro boy faces the fact that 
 white folks, the folks who monopolize 
 the wealth and learning of the society 
 in which he finds himself, do not ex¬ 
 pect very much of him, and worse than 
 this, that race feeling has closed most 
 
of the doors to preferment and advance¬ 
 ment to the man with a black skin. 
 Peters fell into the ways of others of 
 his class. He was idle and purposeless 
 except that he got all the fun he could, 
 and his cool, self-controlled spirit, com¬ 
 bined with a body made of steel springs, 
 soon made him a star among the local ball 
 players. The sports, both white and 
 black, delighted in such a youth, and 
 Peters gained in repu tation and grew 
 satisfied with his attainments and pros¬ 
 pects. 
 
 The boy’s mother knew that some¬ 
 thing was wrong. She lamented the 
 fact that her child had grown beyond 
 her control, and dreaded a catastrophe 
 that she felt sure must li*e at the end of 
 the road he was following. In some 
 way she was able to get him packed off to 
 Virginia and entered at Hampton before 
 he had broken with decent living. He 
 did not come as an incorrigible; Hamp¬ 
 ton is not a reform school. But all the 
 strength of his nature, and it was a strong 
 one, was devoted to sports, and the 
 career that appealed to him was the 
 short-lived one of the popular idol. 
 How the rooters of the upper west side 
 
used to yell when he came to the bat! 
 This was music that made his blood 
 leap. A school with its regular hours, 
 requirements of close application, un¬ 
 interesting studies. School! the very 
 thought of it was stifling. 
 
 Peters began by falling in line with 
 the routine of the place. The military 
 part of it pleased him, and the manual 
 training furnished an outlet for his en¬ 
 ergies. Then came the inevitable letting 
 up in attention as the work lost the 
 charm of novelty. 
 
 He was in the pink of condition 
 physically; regular hours for sleep and 
 exercise, and good food had done their 
 work. Then it was that the pull of the 
 habits of the years spent about town 
 made itself felt. 
 
 I don’t know what it was that Peters 
 did, perhaps he indulged in a surrepti¬ 
 tious smoke, or visited Hampton town 
 out of hours and without permission; 
 at any rate he was summoned to the of¬ 
 fice to give an account of himself, and 
 this summons was not from a white man 
 but from a man of his own color. Peters 
 had that in him which makes the black 
 man submit to the white man without a 
 
sacrifice of dignity, but to be called to 
 account by a black man !—well, we stall 
 see. 
 
 He entered the office game. His 
 sporting life had fitted him for just this 
 sort of encounter. That big Negro be¬ 
 hind the desk should learn at once that 
 Peters was no cringing school boy, and 
 he did. The vocabulary of the New York 
 street urchin is rich in invective, and 
 Peters proved that his tongue shared 
 the suppleness of his other members. 
 As he poured out his stream of scorn 
 and indignation, a great black hand ap¬ 
 peared before his face and the voice of 
 the Commandant’s assistant, for it was 
 he, remarked in the quietest tone possi¬ 
 ble : 
 
 “That’ll do, Peters, you are in no con¬ 
 dition to talk; go to your room and see 
 me to-morrow at this time,” and the 
 hand motioned him off, while the 
 Captain, as he was called, turned to 
 speak with someone else. 
 
 It was humiliating to have his attack 
 treated in this way, but Peters had 
 said his say, and he withdrew to tell 
 the fellows outside that he had told the 
 Captain what he thought of him. Here 
 
he met with disappointment. No one 
 seemed to think that he had done any¬ 
 thing to be proud of. One youth, 
 franker than the others, plainly told 
 him that he was a fool and the Captain 
 was the best friend he had. 
 
 All day Peters went about his work 
 suffering from wounded pride, and go¬ 
 ing through that painful process of read¬ 
 justing his view of life and of himself 
 with which we are all familiar. 
 
 He was entertaining serious doubts as 
 to whether Peters was the truly great 
 and wise personage he had supposed him 
 to be, and the next day he reported at 
 the appointed hour with all his wrath 
 replaced by a strange feeling of doubt 
 and uncertainty. 
 
 He stood before the Captain. They 
 looked at each other a moment, and then 
 Peters cried. Ths rest was simple 
 enough. The Captain talked to him 
 like a father, and the boy went back to 
 his work with a new idea of what Hamp¬ 
 ton meant, and a glimpse of some¬ 
 thing, a purpose, an ideal in life, differ¬ 
 ent from anything he had ever known 
 before. 
 
 “You see,” said the Captain, in speak- 
 
ing of it afterwards, “the boy really 
 thought that he had been imposed upon. 
 He was grossly ignorant, of course, but 
 he wasn’t afraid. Such a boy is worth 
 saving.” And he was. The energy, the 
 ambition, the splendid physical supple¬ 
 ness, and perfect alignment of all his 
 faculties, were turned into new chan¬ 
 nels. 
 
 He played ball. When the “ help ” from 
 the Hotel Chamberlin, numbering some 
 of the Cuban Giants on its force, visit¬ 
 ed the school, we looked to Peters to pre¬ 
 serve our laurels. But if you wanted to 
 see the real Peters in action you should 
 visit the Trade School and note his ab¬ 
 sorbed interest in his work, and then 
 study the articles turned out by his 
 skilled hand. He is going back to New 
 York where he is wanted by one of the 
 big manufacturers. Prizes in the field 
 of productive work lure him now, a so¬ 
 ber sense of his place in society, and of 
 the opportunities to help his people into 
 lives of usefulness and power, has taken 
 possession of him. And there is a black 
 mother whose anxiety has given place 
 to joy and pride in her son, too deep 
 and real for utterance. 
 
* 
 
Hampton Sftetcbes 
 
 Johnson of Hampton 
 
 IE. IL (Eijirljwtf r 
 
 ©V 3histitulp Prras 
 ijamplmt, Bfrgiuia 
 1912 
 
THIS SKETCH HAS APPEARED 
 IN THE “ UTICA PRESS,” THE 
 BOSTON TRANSCRIPT,” THE 
 
 “ youth’s companion,” and 
 
 THE “ SOUTHERN WORKMAN.” 
 
JOHNSON OF HAMPTON 
 
 BY EDWARD L. CHICHESTER 
 Assistant Chaplain at Hampton Institute 
 
 ¥N order to give some idea of the work 
 * done at Hampton Institute, it is cus¬ 
 tomary to refer to the school’s record 
 and point to the fact that 36 educational 
 leaders (a list headed by the name of 
 Booker T. Washington ) have gone out 
 from Hampton; that the school has sent 
 out 2092 tradesmen and farmers; that 
 1618 of its girls are homekeepers, and so 
 on, with a long list of telling figures, 
 but to give an idea of the peculiar 
 quality of its work is not so easy. This 
 work is unobtrusive in the doing and its 
 most significant results do not lend 
 themselves readily to analysis or tabula¬ 
 tion. 
 
 About four years ago I was going 
 through the dairy and saw a tall, awk¬ 
 ward looking Negro washing milk cans. 
 I asked his name. “Johnson.” I asked 
 him where he was from, and straighten¬ 
 ing himself up, he looked at me in a be¬ 
 wildered way and answered, “Alabama.” 
 
 “ What did you do at home? ” 
 
“ I worked with my father on the 
 farm.” 
 
 “Did your father own his place?” 
 
 “No, he didn’t own anything, but,” 
 brightening up, “ he’s made the first 
 payment on a home since I came here to 
 school.” 
 
 The boy’s influence had told. Hope 
 and ambition had come to that black 
 laborer down at Alabama because his son 
 had sent in a report of a new and broader 
 outlook for his people. A year or 
 two after this I was in the Grand Central 
 Station in New York, and saw this same 
 youth clutching his baggage and look¬ 
 ing about him in a bewildered way. A 
 man he had expected to meet, who would 
 take him across the cit y , was not on hand. 
 
 “ How did you happen to be in New 
 York?” I asked. 
 
 He told me that he had been working 
 through the summer with a dairy farmer 
 in Connecticut, and was on his way to 
 Hampton. 
 
 “ Did you like the work? ” 
 
 “Yes, and he wants me to come back 
 next year.” 
 
 Progress again. This boy was desired. 
 Slow, unpolished, unprepossessing, if 
 you will, but desired where he had 
 worked. Some progress was being made 
 
here toward the solution of the Negro 
 problem. 
 
 Last summer I saw him again. He was 
 on the grounds at Hampton, wearing a 
 uniform with stripes betokening official 
 rank. His carriage was erect and soldier¬ 
 ly. He was still slow and deliberate in 
 speech and movement, but his eye was 
 clear, and he looked at you when he 
 spoke. We shook hands cordially and I 
 asked him what he was doing now. 
 
 “ I am in charge of the dairy,” he said. 
 The sup rintendent was away on his 
 vacation. “We are milking thirty cows 
 and making certified milk ”—milk that I 
 learned later went to the sick babies at 
 Norfolk. 
 
 “ How does the inspector rate your 
 milk?” 
 
 “We are getting ninety-six and ninety- 
 eight per cent,” he said, and seemed 
 rather dissatisfied. “ I am trying to 
 make it one hundred, but I haven’t done 
 it yet,” he added in his slow, dogged 
 way. 
 
 He took me over the dairy. Every 
 thing was scrupulously clean. The 
 cattle looked fine. He knew every one, 
 her pedigree, her peculiarities, her capac¬ 
 ity, just what she ate, and what ration 
 was required to produce the best results. 
 
ibampton Sketches 
 
 A Man to Men 
 
 E. 2J, (Elf trff eater 
 
 ®ljr Unatitutr Press 
 fiampton, Btrgfttta 
 1911 
 
 * 
 
THIS SKETCH HAS APPEARED 
 IN THE "ALBANY JOURNAL'' 
 AND IN "HOSPITAL TOPICS" 
 OF BUFFALO 
 
 
A MAN TO MEN 
 
 ^TERMONT has a prison at Rutland 
 * where the prisoners, for the most 
 part, are young men, sentenced for com¬ 
 paratively short terms. 
 
 One day last summer the office routine 
 was interrupted by a telephone call an¬ 
 nouncing that representatives of Hamp¬ 
 ton Institute, Va., were unexpectedly 
 detained at the station, and asking if 
 they might visit the prison. The man¬ 
 agement was most cordial. “ Certainly.” 
 Representatives from Hampton meant 
 plantation songs. 
 
 In due time the party arrived. It con¬ 
 sisted of one of the instructors (a white 
 man), a Negro disciplinarian, an Indian 
 student, and four colored singers. 
 
 They were taken through the prison 
 and witnessed the sight of men doing 
 enforced work with averted faces, felt 
 the pull on their sympathies that always 
 accompanies such an inspection, and 
 then adjourned to the assembly hall of 
 the prison, where they were given seats 
 on the platform. 
 
The straight-backed wooden benches 
 were filled with the prisoners, and the 
 guards, holding their guns across their 
 knees, sat in chairs in the aisle, grim¬ 
 faced and alert. In the rear were as¬ 
 sembled a number of guests, friends of 
 the warden, some ladies, who perhaps 
 were teachers in the prison Sunday 
 school, and a few neighbors who had 
 heard of the unexpected visit and had 
 been allowed to come in for the enter¬ 
 tainment. After the quartet sang there 
 was a pause. 
 
 “You must make the speech here,” 
 whispered the instructor to the black 
 man at his side. “ I can’t,” said the 
 other, startled. “Yes you can. You are 
 our disciplinarian. You are in control 
 of men. Speak to them.” 
 
 “ I shall surely start by telling them I 
 am glad to see so many of them here,” 
 pleaded the other. “Nonsense,” and be¬ 
 fore he could further object he was intro¬ 
 duced and standing in the middle of the 
 platform. 
 
 This man was very big and black, a 
 pure-blood Negro, not a ready speaker, 
 but he was a man who had had his share 
 of handicap in the battle of life and won 
 out, while the men before him were suf- 
 
fering different degrees of defeat. He 
 hestitated, then he began with a story of 
 a Negro preacher who had forgotten his 
 text and was guyed by a fellow in the 
 gallery who had had too much “co’n 
 juice.” The faces of his audience were 
 a study. The men appreciated the situ¬ 
 ation he described perfectly. He then 
 went on to tell another. This was about 
 a fellow sent up for stealing chickens 
 and discharged in time to attend a re¬ 
 vival meeting, and answer the sister 
 whose testimony was in the form of a 
 criticism of the absent one. The men 
 fairly doubled up with laughter and the 
 lips of the guards twitched. Some of the 
 visitors looked as if they hardly knew 
 how to take the speech. What was he 
 driving at anyway? 
 
 Embarassed and uncertain as he had 
 begun, he had established a bond of sym¬ 
 pathy between the sad-faced company 
 and himself, and now he began to talk to 
 them about looking their fellow-men in 
 the face ; about meeting the adverse ex¬ 
 periences of life unafraid; and closed 
 with an appeal to their courage and man¬ 
 hood that had in it the ring of sincerity. 
 
The Negro, the member of a struggling 
 race whose road to success is beset by 
 weaknesses inherent in itself, and op¬ 
 posed by prejudices and powers without, 
 that would be daunt the strongest am¬ 
 bition, talked simply and earnestly con¬ 
 cerning the equipment needed by a man 
 who faces odds. 
 
 When he had finished there wasn’t 
 much time left. The party must catch 
 the train, but when the warden explained 
 that the prisoners were allowed to show 
 their appreciation of anything to which 
 they had listened by rising, every man 
 sprang to his feet with the alacrity of a 
 jack-in-the-box ; and the last glimpse of 
 the assembly so strangely garbed in its 
 uniform of disgrace, showed a body of 
 human faces lighted with hope. 
 
3 
 

3 
 
 Ibampton Sketches 
 
 The Woodman 
 
 ?E. ?C. (£f}trljpatpr 
 
 
 ®l|p ilnstttutp ^rrss 
 iijamptmt, Btrgiuta 
 1911 
 
THIS SKETCH HAS APPEARED 
 IN THE "INDIAN'S FRIEND” AND 
 IN THE ' SOUTHERN WORKMAN” 
 
THE WOODMAN 
 
 BY E. L. CHICHESTER 
 
 “The Indian is not a lazy man, but he does need 
 to be provided with proper channels for his ener¬ 
 gies, and incentives for their use.” F. E. Leupp. 
 
 T HERE are people living in Syracuse 
 who remember Joseph Lion well. 
 He was an Onondaga Indian and worked 
 at the carpenter’s trade. 
 
 To most white people Joseph seemed 
 commonplace enough. Absorbed, taci¬ 
 turn, and rather gloomy, we can picture 
 him clad in white man’s clothes, and work 
 clothes at that, that fitted him in the 
 pitiful, second-hand fashion that the 
 garments of civilization fit the red man. 
 But it would take an eloquent pen in¬ 
 deed to describe the emotions that seeth¬ 
 ed in his soul. The swarthy, expres¬ 
 sionless face masked the memories of a 
 great past in which the man lived his 
 real life. 
 
 The Iroquois had possessed and ruled 
 where the people of Syracuse had their 
 homes, and the Onondagas, the council 
 tribe of the Six Nations, had made 
 peace and declared war in their Council 
 House centuries before the Town Hall 
 was thought of. 
 
Joseph, edging through the crowd on 
 his way to his cabin on the reservation, at 
 the close of his day’s work, lost him¬ 
 self in these dreams of the past, and 
 when he had shed his hated overalls and 
 dressed in the costume of his people he 
 was another being. 
 
 The man was a pagan Indian and 
 smoked his pipe in solemn conclave, 
 or hopped about in the ecstacy of the 
 dance within sound of the bell of the 
 Old Valley Church. All this was bar¬ 
 barous and meaningless to white peo¬ 
 ple when it was not actually sacrilegi¬ 
 ous, but little did the average Christian 
 missionary of that day appreciate the 
 sound moral principles that found ex¬ 
 pression in Joseph’s guttural speech, or 
 realize that there was a character in the 
 man that commanded the respect of the 
 Indian boys who looked up to him, 
 standing in his buckskin and feathers, 
 from where they squatted on the floor 
 of the Council House. 
 
 One of these boys was Joseph’s grand¬ 
 son, little Hohs-qua-sa-ga-da, which 
 means, in the Indian language, “the man 
 with the ax on his shoulder,” or “ the 
 Woodman.” In the boy the saddened 
 heart of Joseph found some solace, and 
 he cherished the hope that the solemn 
 
meaning of the dance would be ob¬ 
 served by him, and the memories and 
 traditions of the past greatness of his 
 people be kept alive in his person. 
 
 He taught the little Woodman from 
 his full store of Indian tradition and 
 ethics, and warned him with gloomy 
 threats against the white man and all 
 his ways; especially, so Joseph told him, 
 was he to shun the printed book, for 
 evil for the Indian, and evil only, 
 was to be found there. A devil, he de¬ 
 clared, lurked between its covers. 
 
 Joseph died among the very last of 
 the old regime, and with him went out, 
 not only his store of memories of a past 
 greatness and power, but most of the 
 reverence that invested the Indian cere¬ 
 monies, and all that was edifying and 
 inspiring in them. 
 
 The Woodman, an orphan, was taken 
 into the family of relatives. They were 
 reservation Indians with all that that 
 implied of ignorance, poverty, and mal¬ 
 adjustment to the life and interests of 
 this great and properous country. With 
 children of their own and barely 
 enough to feed them, the outlook for 
 this extra little Indian was a sad one. 
 
 He used to sit on his bench against 
 
 * 
 
the wall while the family partook of its 
 meal, and was allowed to approach the 
 table and help himself to anything that 
 was left after the others were through. 
 It makes one’s heart ache to think of 
 the hollow-eyed, stoical little fellow, 
 with his empty stomach and timid 
 spirit. People think of Indians as fierce, 
 and forget that they are wild by nature 
 and share the fears of all wild things. 
 
 After a season of this life Providence 
 interfered in the Woodman’s case in the 
 person of a lady missionary. This wo¬ 
 man found a white farmer with a kind 
 wife and a bountiful table, and got the 
 poor, half-starved little Woodman into 
 their home. 
 
 There were small girls in the family 
 who were kind to him, and taught him 
 to speak English and something of 
 reading and writing as well. He did 
 not forget his grandfather’s teaching. 
 The memory of the grave, earnest face 
 of Joseph Lion commanded his rev¬ 
 erence, but the fear of the white man’s 
 influence was lessened among these 
 friends, and a curiosity to find and see, 
 with his own eyes, the devil that lurked 
 in the printed book gave a kind of 
 wicked zest to his studies. 
 
After a year or two, through the in¬ 
 fluence of the same good woman who 
 had found him his home on a farm, 
 the Woodman was sent to Hampton In¬ 
 stitute in Virginia. It was supposed 
 that the Government would help him 
 here, but Uncle Sam, who makes an 
 annual appropriation for his red 
 children sent to this school, looked 
 askance at. a youth with a Central New 
 York address. No Indian surely could 
 be found in the midst of this civilized 
 Empire State—that is, not one who was 
 Indian enough to draw public moneys— 
 and the fact that the youth in question 
 was the grandson of an Onondaga chief, 
 that his ancestors had never voted, 
 that he made his wants known in the 
 English tongue with difficulty, and 
 that he regarded white people and their 
 ways with ill-concealed fear, weighed 
 not a whit in giving him his standing 
 as a nation’s ward. 
 
 If he stayed at Hampton he must re¬ 
 main on the footing of the Negro 
 students and earn his own keep while 
 he carried on his studies. It was hard, 
 but it was this or return to the hard¬ 
 ships and uncertainties of life on the 
 reservation, so he entered on his work 
 
year, a year with long hours and steady 
 toil, with much of the spirit of a galley 
 slave. 
 
 How impossible it is for a white man 
 to understand the contempt with which 
 an old-time Indian regards work! For 
 a free man to voluntarily devote his 
 waking hours to toil is quite beyond 
 the Indian’s power to conceive. This 
 attitude toward work was bred in the 
 Woodman’s bone, but Hampton holds 
 the secret of joy in toil, if it is held 
 anywhere, and the Woodman, now 
 grown to be a tall youth in his early 
 twenties, actually came to like the life 
 with its long hours and constantly 
 stimulated pride in accomplishment. 
 He came to perceive, with more and 
 more distinctness, what it was that in¬ 
 terested the white man in his, to the 
 Indian, singular manner of life. He 
 chose the machinist’s trade and in three 
 years gained a degree of skill that en.- 
 abled him to find work outside. Then 
 he went back to the neighborhood of his 
 home and entered a railroad shop, where 
 he built locomotives. 
 
 Picture him at this time—tall, silent, 
 and pre-occupied, but with a smile that 
 lighted his whole face and won the in¬ 
 terest and sympathy of the veriest 
 
stranger. He had marked Indian features 
 and eyes that, like his grandfather’s, 
 seemed to see things beyond the task in 
 hand,but this, in the Woodman’s case, 
 was only seeming; for though he remem¬ 
 bered the traditions of the reservation, 
 and his own childhood experiences and 
 impressions in the Council House, these 
 were but dim memories, and the de¬ 
 mands of his trade and the friends and 
 interests of the active life he was living, 
 satisfied him. 
 
 The Woodman, in his thoughts and 
 pursuits, had become a white man; but 
 back of it all was race consciousness; 
 and the school that had trained him had 
 impressed him with a sense of a peculiar 
 responsibility to his people. This 
 showed in an interesting way after he 
 had been for some time in the shop. 
 The men proposed his name as a mem¬ 
 ber of their Union. He thought the mat¬ 
 ter over with care and finally consented 
 to join as an Indian. The members de¬ 
 murred, but he was firm, and they took 
 him in on a basis that left the door open 
 to others of his race. 
 
 Seventeen years the man followed his 
 trade in this shop; he was not satisfied 
 to do ordinary work, but studied and 
 
practised till his product ranked with 
 the best. Later he would speak of the 
 delight he took in this work, the delight 
 incident to a growing comprehension 
 and the increased respect of his fellow 
 workmen. He had acquired what Gen¬ 
 eral Armstrong used to call “the work 
 habit.” 
 
 Now he went back to Hampton and 
 assisted in the machine shop there. He 
 was again thrown with his people—the 
 Sioux, the Crows, the Navalioes, the 
 Apaches, and the pauperized reserva¬ 
 tion Indians of the East. He did not 
 classify these people—the Woodman’s 
 mind was not at all of this order. He 
 simply liked folks, and fraternized with 
 the children of the red race—his folks 
 curious, suspicious youths—they were 
 playing at the white man’s work. The 
 Woodman knew just how they felt. Had 
 he not been there himself ? The call 
 of the wild was in their blood. Time— 
 three, four, five years—more time, and 
 still more, was needed to drill hand 
 and mind to the white man’s task and 
 give the things that interested him a 
 chance to interest them. How patiently 
 the Woodman worked with them! How 
 well he understood ! 
 
Visitors would ask him, with unbelief 
 in their tones, if he could make these 
 fellows work. He fairly beamed as 
 he answered, reminding them of the 
 background of these youths, and assur¬ 
 ing them they would all come out well 
 if one only understood and had pa¬ 
 tience. To meet him in the shop at 
 Hampton was a lesson on the proper 
 attitude of the strong toward the weak, 
 not easily forgotten. 
 
 He had land on his reservation and 
 retixrned, in time, to identify himself 
 with the Indians of his tribe. One 
 after another of the boys here came 
 under his influence and was persuaded 
 to learn a trade. One after another 
 drew out of a condition of dependence 
 and dread, and tasted the freedom and 
 power that come to the man who knows 
 how. The Woodman himself secured a 
 steady job in one of the machine shops 
 in Syracuse. Here you meet him, dress¬ 
 ed in his working clothes, and thread¬ 
 ing his way through the crowds in the 
 steeet after his day’s work, as his grand¬ 
 father did before him; but whereas poor 
 Joseph Lion dreamed embittered dreams 
 and felt himself the victim of untoward 
 circumstances, his grandson has con- 
 
3 0112 062141582 
 
 quered where he was overcome, a 
 looks forward, where Joseph dwelt oil 
 on the past. 
 
 The Woodman is a Christian but hel 
 not a preacher; that is, he does not tai 
 easily in public. The English languaj 
 even, he does not speak as if it were t 
 mother tongue, but he is a doer of l.j 
 word. Only those.in his confidence kn 
 with what interest he watches the grow 
 of his brother. How will this Indian q 
 whom the Woodman carries on . 
 heart, come out ? Shy, taciturn, qu™ 
 tioning, he may break on the rocks tfflL 
 wreck civilized as well as uncivili aW 
 man, but he is rescued from the c 
 rot, the dependence, the utter hopelej 
 ness of the reservation Indian. He 
 a living, integral unit of the land 
 which he was born. For better or 
 worse he is one of us.