Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1914-09-10

It is often taken up merely as an
excuse for something to do, only to
be laid aside half smoked.
The darkness of the northland
make very short days that are all
too long, and nights which seem to
be without end.
It was then that the irking Of
Lorimer's soul would become almost
too great to bear. The strength Of
BODY and the education of mind that
were his seemed to weigh upon him
like useless burdens.
The talk of the Indians was al
ways the same. Even during the
open season, when brigade came
or a visitor whose arrival was a
thing to be long remembered and
commented on, the same uneasiness
persisted, and the day after their
departure brought vain longings.
1t is possible that at that time he
was struggling against the slow
growing madness which is born in
the waste places. 1t may have been
the simple longing which comes
sooner or later to every man that
bade him look wistfully into the open
tents of Indians preparing to sum-
mer at the post.
He watched the women at work,
and the babies fastened to padded
boards, swinging from limbs of
nearby trees or the ridge-poles Of
tents. He looked upon those at their
mothers breasts, and followed the
play of boys armed with blunt head
ed arrows, and the work Of small
girls who were helping the women
with the household toll.
From the door of the store-room
he watched the movements of young
women and studied their faces, not
ing how they handled short axes OF
sewed shoepacks or bent over the
fires among the pots and pans.
During his first months in the will
derness Lorimer imagined that the
Indians were an inferior, degraded
lot. In some instances he was
doubtless, correct, yet some were
handsome, splendidly built people, SC
far superior to himself in all that
concerned life in the woods that he
sometimes had to acknowledge q
sense of inferiority on his own part
Insensibly he had become friendly
with them and kind in his mode OF
treatment, a fact which they had
been quick to appreciate.
At the going out of the ice during
the previous spring, and few days
after Curran had departed to be
gone long time, Nimissuts, or
Thunder, an old chief among the
Nascaupees, a tribe related to the
Montagnais and srealsing the same
language, arrived with his wife, who
had young children, and his daugh-
&c, -
riage.
The girl had come into the store
room with her father. Each carried
a bale of fur. Lorimer ceased
weighing out salt to look at the at
tractive young woman.
He remembered that during the
previous year she was little more
than a well-grown child, showing
signs Of soon blossoming into wom-
anhood. But now, like many plants
of the north whose growing seems
tc take place with breathless haste
for fear the summer shall prove too
short, she had added to her stature
until she was tall and gracefully
rounded. Her soft, dark, long
lashed eyes no longer looked at him
with the frankness of childhood, but
We're downcast in maidenly modesty.
To Lorimer she appeared as a
sweet, fresh vision which brought to
his mind a vague notion of surcease
| to his dreadful loneliness. Her
grace and beauty seemed to fill the
log building with something that had
never yet penetrated it. Her soft
voice was like music more charming
than any he had ever heard.
For days he watched her, and dur
ing the nights her image came be-
fore him. He wondered what his
world would say to marriage with
the girl; how such an event would
make his return to it forever inn
possible.
Other white men had married In
dian girls who had made good wives
yet such alliances meant the deep
burial of any desire to return to a
civilization where the darker faces
of other races were held in reproach
But what prospect was there OF
his ever leading again the grubbing
narrow life of the cities? Here the
loneliness was killing, but the won.
drous freedom of it all--the great.
ness of the waters and the depths OF
the forests-still held him in thrall
Only compsnion was needed
whose presence would bring bright.
ness and affection and constant, ten
der care.
He sought the girl openly anc
spoke with her before all. He sa
before the campfire of old Nimissuts
smoking his pipe, while the girl bus
led herself beading moccasins o.
making clothing fer her spuall hal
brothers and sisters.
His eyes must have carried SOM
message to the girl, for Ameou he
gan to he glad when he came.
Ono evening Anisku, the younl
wife Of Nimissuts, was speaking I,
her husband, who was placidly smok
ing long pipe.
"Hast thou noticed? ?" she asked.
my eyes are old, yet still able t.
see" he replied.
"Uapishiu, he of the yellow hnir,
she continued, giving Lorimer tn
name by which the Indians usuall
called him, sis looking for a mate
and his eyes have fallen upo
Ameou. He wants her for his wife.
The old man nodded but made n
answer.