are born to a higher destiny than were ever the children of the
Pharaohs."

"With the exception of Gretchen, not one of the pupils fully understood
the picturesque allusion. Like the reference to the pilot of the Argo, it
was poetic mystery to them; and yet it filled them with a noble curiosity
to know much and a desire to study hard, and to live hopefully and
worthily. Like the outline of some unknown mountain range, it allured them
to higher outlooks and wider distances.

"He talked to us so grandly," said Gretchen to Mrs. Woods one evening,
"that I did not know half that he was saying; but it made me feel that I
might be somebody, and I do intend to be. It is a good thing to have a
teacher with great expectations."

"Yes," said Mrs. Woods, "when there is so little to expect. People don't
take a lot of nothing and make a heap of something in this world. It is
all like a lot of feathers thrown against the wind. _Nevertheless_ it
makes one happier to have prospects, if they are far away. I used to; but
they never came to nothing, unless it was to bring me way out here."

The log school-house was a curious place. The children's benches consisted
of split logs on pegs, without backs. The sides of the building were logs
and sods, and the roof was constructed of logs and pine boughs. All of the
children were barefooted, and several had but poor and scanty clothing.
Yet the very simplicity of the place had a charm.

Benjamin sat alone, apart from the rest. It was plain to be seen that he
was brooding over the painful event of the morning. Gretchen had grown
cheerful again, but the bitter expression on the young Indian's face
seemed to deepen in intensity. Mr. Mann saw it. To quiet his agitation, he
began his teaching by going to him and sitting down beside him on the rude
bench and opening to him the primer.

"You understand English?" said Mr. Mann.

"A little. I can talk Chinook."

In the Chinook vocabulary, which was originally the trade language of all
the tribes employed by the Hudson Bay Company in collecting furs, most of
the words resemble in sound the objects they represent. For example, a
wagon in Chinook is chick-chick, a clock is ding-ding, a crow is kaw-kaw,
a duck, quack-quack, a laugh, tee-hee; the heart is tum-tum, and a talk or
speech or sermon, wah-wah. The language was of English invention; it took
its name from the Chinook tribes, and became common in the Northwest.
Nearly all of the old English an