And Catharine was glad when, after many go months of patient teaching, the
Indian girl asked permission to kneel down with her white friend, and pray
to the Great Spirit and His Son in the same words that Christ Jesus gave
to his disciples; and if the full meaning of that holy prayer, so full of
humility and love, and moral justice, was not fully understood by her whose
lips repeated it, yet even the act of worship and the desire to do that
which she had been told was right, was, doubtless, a sacrifice better than
the pagan rites which that young girl had witnessed among her father's
people, who, blindly following the natural impulse of man in his depraved
nature, regarded deeds of blood and cruelty as among the highest of human
virtues, and gloried in those deeds of vengeance at which the Christian
mind revolts with horror.
Indiana took upon herself the management of the rice, drying, husking and
storing it, the two lads working under her direction. She caused several
forked stakes to be cut and sharpened and driven into the ground; on these
were laid four poles, so as to form a frame, over which she then stretched
the bass-mat, which she secured by means of forked pegs to the frame on
the mat; she then spread out the rice thinly, and lighted a fire beneath,
taking good care not to let the flame set fire to the mat, the object being
rather to keep up a strong, slow heat, by means of the red embers.
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