After forty years spent on a Canadian Indian Reserve, Lydia
Mansion still wore real lace, real tortoise shell combs, real furs.
If she could not have procured these she would have worn plain
linen collars, no combs, and a woven woolen scarf about her throat;
but the imitation fabrics, as well as the "imitation people," had
no more part in her life than they had in her husband's, who
abhorred all such pinchbeck. Their loves were identical. They loved
nature--the trees, best of all, and the river, and the birds. They
loved the Anglican Church, they loved the British flag, they loved
Queen Victoria, they loved beautiful, dead Elizabeth Evans, they
loved strange, reticent Mr. Evans. They loved music, pictures and
dainty china, with which George Mansion filled his beautiful home.
They loved books and animals, but, most of all, these two loved
the Indian people, loved their legends, their habits, their
customs--loved the people themselves. Small wonder, then, that
their children should be born with pride of race and heritage, and
should face the world with that peculiar, unconquerable courage
that only a fighting ancestry can give.
As the years drifted on, many distinctions came to the little family
of the "Grand Mansions.
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