I stand outside the great palace wigwam, the huge council-house by
the river. My seeing eyes may mark them, but my heart's eyes are
looking beyond all this wonderment, back to the land I have left
behind me. I picture the tepees by the far Saskatchewan; there
the tent poles, too, are lifting skyward, and the smoke ascending
through them from the smouldering fires within curls softly on the
summer air. Against the blurred sweep of horizon other camps etch
their outlines, other bands of red men with their herds of wild
cattle have sought the river lands. I hear the untamed hoofs
thundering up the prairie trail.
But the prairie sounds are slipping away, and my ears catch other
voices that rise above the ceaseless throb about me--voices that
are clear, high, and calling; they float across the city like the
music of a thousand birds of passage beating their wings through
the night, crying and murmuring plaintively as they journey
northward. They are the voices of St. Paul's calling, calling
me--St. Paul's where the paleface worships the Great Spirit, and
through whose portals he hopes to reach the happy hunting grounds.
The Great Spirit.
As I entered its doorways it seemed to me to be the everlasting
abiding-place of the white man's Great Spirit.
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