American fiction -- 19th century; California -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Western stories
tent-poles to long sheds especially constructed for that purpose. The
sweat-house was no longer utilized for worldly purposes. The wise and
mighty Elijah did not attempt to reform their religion, but to preserve
it in its integrity.
That these improvements and changes were due to the influence of one man
was undoubtedly true, but that he was necessarily a superior man did
not follow. Elijah's success was due partly to the fact that he had been
enabled to impress certain negative virtues, which were part of his own
nature, upon a community equally constituted to receive them. Each was
strengthened by the recognition in each other of the unexpected value of
those qualities; each acquired a confidence begotten of their success.
“He-hides-his-face,” as Elijah Martin was known to the tribe after the
episode of the released captives, was really not so much of an autocrat
as many constitutional rulers.
*****
Two years of tranquil prosperity passed. Elijah Martin, foundling,
outcast, without civilized ties or relationship of any kind, forgotten
by his countrymen, and lifted into alien power, wealth, security, and
respect, became--homesick!
It was near the close of a summer afternoon. He was sitting at the door
of his lodge, which overlooked, on one side, the far-shining levels
of the Pacific and, on the other, the slow descent to the cultivated
meadows and banks of the Minyo River, that debouched through a waste of
salt-marsh, beach-grass, sand-dunes, and foamy estuary into the
ocean. The headland, or promontory--the only eminence of the Minyo
territory--had been reserved by him for his lodge, partly on account of
its isolation from the village at its base, and partly for the view it
commanded of his territory. Yet his wearying and discontented eyes were
more often found on the ocean, as a possible highway of escape from his
irksome position, than on the plain and the distant range of mountains,
so closely connected with the nearer past and his former detractors. In
his vague longing he had no desire to return to them, even in triumph in
his present security there still lingered a doubt of his ability to
cope with the old conditions. It was more like his easy, indolent
nature--which revived in his prosperity--to trust to this least
practical and remote solution of his trouble. His homesickness was as
vague as his plan for escape from it; he did not know exactly what
he regretted, but it was probably some life he had not enjoyed, some
pleasure that had escaped his former incompetency and poverty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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