human
For thirty years now has Father Sebastian Rasle dwelt in the forest, teaching to its wild, red children the love of God and Mary. He is burned by sun and tanned by wind until he is almost as red as his parishioners. The languages of the Abenaki and Huron, the Algonquin and Illinois, are more familiar to him than the tongue in which his mother taught him the Ave Maria. The huts of Norridgewock contain his people; the river Kennebec flows swiftly past his dwelling to the sea. There he has built a church--handsome, he thinks and says; perhaps it would not much excite our luxurious imagination. At any rate, the altar is handsome; and he has gathered a store of copes and chasubles, albs and embroidered stoles for the dignity of the holy service. He has trained, also, as many as forty Indian boys in the ceremonies, and, in their crimson cassocks and white surplices, they aid the sacred pomp. Besides the church, there are two chapels, one on the road which leads to the forest, {575} where the braves are wont to make a short retreat before they start to trap and hunt; the other on the path to the cultivated lands, where prayers are offered when they go to plant or gather in the harvest. The one is dedicated to the guardian angel of the tribe, the other to our most holy mother, Mary Immaculate. To adorn this latter is the especial emulation of the women. Whatever they have of jewels, of silk stuff from the settlements, or delicate embroidery of porcupine-quill, or richly tinted moose-hair, is found here; and from amidst their offerings rises, white and fair, the statue of the Virgin; and her sweet face looks down benignantly upon her swarthy children, kneeling before her to recite their rosaries. One beautiful inanimate ministrant to God's worship they have in abundance--light from wax candles. The wax is not precisely _opus apium_, but it is a nearer approach to it than you find in richer and less excusable places. It is wax from the berry of the laurels, which cover the hills of Maine. And to the chapel every night and morning come all the Indian Christians. At morning they make their prayer in common, and assist at mass, chanting, in their own dialect, hymns written for that purpose by their pastor. Then they go to their employment for the day; he to his continuous, orderly, and ceaseless labor. The morning is given up to visitors, who come to their good father with their sorrows and disquietudes; to ask his relief against some little injustice of their fellows; his advice on their marriage or other projects. He consoles this one, instructs that, reestablishes peace in disunited families, calms troubled consciences, administers gentle rebuke, or gives encouragement to the timid. The afternoon belongs to the sick, who are visited in their own cabins. If there be a council, the black-robe must come to invoke the Holy Spirit on their deliberations; if a feast, he must be present to bless the viands and to check all approaches to disorder. And always in the afternoon, old and young, warrior and gray-haired squaw, Christian and catechumen, assemble for the catechism. When the sun declines westward, and the shadows creep over the village, they seek the chapel for the public prayer, and to sing a hymn to St. Mary. Then each to his own home; but before bed-time, neighbors gather again, in the house of one of them, and in antiphonal choirs they _sing_ their beads, and with another hymn they separate for sleep.