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Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851

"Oak Openings"

The Son of the Manitou has now told me better. I have lived
under a cloud. The breath of the dying medicine-priest of your
people has blown away that cloud. I see clearer. I hear him telling
the Manitou to do me good, though I wanted his scalp. He was
answered in my heart. Then my ears opened wider, and I heard what
the Good Spirit whispered. The ear in which the Bad Spirit had been
talking for twenty winters shut, and was deaf. I hear him no more. I
do not want to hear him again. The whisper of the Son of the Manitou
is very pleasant to me. It sounds like the wren singing his sweetest
song. I hope he will always whisper so. My ear shall never again be
shut to his words.
"Bourdon, it is pleasant to me to look forward. It is not pleasant
to me to look back. I see how many things I have done in one way,
that ought to have been done in another way. I feel sorry, and wish
it had not been so. Then I hear the Son of the Manitou asking His
Father, who liveth above the clouds, to do good to the Jews who took
his life. I do not think Injins are Jews. In this, my brother was
wrong. It was his own notion, and it is easy for a man to think
wrong.


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