IN THE NORTH 47

to speak well by making mistakes. Once I had been
laughed at for a fault of language, you may be sure
that I would never fall into that same error again.”

One thing is certain. It was that mastery of the
language he ultimately acquired which was to render
him the king of the country, especially if we join that
linguistic achievement to his great impartiality and
his astonishing penetration of the Indian character
as well as the instinctive sense he had of the probable
results of a measure, or, of a direction on his people.

“Tt is surprising,’’ would remark the late Bishop
Durieu, incontestably the greatest missionary that
ever lived on the Pacific coast, who reproduced at vari-
ous points the marvels accomplished by the Jesuits
in the Paraguay of old, ‘It is surprising how Father
Morice follows me without knowing it. I never had
him with me, I never taught him, and yet he acts with
the Indians in exactly the same way as I do.”

’

This avenue to success, the acquisition of languages
and the intelligent manner in which he was treating
his people, Morice has recorded in a page or two of his
most important book, putting either to the credit of
his episcopal superior. We have room for only a few
passages.

The missionary who would succeed among the Indians,
must aim higher in order to hit lower. Without doing too
great violence to the principles of a sane theology, he must
ask for more, sure as he is to obtain less. He requires a
great steadiness of purpose, a continuity of direction free
from all danger of self-contradiction. He must, in fact,
forestall all possibility of hesitation or of doubt relatively
to the legitimity or opportuneness of such and such a
measure, inasmuch as the native has a good memory,
and his inborn astuteness would easily make him feel any
contradiction, real or apparent, between the past and the
present.