Bernal lay still with eyes closed during the reading of several letters; but when the old man opened out a newspaper with little rustlings and pats, he turned to him.
"Well, my boy ?" "I've been thinking of something funny.

You know, my memory is still freakish, and things come back in splotches.

Just now I was recalling a primitive Brazilian tribe in whose language the word 'we' means also 'good.

'Others,' which they express by saying 'not we,' means also 'evil.' Isn't that a funny trait of early man--we--good; not we--bad! I suppose our own tongue is but an elaboration of that simple bit of human nature--a training of polite vines and flowering shrubs over the crude lines of it.
"And this tribe--the Bakairi, it is called--is equally crude in its religion.

It is true, sir, is it not, that the most degraded of the savages tribes resort to human sacrifice in their religious rites ?" "Generally true.