When I meet a pretty girl and beg her: "Be so good as to come with me," and she walks past without a word, this is what she means to say:
"You are no Duke with a famous name, no broad American with a Red Indian figure, level, brooding eyes and a skin tempered by the air of the prairies and the rivers that flow through them, you have never journeyed to the seven seas and voyaged on them wherever they may be, I don't know where. So why, pray, should a pretty girl like myself go with you?"
"You forget that no automobile swings you through the street in long thrusts; I see no gentlemen escorting you in a close half-circle, pressing on your skirts from behind and murmuring blessings on your head; your breasts are well laced into your bodice, but your thighs and hips make up for that restraint; you are wearing a taffeta dress with a pleated skirt such as delighted all of us last autumn, and yet you smile--inviting mortal danger--from time to time."
"Yes, we're both in the right, and to keep us from being irrevocably aware of it, hadn't we better just go our separate ways home?"
What was it with him and jealousy over Indians? He has another short story called "The Wish To Be a Red Indian"
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
It's been a long and continuing obsession for Germoids. American Indians were perceived to be the ultimate symbol of the noble savage, free and living a more natural life, placed perfectly in opposition to the numerous, ever more abstract constraints and duties placed upon you by society and the state (which began to meld together long before fascism), whether the Prussian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy or, much later, the GDR technocrats.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context