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                           GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
             VOL. XXXVII.      November, 1850.      NO. 5.

                           Table of Contents

                    Fiction, Literature and Articles

          Enchanted Beauty. A Myth.
          The Vision of Mariotdale
          Tamaque
          The Sunflower
          Minnie de la Croix
          Pedro de Padilh
          Nettles on the Grave
          Familiar Quotations From Unfamiliar Sources
          Two Crayon Sketches
          Quail and Quail Shooting
          Review of New Books
          Editorial. To Rev. Rufus Wilmot Griswold

                       Poetry, Music, and Fashion

          Hylas
          Sorrow
          Sonnet.—Moral Strength.
          The Reconciliation
          Unhappy Love
          The Wife’s Last Gift
          I Dreamed
          Theodora
          Charlotte Corday
          Sonnet—To Arabella, Sleeping
          The Spectre Knight and His Ladye-Bride
          To L——. with Some Poems
          Wordsworth
          Le Follet

       Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

[Illustration: THE ANGEL’S WHISPER.]

                           GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

       VOL. XXXVII.     PHILADELPHIA, November, 1850.     NO. 5.

                       ENCHANTED BEAUTY. A MYTH.

The mythologies, in which the faiths, philosophies and fancies of the
world have taken form, have such truth and use in them that they endure,
under corresponding changes, through the reformations of creeds and
modifications of ceremony which mark the history of natural religion
throughout all ages and countries. The essential unity of the race, its
kindred constitution of mind and affections, its likeness of instincts,
passions and aspirations, naturally account for the under-lying
agreement in principles, and central similarity of beliefs, which are
traceable clean through, from the earliest to the most modern, and from
the most polished and elaborate eastern to the rudest northern opinions;
and the nice transitions of doctrine from the infancy to the maturity of
faith and philosophy, are marked by an answering variance in their
significant ceremonials. But, however mingled and marred, the inevitable
truth is imbedded in all the forms of fable, and, under an invariable
law of mind, the inspirations of fancy correspond in essentials to the
oracles of revelation, just because human nature is one, and its
relations to all truth are fixed and universal.

Creeds and formulæ, like the geological crusts of the earth, at once
retain and record the revolutions, disintegrations, intrusions and
submersions from which they result. In the long succession of epochs
whole continents have risen from the deep, and the vestiges of the most
ancient ocean are found upon the modern mountain tops; promontories have
been slowly washed away by the ceaseless waves, and new islands have
shot up from the ever-heaving sea. Through the more recent crusts the
primitive formations frequently crop out upon the surface of the
present, and the comparatively modern, in turn, is often found
fossilized beneath the most ancient; dislocated fragments are
encountered at every step, and icebergs, from the severer latitudes, are
found floating far into the tropical seas. Nevertheless, through all
changes of system, revolution has been ever in the same round of
celestial influences and relations, and the alterations of form and
structure have been only so many different mixtures of unchanging
elements, from the simple primitives to the rich composite moulds, into
which the waters, winds and sun-light have, in the lapse of ages,
modified them. The constancy of essential principles, through all
mutations of systematic dogmas, is strikingly analagous. The law of
adaptation links the material globe and the rational race which occupies
it in intimate relations, and the universal unity in the great scheme of
being establishes such correspondences of organisms and processes with
ideas and ends, that the symbolisms of poetry and mythology are really
well based in the truth of nature, and the essential harmonies of all
things are with equal truth, under various forms, embraced by fiction
and fact, fable and faith, superstition and enlightened reason.

“The true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;”
“the grace that hath appeared unto all men;” and “the invisible things
of the Creator, clearly seen and understood by the things which are
made,” are propositions which have the formal warrant of our sacred
books to back the authority of logical demonstration. Moreover, it is
pleasant and profitable to believe that “He hath not left himself
without a witness” among any of the tribes of men. The human
_brotherhood_ is so involved in the divine fatherhood, that the
individual’s hold on the infinite and eternal must stand or fall with
the universality of His regards and providence. If Canaan had been
without a “Prophet of the Most High,” if Chaldea had been left without
soothsayer and seer, and classic Greece and Rome destitute of oracles
and Sibylline revelations, the Jewish theology and the Christian
apocalypse would stand unsupported by “the analogy of faith,” and our
highest hopes would be shifted from the broad basis of an impartial
benevolence, to a narrow caprice of the “Father of all Men.” But,
happily, the sympathies of nature, the deductions of reason, and the
teachings of the Book, are harmonious on this point, for we find
Melchisedec, who could claim no legal or lineal relation to the
Levitical priesthood, the chosen type of the perpetual “High Priest of
our profession;” and Balaam, notwithstanding his heathen birth, and
ministry among the Canaanites when their cup of iniquity was full; and
the eastern Magi, who brought their gifts from afar among the Gentiles,
to the new-born “King of the Jews,” all alike guided by the same light,
and partakers and fellow-laborers in the same faith, with the regular
hierarchy of Mount Zion. So, the Star of Jacob is the “desire of
nations,” and the heart and hope of the wide world turneth ever toward
the same essential truth, and strive after it by the same instinct
through a thousand forms, “if haply they may find it.”

The religious system of the Jews and Chaldeans agreed, with wonderful
exactness, in the doctrine of angelic beings and their interposition in
the affairs of men. The superintendence of the destinies of nations and
individuals, and the allotment of provinces, kingdoms and families among
these ministering spirits, are as distinctly taught in the book of
Daniel of the old testament, and in the gospel of St. Matthew of the
new, as in the popular beliefs of the Arabians and Persians; indeed, the
Bible sanction is general, particular, and ample, for the doctrine of
angelic ministry as it has been held in all ages and throughout the
world.

The order and organization of these celestial beings, among whom the
infinite multiplicity of providential offices is thus distributed,
falling within the domain of marvelousness and ideality, of course, took
the thousand hues and shapes which these prismatic faculties would
bestow; and in the various accommodations and special applications of
the doctrine, it naturally grew complicated, obscure, and sometimes even
incoherent; but in all the confusion of a hundred tongues, kindreds and
climates, a substantial conformity to a common standard is apparent
enough to prove the identity of origin and the fundamental truth common
to them all.

It is to introduce one of these remarkable correspondences that these
reflections are employed.

Fairy tales, it is said by encyclopedists, were brought from Arabia into
France in the twelfth century, but this can only mean that that was the
epoch of the exotic legends. In England, if they were not indigenous,
they certainly were naturalized centuries before Chaucer flourished; and
they were as familiar as the catechism, and almost as orthodox, when
Spencer, wrote his Fairy Queen, and Shakspeare employed their agency in
his most exquisite dramas. But their date is, in fact, coeval with
tradition, and earlier than all written records, and their origin is
without any necessary locality, for they spring spontaneously from faith
in the supernatural. They are inseparable from poetry. The priesthood of
nature, which enters for us the presence of the invisible and converses
familiarly with the omnipresent life of the creation, recognizes the
administration of an ethereal hierarchy in all the phenomena of
existence; they serve to impersonate the spiritual forces, which are
felt in all heroic action, and they graduate the responsive sympathies
of Heaven to all the supernatural necessities of humanity. The live soul
can make nothing dead; it can take no relation to insensate matter; it
invests the universe with a conscious life, answering to its own; and an
infinite multitude of intermediate spirits stand to its conceptions for
the springs of the universal movement. Rank upon rank, in spiral ascent,
the varied ministry towers from earth to heaven, answering to every
need, supporting every hope, and environing the whole life of the
individual and the race with an adjusted providence, complete and
adequate. In the great scale, place and office are assigned for spirits
celestial, ethereal and terrestrial, in almost infinite gradation. The
highest religious sentiments, the noblest styles of intellect and
imagination, and the lower and coarser apprehensions of the invisible
orders of being, are all met and indulged by the accommodating facility
of the system.

The race of Peris of Persia, and Fairies of western Europe, hold a very
near and familiar relation to the every day life of humanity, by their
large intermixture of human characteristics and the close resemblance
and alliance of their probationary existence and ultimate destiny to the
life and fortunes of men. A commonplace connection with ordinary affairs
and household interests constitutes the largest part of the popular
notion of them; and their interferences among the vulgar are almost
absurd and ludicrous enough to impeach the earnestness of the
superstition; but our best poets have shown them capable of very noble
and beneficent functions in heroic story. Like our own various nature,
they are a marvellous mixture of the mighty and the mean, the
magnanimous, the malignant and the mirthful; they stand, in a word, as
our own correspondents in a subtler sphere, and serve to illustrate, by
exaggerating, all that is true and possible in us, but more probable of
them—our own shadows lengthened, and our own light brightened into a
higher life. In some countries the legends are obscure, in others clear;
but they all agree well enough in ascribing their origin to the
intermarriage of angels with “the daughters of men,” and that they are
put under penance and probation for the recovery of their paradise. So,
like our own race, they have fallen from a higher estate; their natures
are half human, and their general fortunes are freighted on the same
tide.

The nursery tale of the Sleeping Beauty will serve capitally to
illustrate our theme. Handed down from age to age, and passed from
nation to nation, through the agency of oral tradition chiefly, it has
of course taken as many shapes as the popular fancy could impart to it;
but the essential points, seen through all the existing forms, are
substantially these:

A grand coronation festival of a young queen abruptly opens the story.
The state room of the palace is furnished with Oriental magnificence.
The representatives of every order, interest and class in the
kingdom—constructively the whole community—are present to witness and
grace the scene. The fairies who preside over the various departments of
nature, and the functions and interests of society, are assembled by
special invitation to invoke the blessings and pledge the favors of
their several jurisdictions to the opening reign. The ceremony proceeds;
the young queen is crowned; the priest pronounces the benediction, and
the generous sprites bestow beauty and goodness, and every means of life
and luxury, until nothing is left for imagination to conceive or heart
to wish. But an unexpected and unwelcome guest arrives—an old Elf, of
jealous and malignant character, whose intrusion cannot be prevented,
and whose power, unhappily, is so great, that the whole tribe of
amicable spirits cannot unbind her spells. Neither can she directly
revoke their beneficences; for such is the constitution of fairy-land
that the good and evil can neither annihilate each other’s powers nor
check each other’s actions, and their active antagonism can have place
and play only in issues and effects. The good commanded and dispensed
cannot be utterly annulled, the profusion of blessings prepared and
pledged cannot be hindered in their source or interrupted in their flow,
but the recipients are the debatable ground; they are, within certain
limits, subject to the control of the demon, and the _end_ is as well
attained by striking them incapable of the intended good. The queen and
her household are cast into a magic slumber until (for the Evil will be
ultimately destroyed by the Good) an age shall elapse and bring a
Deliverer, who, through virtue and courage, shall dissolve the infernal
charm. The blight fell upon the paradise in its full bloom, and it
remained only for the youngest fairy present, who had withheld her
benefactions to the last, to mitigate the doom she could not avert, by
bestowing pleasant dreams upon the long and heavy sleepers. A century
rolls round. The Knight of the Lion undertakes the enterprise;
encounters the horrible troops of monsters and foul fiends which guard
the palace; overcomes them; enters the enchanted hall, and wakens the
whole company to life, liberty and joy again. The knight is, of course,
rewarded with the love he so well deserves and the hand he has so richly
earned.

This is obviously the story of the apostacy and redemption of the human
family, in the form of a fairy legend. It conforms closely to the
necessary incidents of such a catastrophe, and answers well and truly to
the intuitive prophecy of man’s final recovery. In substance and method
the correspondence is obvious. Every notion of “the fall,” whether
revealed or fictitious, assumes the agency of “the wicked one;” and the
final recovery, universally expected, involves the sympathies and
employs the services of the “ministering spirits,” as important
instruments in the happy consummation.

This tale was presented as a dramatic spectacle last winter at the
Boston Museum. The play is a minutely faithful expositor of the legend;
and it is by the aid of this fine scenic exhibition that I am able to
adjust the details, of which the primitive story is so legitimately
capable, to the answering points in the great epic of human history “as
it is most surely believed among us.” The parallel presented does not
seem to me fanciful, but the circumstantial exactness of resemblance
may, I think, be accounted for without supposing a designed imitation.

Before tracing the specialties and their allusions, let us notice the
general parallelism found between the pivotal points of the fabulous and
authentic representations.

The Bible Eden is introduced at the same stage of the story’s action and
in the same attitude to the principal characters of the narrative; it
stands on the coronation day of its monarch, perfect in all its
appointments; the realms of air, earth and ocean in auspicious relation,
every element harmoniously obedient, and the garden still glows with the
smile which accompanied the approving declaration, “it is very good.”
Dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and
over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth, is
conferred, and the heavens add their felicities to the inaugural
rejoicings—“the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy.” The gifts are without measure or stint, and the Divine
beneficence cannot be tainted in its source nor impeded in its efflux,
but the intended recipients, by “the wiles of the enemy,” are rendered
incapable of the enjoyment. The sin-blunted sense and passion blinded
soul of the fallen race, are plunged into a spiritual stupor, which
sleep—the sister and semblance of death—strikingly illustrates; and
through the long age of moral incapacity which follows, the highest mode
of life is but dimly recognized and feebly felt in the dreams of a
paradise lost and the visions of a millenium to come; till, “in the
fullness of time,” when a complete psychical age shall be past. The
Deliverer, having first overcome the wicked one, shall lead captivity
captive, and by the “marriage of the Lamb” with “the bride which is the
Church,” perfect the redemption and bring in the new heavens and new
earth.

But to the fable, the dramatic representation and the interpretation
thereof.

The scene opens upon a rustic society, a hamlet, in the infancy of
civilization, such as, upon ballad authority, was “merrie England”
before the age of her conquests in arts, sciences and arms, and before
the crimes and cares of her age of glory replaced the days of her
innocence and contentment. Simplicity of manners, modest abundance,
moderate labor, aspirations limited to the range of things easy of
attainment, and opinions comfortably at rest on questions of policy and
religion, describe the rural life upon Monsieur Bonvive’s domain. The
master, in bachelor ease, superintends the simple affairs of his
village; Madam Babillard, the house-keeper, has the necessary excitement
without the anxiety of her post—just the amount of trouble that is
interesting with the pigs, poultry and pets of the homestead. The girls,
indeed, are too hasty in ripening into womanhood, and the beaux are
over-bold in their gallantries; but then, these are things of great
consequence to her, and she is, through them, a matter of great
consequence to the community, and the exercise of authority amply repays
all its troubles and responsibilities. The affairs of the commonwealth
take good enough care of themselves generally; the people are happy in
the enjoyment of what they have, and equally happy in the
unconsciousness of what they have not; the holydays come at least once
a-week, and there is space and place for work and play every hour of
every day. Good consciences, light hearts, and natural living, carry
them along very happily, and they have enough of the little risks and
changes of fortune to keep the life within them well alive. The
wilderness upon which their village borders is known to be infested with
hobgoblins and demons, and there is a current belief that in the centre
of the forest there is a princely family bound in a spell for a hundred
years, but they have never penetrated the mystery nor clearly
ascertained the facts.

Among these simple people there is an ancient dame, who was old when the
oldest villager first knew her, and she has lived through all the known
generations of men. Her whole life has been a continual exercise of the
best offices among the people; she has been nurse and doctress, friend
and counselor, by turns, to the whole community, and they repay her with
the love and veneration which her goodness and wisdom command. She is
now apparently in the decrepitude of extreme age, but the frame only
assumes the marks of age—the mind is as young and the affections as
fresh as they were “a hundred years ago.” She is the “Fairy of the
Oak,”—the youngest at the coronation scene, and the tutelary spirit of
the enchanted family. Ever since the hour of their evil fortunes she has
inhabited a human form, performing the charitable offices of ordinary
life and mitigating its incident evils; but, especially she has been
cultivating whatever of virtuous enterprise and aspiration appeared
among the youth from generation to generation, directing it into the
best service and endeavoring by it the deliverance of the imprisoned
spirits under her charge. Patiently and lovingly she has striven,
earnestly and anxiously she has watched, every promise of a deliverance
that the race from age to age produced. Patriarch, prophet, apostle and
philanthropist, has each in his degree done his own good work, and the
world has been the better that they lived; each has added another
assurance of the ultimate success, but themselves “have died without the
sight.” Her own powers, and those of her auxiliaries, are vast and
supernatural, indeed, but the champion age of human redemption must be
human, and she can but inspire, direct, sustain and guard the mighty
effort.

Now, a young Christian Knight “the Knight of the Lion,” famous for deeds
of valor in Holy Land, gives promise of the great achievement to the
quick perception of the Guardian Spirit. She has aroused his enthusiasm
and sustained his zeal, disciplining him by trial after trial, and
training him from triumph to triumph, for still greater deeds, which
take continually more definite shape and more attractive forms in the
dreams and reveries which she inspires, until he has grown familiar with
the vision and conscious of its supernatural suggestion, and she is able
at last to intimate the duty and the trial which invite him by songs in
the air addressed to his waking ear.

        “The enchanted maiden sleeps——in vain
           To hope redress from other arm,
         Foul magic forged the mighty chain,
           Honor and love will brake the charm.

           *       *       *       *        *

         Dread perils shall thy path surround,
           Wild horrors ranged in full array,
         Courage shall take the vantage ground,
           Bright virtue turn dark night to day.”

Drawn westward by her art toward the scene of the great enterprise, he
reaches the village on the border of the wilderness, and from the legend
current among the rustics inferring more definitely the character of his
mission, he accepts it in the true chivalric spirit of faith, love and
hope. His squire, or man-at-arms, who has followed him heretofore with
an unquestioning fidelity, consents to incur the risks, though he has a
very imperfect apprehension of the heroic undertaking; but the devotion
of a faithful follower answers instead of knowledge in his rank of
service. He would rather encounter a dozen flesh and blood swordsmen
than one ghostly foe; nevertheless, where his master leads he will
follow, whatever the character of the fight. The knight comprehends the
nature of the conflict fully; it is not with flesh and blood, but with
“spiritual wickedness in high places” that he “has his warfare.” To him
the great battle is not in the outward and actual, but is transferred to
the inward and spiritual sphere—into the real life—whence the ultimate
facts of existence derive all their currents and ends. So felt the hero
who said, in the great faith, “we have our conversation in heaven”—“we
sit in heavenly places;” and so felt and thought the reformer who
deliberately threw his ink-stand at the devils’ head. The region of the
ideal is the fields of the highest heroism, and every life given to the
world in noble service and generous sacrifice is living in the spirit
sphere in familiar sympathy with the good, and constant strife with evil
angels. This faith is the main impulse in all chivalric action; even a
heroic poem cannot be created without it. It cannot be false, for it
differs nothing in the constancy and efficiency of its presence from the
most palpable facts, and is proved true by the test of harmonizing with
all other truth.

The knight personates the highest ideal of philanthropy; the squire
stands for the lower, more palpable modes of practical benevolence and
reform. They are distinguished as widely as general and special
providence, as the thorough emancipation of the soul and the charity
which relieves the body, or the whole difference between the apostleship
of spiritual and that of civil liberty. They correspond respectively to
the Prophet Elisha, who saw the mountain tops filled with horses and
chariots of fire, outnumbering and overwhelming the hosts of the Syrian
king; and his servant, who saw but two men, his master and himself,
opposed to a numerous and well appointed army. Such is the difference
between the seer and the servant in any labor or conflict of faith—in
any enterprise which involves the spiritual forces that rule the
movements of the world. Throughout the whole action of the drama the
agency and deportment of the knight and his follower are marked by this
distinction. But the scene shifts, and the sympathetic and corroborative
movements in Fairy-land, are revealed. The Fairy of the Oak appears and
summons the spirits of the Air, Earth, Water and Fire. The elements,
disordered by the fall, and thenceforth at war with the poor fugitive
from Paradise, must render their aid in his restoration, that when the
last enemy is put under his feet the material creation, cursed for his
sin, may be renewed with his recovery, and the harmonies of matter
answer to the sanctities of spirit. The spirits of the material forces
obey the invocation, and cordially promise sympathy and service:

        “Throughout all space—above, below,
         In earth or air, through fire or snow,
         Where’er our mission calls we fly,
         Our tasks performing merrily,
         Our guerdon winning happily.”

The actors, human and ethereal, thus adjusted to their several offices,
the knight and his squire enter the haunted wood—the squire to struggle
with the grosser forms of evil, some as ludicrous as sad, others as
horrible as atrocious, and all odious, coarse and palpable; the knight
to be tempted of the devil, and do battle with him for the redemption of
the enchanted family from his dominion.

On the open front of the stage, darkened with smoke and foul with
offensive odors of noxious gases, the squire is hotly engaged with the
great dragon, in close rencontre, and at the same time assailed above,
around, in flank and rear, by harpies, fiery serpents, and other forms
of terror—the battle of life translated into coarse _diablerie_. The
sentiment and significance of the play in this take great liberties with
the regular charities and practical reforms of our social system. The
sorts of evil which these monsters so uncouthly represent are such as
physical suffering, drunkenness, violence, fraud, and the thousand
shapes of slavery, personal and political, and of all castes and colors.
They are represented as greedy and ugly, and full of mocking and
malignity, but with little intrinsic capability of mischief, for they
are really unattractive in temptation and extremely awkward in battle,
and much more remarkable for thick-skinned insensibility to assault than
for any adroitness in the combat. The squire bravely deals his blows
upon the great dragon. Horror, fear and hatred of the monster, earnest
devotion to the “great cause,” with the courage of full commitment, and,
perhaps, some regard for his reputation as a hard-hitter, put life and
metal in his veins, and right lustily he mauls away. The earliest
effects of his prowess are remarkable. The dragon, defending his own
ground as confidently and angrily as if the empire of evil were really a
rightful one wherever sanctioned by antiquity of possession, dashes his
ponderous jaws at the reckless agitator, opened wide enough to swallow
him, with all his weapons and armor at a gulp; but he manages to elude
the clumsy wrath, and, nothing daunted and nothing doubting, deals his
blows with energy in the ratio of the rage they rouse. Curiously, but
conformably enough, at every stroke another ring of the monster’s tail
unrolls. At first he was an unwieldy, but not an utterly misshapen
brute; now he has become a serpent and a scarecrow; the head and tail
are as incongruous as the pretended righteousness of his cause and his
villainous method of defending it. The strife goes on, and grows only
the worse and wickeder for its continuance, till it is plain that the
beast is not to be mastered with hard blows, and if he yields it is
because his huge, unwieldy bulk is exhausted with the protracted effort
of defense, and he subsides at last rather than submits. So ends the
battle, and then comes the triumph. The valorous victor, claiming all
the honors he has won, mounts his sometime foe in the new character of
hobby, and rides him grandly off the stage in a blaze of gaseous glory,
cheered most vociferously by the boys and affording not a little
merriment, mixed with admiration, to the old folks. What a figure that
procession made! and how exact a figure, too, of many another that the
world witnesses admiringly. The squire is, however, none the less a hero
that his principles are rugged, his method rude, his ideas a little
vulgar, and his aims tinged but not tainted with his egotism. The
dragons, serpents and hobgoblins must be routed, and he is the man for
the emergency.

All the while this palpable warfare is proceeding in open view, the
knight is engaged with the subtler fiends in the dim and doubtful
darkness of the background. Quite behind the scenes the severest strife
is maintained, but enough is seen and intimated upon the stage to reveal
the real character of the conflict. The fidelity of illustration in the
conduct of the allegory here was really admirable. At one time we
descried him through the gloom by the flashing of his sword, engaged in
hand-to-hand combat with a host of fiends, rushing upon the foe with
true chivalric enthusiasm; at another, hard pressed and well-nigh
exhausted, sternly enduring the blows he could not parry or
repay—exhibiting, in turn, every mood of courage to do and fortitude to
endure the varied fortunes of the field. But anon, with equal
truthfulness of portraiture, he is discovered trembling in sudden and
strange panics, which show the temporary failure of his faith, and seem
to threaten his utter desertion of the field. In the open presence of
the foe his courage never fails, but the stratagem of darkness and
desertion successfully evades the sword-thrust and the shield’s defense,
and gives him up to doubt and desperation. The powers of darkness take
hold upon him, and in his agonies of fear and suffering he would, if it
were possible, that the cup might pass from him. In these moments of
anguish and depression the Fairy of the Oak instantly appeared to
strengthen him. With a touch and a word she reassures him, and the
divine virtue again shines out, exposing visibly the demon of the doubt,
and the good sword again flashes in the gloom, and the fiends, forced
into open fight, are finally overthrown.

Bulwer strikes the same profound fact of experience in heroic
enterprise, in his “Terror of the Threshold.” The reformer, however,
confident in virtue and assured of the goodness of his undertaking,
naturally trembles at critical stages of revolution in opinions and
institutions long established and interwoven with the existing order of
society, for the risk of introducing new truths may well check the
current of a wise man’s zeal. If I pull down, he will say, this temple
whose ceremonial, though barbarous and blinding, yet supports the morals
of the worshiper and the present order of the social system, will the
liberty and light bestowed avail for the designed improvement, or will
they only unsettle the securities of law and prove occasions of disorder
and licentiousness? The brave bigot and fiery enthusiast know nothing of
this indecision. The cautious hesitation which springs from solicitude
for the best ends and most expedient means, never troubles their
stubborn bluntness of purpose nor abates their boasted consistency of
action. But the regular procedure of Providence is marked by regard for
the influence of conditions and the established law of progress. In
these things the highest benevolence meets impediments and suffers
modifications and even submits to postponement to avoid defeat; and the
agents and instruments of the world’s regeneration have their
Gethsemanes as well as their triumphs and transfigurations.

Nothing in language, scenery or costume irreverently asserted the
allusions which I am exposing. I do not know that either playwright,
performer or spectator was concerned about or even conscious of the
significant symbolism of the fable and its circumstantial exposition in
the play. It was produced as a beautiful dramatic spectacle. Apart from
any mystical meanings, it was a perfect luxury of scenic entertainment.
It was so regarded by the visiters, and probably was designed for
nothing more; but to me the analogy was a surprise and a delight,
growing at every step of the development. It struck me first when I saw
the knight and his brave squire standing on the threshold of the
enchanted hall, after their victory in the wilderness. With equal zeal,
truthfulness and devotion they had battled with the formidable foe, but
with very different aims and apprehensions. The difference was most
manifest when they stood in the presence of the enchanted family. The
knight, breathless with awe and melting with compassion, showed how
tenderly and reverently he felt the moral and mental bondage which
struck his opened vision; but the squire, though so faithful and loyal
as a follower, and efficient as a servant, had yet not the penetration
of a seer; and the preposterous spectacle of princes, counselors,
knights, esquires, priests, soldiers, pages, artisans, musicians,
dancers, slaves, retainers—every class and calling among men—all
arrested in mid-action, and slumbering for a century amid the luxury and
pageantry of a gorgeous festival, with the viands untasted and the cup
undrained before them, struck him with a comic wonder and pleasant
sportiveness which he cared not to suppress. Approaching the venerable
prime minister of the realm, who sat with the goblet near his lip,
immovable as death, the thirsty soldier familiarly proposed to drink his
health, and only made mouths at the cup when he found it “as dry as
dust.” The cheek of the dancing girl, who stood pivoted for her century
upon one toe, he found “as cold as a stone;” and the apples offered by
an African slave to a guest, whose hand hung arrested midway in the
reach, proved to his disappointed taste a petrified humbug. The whole
scene of deprivation and incapacity before him he pronounced an epidemic
sleeping fever, and he wondered if it was catching, and where and how he
should get his dinner!

All this has its parallel and exposition in the boys that mock a
drunkard reeling through the street, and the contrasted sadness which a
soul alive to the moral ruin feels at the same sight; or it may be
witnessed again in the conduct of an insensible boor and that of a
person of refinement in the presence of the insane; and in general, in
the sentiments of those who have, and those who have not, learned that
“the life is more than meat, and the body than raiment.”

These reflections present themselves in the pause while the champion
stands, riveted with emotions of wonder and pity at the mingled gloom
and glory of the scene.

But the action proceeds again. A strain of melody spontaneously waking
from the silence of an age, fitly preludes and prophesies the harmonies
of the new era, and there wants only the taliha-cumi of the Deliverer to
awaken the princess and her household into the activities of full life.
At the bidding of the minstrel he advances to her pavilion. Answering to
his word and touch, she rises. One by one the women first resume their
proper consciousness, and the revival of the men follows in proper
order, till the spell is broken and the last shadow of the long night
gives place to the perfect day. The renovated realm every where receives
its primal beauty, the flowers of Eden bloom again, and the fruits
regain their flavor, the wine is new in the new kingdom, and all the
material ministries of life without, respond to the renewed faculties
within.

The fable has not yet exhausted the facts. Obeying the poetical
necessities of the epic story, and conforming also to the apocalyptic
vision of the world’s fortunes, which are to follow the first victory
over the dragon and the binding of the adversary for a thousand years,
we have the peace and happiness of the disenchanted household once more
disturbed. The prince of the powers of darkness, that great magician who
is the author of all the mischief from the beginning, is “loosed out of
his prison,” and gathering all his forces for a final battle, he
surrounds the castle. The queen’s army, led by the knight, go out to
meet the grand enemy in battle, and he is utterly overthrown and his
power broken for ever. The conquerors return in triumph to the castle,
and in the midst of their rejoicings a herald from the outer wall, who
has witnessed the scene, announces the total annihilation of the enemy.
The elements, marshaled by their ruling spirits, have overwhelmed him; a
tempest of hail and fire bursts upon his castle, and the earth opening
has swallowed up the last vestige of his kingdom and power.

The battle of Gog and Magog (20th Rev.) in which the deceived of the
four quarters of the earth are gathered together, and compass the camp
of the saints about, is the very prototype of this incident in our
story, and “the fire which came down from heaven,” and the “casting of
the devil which deceived them into the lake of fire and brimstone,” is
only a different expression of the same final deliverance of the human
family from the last enemy.

The marriage rites close and crown the grand achievement, and a
magnificent tableau illustrates the consummation. The spirits of the
elements arise, and array themselves in a vertical arch upon the stage.
The centre and summit is occupied by a new figure, now first introduced,
costumed appropriately in pure white, representing Truth in augurated or
universal harmony; the Spirit of Earth at the base on one side, and of
Water at the other, while impersonations of Air and Fire occupy the
intermediate positions. This bow of beauty and promise, emblematically
dressed and decorated, stood a happy symbol of the restored order of the
material creation. The household, artistically arranged and displayed,
represented the divine order of society, where government and liberty,
refinement and efficiency, luxury and industry, are reconciled, and man
with his fellow man is organized in the harmonies of the creative
scheme. And, that the joy may be full to the utmost limits of communion
and sympathy, the Fairy of the Oak is seen ascending, to take
possession, in behalf of her race, of their recovered heaven—the
guerdon of their services to the redeemed family of Adam. So, the last
scene in the drama mingles the new Heavens with the new Earth, and all
the worlds in our universe triumph together in the general resurrection,
as they rejoiced on the birth-day of the creation.

I do not know the history of the fairy tale, its age or origin. I know
nothing of the design with which it was prepared for theatrical
representation, nor do I see why it should be inferred, because the idea
and method are so strikingly significant, that the manager, after the
fashion of the ancient “Mysteries,” intended to restore sacred subjects
to the stage in allegorical disguise. I suppose that the fable is simply
fancy’s method of the great fact, and that its doctrinals are the
natural intuitives and inevitable theory of the human mind concerning
the mystery of life, the great epochal experiences of the human family,
their final fortunes, and the interests and sympathies of other worlds
included; for such conceptions as these are general and common among all
men. The question of special revelation is not affected by its
concurrence with universally received ideas. The correspondence
pervading all systems proves the truth and unity of origin of the
essential points in all, but in no wise touches the method of their
revealment, discovery or propagation.

The points and particulars of the play are none of them manufactured to
supply the running parallel we have given, nor are they nearly
exhausted. Moreover, it will readily occur that the plan of the play
illustrates the whole philosophy of world-mending by its merely human
hero. The actual and eventual progress of civilization, religion and
liberty can be laid down upon its scheme in the exactest detail of
principles, which facts _must_ follow and fulfill. The supernatural
agencies introduced also answer this aspect and rendering of the myth.
They well represent the material and immaterial forces concerned in all
societary movements, and if they may not serve for the religion of the
great process, they may do duty as philosophical abstractions, or as a
beautiful system of poetical symbolism—for in the mystical
correspondence of all these systems of ideas there is such fundamental
unity of use.

                                                                   W.

                                 HYLAS.

                           BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

      Storm-wearied Argo slept upon the water.
      No cloud was seen; on blue and craggy Ida
      The hot noon lay, and on the plain’s enamel;
      Cool, in his bed, alone, the swift Scamander.
      “Why should I haste?” said young and rosy Hylas:
      “The seas were rough, and long the way from Colchis.
      Beneath the snow-white awning slumbers Jason,
      Pillowed upon his tame Thessalian panther;
      The shields are piled, the listless oars suspended
      On the black thwarts, and all the hairy bondsmen
      Doze on the benches. They may wait for water,
      Till I have bathed in mountain-born Scamander.”

      So said, unfilleting his purple chlamys
      And putting down his urn, he stood a moment,
      Breathing the faint, warm odor of the blossoms
      That spangled thick the green Dardanian meadows.
      Then, stooping lightly, loosened he his buskins
      And felt with shrinking feet the crispy verdure,
      Naked, save one light robe, that from his shoulder
      Hung to his knee, the youthful flush revealing
      Of warm, white limbs, half-nerved with coming manhood,
      Yet fair and smooth with tenderness of beauty.
      Now to the river’s sandy marge advancing,
      He dropped the robe and raised his head exulting
      In the clear sunshine, that with beam embracing
      Held him against Apollo’s glowing bosom.
      For sacred to Latona’s son is Beauty,
      Sacred is Youth, the joy of youthful feeling.
      A joy indeed, a living joy was Hylas,
      Whence Jove-begotten Hêraclês, the mighty,
      That slew the dreaded boar of Erymanthus,
      To men though terrible, to him was gentle,
      Smoothing his rugged nature into laughter
      When the boy stole his club, or from his shoulders
      Dragged the huge paws of the Nemæan lion.
      The thick, brown locks, tossed backward from his forehead,
      Fell soft about his temples; manhood’s blossom
      Not yet had sprouted on his chin, but freshly
      Curved the fair cheek, and full the red lip’s parting,
      Like a loose bow, that just has launched its arrow;
      His large blue eyes, with joy dilate and beamy,
      Were clear as the unshadowed Grecian heaven;
      Dewy and sleek his dimpled shoulder rounded
      To the white arms and whiter breast between them.
      Downward, the supple lines had less of softness:
      His back was like a god’s; his loins were moulded
      As if some pulse of power began to waken;
      The springy fullness of his thighs, outswerving,
      Sloped to his knee, and lightly dropping downward,
      Drew the curved lines that breathe, in rest, of motion.

      Musing a space he stood, a light smile playing
      Upon his face—a spirit new-created
      To the free air and all-embracing sunlight.
      He saw his glorious limbs reversely mirrored
      In the still wave, and stretched his foot to press it
      On the smooth sole that answered at the surface:
      Alas! the shape dissolved in glimmering fragments.
      Then, timidly at first, he dipped, and catching
      Quick breath, with tingling shudder, as the waters
      Swirled round his thighs, and deeper, slowly deeper,
      Till on his breast the River’s cheek was pillowed,
      And deeper still, till every shoreward ripple
      Talked in his ear, and like a cygnet’s bosom
      His white, round shoulder shed the dripping crystal.
      There, as he floated, with a rapturous motion,
      The lucid coolness folding close around him,
      The lily-cradling ripples murmured: “Hylas!”
      He shook from off his ears the hyacinthine
      Curls, that had lain unwet upon the water,
      And still the ripples murmured: “Hylas! Hylas!”
      He thought: “the voices are but ear-born music.
      Pan dwells not here, and Echo still is calling
      From some high cliff that tops a Thracian valley:
      So long mine ears, on tumbling Hellespontos,
      Have heard the sea-waves hammer Argo’s forehead,
      That I misdeem the fluting of this current
      For some lost nymph”—again the murmur: “Hylas!”
      And with the sound a cold, smooth arm around him
      Slid like a wave, and down the clear, green darkness
      Glimmered on either side a shining bosom—
      Glimmered, uprising slow; and ever closer
      Wound the cold arms, till, climbing to his shoulders,
      Their cheeks lay nestled, while the purple tangles
      Their loose hair made, in silken mesh enwound him.
      Their eyes of clear, pale emerald then uplifting,
      They kissed his neck with lips of humid coral,
      And once again there came a murmur: “Hylas!
      O come with us, O follow where we wander
      Deep down beneath the green, translucent ceiling—
      Where on the sandy bed of old Scamander
      With cool white buds we braid our purple tresses,
      Lulled by the bubbling waves around us stealing.
      Thou fair Greek boy, O come with us! O follow
      Where thou no more shalt hear Propontis riot,
      But by our arms be lapped in endless quiet,
      Within the glimmering caves of Ocean hollow!
      We have no love; alone, of all th’ Immortals,
      We have no love. O love us, we who press thee
      With faithful arms, though cold—whose lips caress thee—
      Who hold thy beauty prisoned. Love us, Hylas!”
      The sound dissolved in liquid murmurs, calling
      Still as it faded: “Come with us, O follow!”
      The boy grew chill to feel their twining pressure
      Lock round his limbs, and bear him, vainly striving,
      Down from the noonday brightness. “Leave me, Naiads!
      Leave me!” he cried; “the day to me is dearer
      Than all your caves deep-sphered in Ocean’s quiet.
      I am but mortal, seek but mortal pleasure:
      I would not change this flexile, warm existence,
      Though swept by storms and shocked by Jove’s dread thunder,
      To be a king beneath the dark-green waters.”
      Still moaned the humid lips, between their kisses;
      “We have no love. O love us, we who press thee!”
      And came in answer, thus, the words of Hylas:
      “My love is mortal. For the Argive maidens
      I keep the kisses which your lips would ravish,
      Unlock your cold, white arms—take from my shoulder
      The tangled swell of your bewildering tresses.
      Let me return: the wind comes down from Ida,
      And soon the galley, stirring from her slumber,
      Will fret to ride where Pelion’s twilight shadow
      Falls o’er the towers of Jason’s sea-girt city.
      I am not yours—I cannot braid the lilies
      In your wet hair, nor on your argent bosoms
      Close my drowsed eyes to hear your rippling voices.
      Hateful to me your sweet, cold, crystal being,
      Your world of watery quiet:—Help, Apollo!
      For I am thine: thy fire, thy beam, thy music
      Dance in my heart and flood my sense with rapture:
      The joy, the warmth and passion now awaken,
      Promised by thee, but erewhile calmly sleeping.
      O leave me, Naiads! loose your chill embraces,
      Or I shall die, for mortal maidens pining.”
      But still with unrelenting arms they bound him,
      And still, accordant, flowed their watery voices:
      “We have thee now, we hold thy beauty prisoned—
      O come with us beneath the emerald waters!
      We have no loves; we love thee, rosy Hylas.
      O love us, who shall nevermore release thee:
      Love us, whose milky arms will be thy cradle
      Far down on the untroubled sands of ocean,
      Where now we bear thee, clasped in our embraces.”
      And slowly, slowly, sunk the amorous Naiads;
      The boy’s blue eyes, upturned, looked through the water,
      Pleading for help; but Heaven’s immortal Archer
      Was swathed in cloud. The ripples hid his forehead,
      And last, the thick, bright curls a moment floated,
      So warm and silky that the stream upbore them,
      Closing, reluctant, as he sunk forever.

      The sunset died behind the crags of Imbros.
      Argo was tugging at her chain; for freshly
      Blew the swift breeze, and leaped the restless billows.
      The voice of Jason roused the dozing sailors,
      And up the ropes was heaved the snowy canvas.
      But mighty Hêraclês, the Jove-begotten,
      Unmindful stood, beside the cool Scamander,
      Leaning upon his club. A purple chlamys
      Tossed o’er an urn, was all that lay before him:
      And when he called, expectant: “Hylas! Hylas!”
      The empty echoes made him answer: “Hylas!”

[Illustration: THE HIGHLAND CHASE.]

                      THE VISION OF MARIOTDALE.[1]

                          BY H. HASTINGS WELD.

                            I.—THE SURPRISE.

My charge was in a beautifully romantic and fertile spot, the natural
features of which would seem sufficient teachers of the power and the
goodness of God, if, indeed, nature were, as some insist, a sufficient
teacher without revelation. I soon found myself, upon here taking up my
residence, almost the only man who thought it worth his while to study
and admire the beauties which nature, with a lavish hand, had scattered
over the scene. It was a valley, enclosed on all sides with hills, whose
ascents, crowned with verdure, exhibited every variety of tint and shade
of green; for the trees of our country display, more than any other,
those varying colors and gentle yet distinctly marked contrasts which
the painter envies, but strives in vain to transfer to his canvas. There
were only two breaks in the surrounding amphitheatre. One was where a
mountain stream came tumbling and babbling into the valley; the other
where, in a more subdued and quiet current, it found egress. The sinuous
path of this little river, or “run,” across the dale, was marked by a
growth of beautiful trees, among which the straight-leaved willow, with
its silver foliage shivering in the light, was most frequent and
conspicuous; other trees which delight in water diversified the long,
green defile; and a little boat, which belonged to one of my
parishioners, offered me frequent twilight pastime. Some labor, to
which, though unused at first, I soon became accustomed, was required to
force the boat upstream; but the highest “boatable” point once reached,
I had only to turn the shallop’s head and guide it down, letting my
little barque slowly float, and conducting it clear of the shallows and
obstructions. Delightful were the views which the turns in the stream
were continually opening; the overhanging trees, forming a green roof
above, were reflected below; and while I seemed thus suspended between
answering skies and trees, over my head and beneath my feet, to look in
either direction of the stream seemed like peering into a mysterious
fairy grot.

One evening as I paused, looking delighted upon the scene of
enchantment, a new feature was, as if by magic, added to the picture. A
little girl—a child of surpassing loveliness—slipped out from among
the bushes, and, skipping from stone to stone, stood on a high rock,
near the middle of the current—the beau ideal of such a sprite as one
might fancy inhabiting the spot. Her loose tresses floated on the
evening breeze, and her scanty drapery—it was mid-summer—as the wind
pressed it against her form, exhibited a delicacy and grace of contour
which that artist would become immortal who could copy. She did not at
first perceive me; and when the flash of my oar startled her, I almost
expected she would prove herself a vision, by vanishing into the sky
above in a cloud, or dissolving in a foam-wreath in the water which
rippled among the rocks behind her.

But youth and innocence are courageous; and she took no other notice of
my approach than to seat herself, to await my coming, upon the same
stone on which she had been standing. Her artless ease and beauty won my
heart—as men’s hearts are often too easily won, through the eyes. Hers
was grace unaffected and natural. No drawing-room belle, after years of
practice before her mirror, could have vied with this rustic nymph. She
possessed what art can with difficulty imitate, and that never
entirely—perfect and unconscious self-possession; and she was the more
admirable, that in her child-like simplicity she dreamed not of
admiration.

I pushed my shallop up beside the rock, and commenced a conversation
with her. I was grieved and amazed to find her helplessly ignorant upon
the commonest subjects which those who fear God teach their children.
She could not even read, she told me. She was born far away, she
said—in another land, mother used to say—and did not remember that she
ever went to church; but mother had told her that she was carried there
once to be baptized, and her name was Bessie.

“Is your mother dead?” I asked.

“No—not dead—I think not; but father—”

A hoarse voice from the shore now shouted her name; and, unalarmed as
she had been when I approached, her little frame now shook with terror,
and her interesting face was pale and sullen with mingled fear and
anger.

“Is that your father?” I said.

She did not stop to answer, but instantly commenced picking her way back
to the bank. While she did so, her trepidation several times almost
tripped her into the river. I should have watched her every step at any
other time, but my attention was irresistibly drawn to the repulsive
form which had come, like a dark and unwelcome shadow, over this fair
scene. The face was positively one of the most demoniacal in expression
I have ever met. Thick, black hair, unkempt, hung over the low forehead,
and the shaggy dark eye-brows seemed to glower in habitual gloom over a
rough and unshaven face. The expression of the whole was that of a man
whose countenance is saddened into surliness, like a clay image of
Satan, by habitual strong potations. A slovenly disregard to dress
completed the picture of a man who has sold himself to the vilest and
most disgusting habits of intoxication.

While I trembled for the fate of such a child, in such hands, she had
come within his reach, and, stretching forth his arm, he dragged her to
him by the hair, tripping her from her footing into the water, and
pulling her to the shore with more inhuman rudeness than I can
describe—her dress draggled and muddied, and her limbs bleeding from
contact with the sharp stones and pebbles. Blow upon blow the ruffian
inflicted upon her, which I could hear as well as see from where I
stood. Not a sound, not a cry escaped her; and while I was hesitating
whether I ought not to try to reach and rescue her, he ceased beating
her, and turned up a path in the bank-side. She silently and doggedly
followed him; and I sadly took my way home, lamenting that the beauty
and peace of such a place should be so brutally interrupted; and
sorrowing more than all, that frequent ill-usage had so deadened the
child’s sensibilities as to make her, otherwise so natural and
unaffected, thus endure pain with the sullen fortitude of an old
offender. I trembled for the life of a child growing up under such
influences; for I could see in her future nothing but crime, suffering
and degradation.

It was later than my usual time of return when I reached the landing,
and there were already lights in the few houses which stood there. I
might have mentioned before—but that I hate to acknowledge the
fact—that the utilitarian habits of our era had converted my romantic
streamlet into a “power” to turn a mill-wheel. It is not a grist-mill,
which is a proper appendage to rural scenery, but a woolen manufactory,
which, with its unromantic surroundings, caused me many a joke from my
friend, the owner of the boat and of the mill. When I excepted to such
things as stretching frames, as a blot on the beauty of the landscape,
and to the dirty wool and dye-stuff as ruining its romance, he would
tell me that if these valleys and rocks had never heard the clatter of
his machinery, neither would the “sound of the church-going bell” have
disturbed their echoes. There was no answering this, because it was
perfectly true, and I could therefore only “humph” and be silent. Though
wrong in some points of his course, Mr. Mariot, our “owner,” was a
liberal man and well disposed—would there were more such! He built the
little church in which I officiated, and he, in effect, supported the
rector. If he had not done so, there could have been neither church nor
service. And he found his account in the superior order of his
establishment; and would have done still more if, beside building the
church, he had abated or forbidden a nuisance which sadly impeded my
usefulness.

Mr. Mariot stood at the landing, and as I stepped ashore said, “I came
down to meet you, Doctor, for Yorkshire Jack is in one of his furious
fits, and vows he will beat you—priest or no priest.”

“And who is Yorkshire Jack?” I asked, though a suspicion who he might be
instantly shot through my mind. My suspicion was correct—for, upon Mr.
Mariot’s explanation, I found that he was the very ruffian whose conduct
I have been describing. As we passed the house dignified with the title
of the “Mariotdale Hotel,” loud voices came through the open windows.
Mr. Mariot would have hurried me past, but I laid my hand upon his arm,
and in a low but determined tone said, “Wait, sir!”

Sunday after Sunday I had preached—to little purpose—and here was the
reason. Several of my usual congregation, upon whose hearts the word of
God fell like seed upon a beaten path-way, sat listening, half laughing,
half terrified, at the blasphemy of this fiendish fellow—Yorkshire
Jack—and half a score more, who never, by any chance, were seen within
the church walls, were applauding him at the top of their voices. O,
they will have a fearful reckoning who have supplied fools who deny God
with words of blasphemy, and with the scoffings of infidelity, through a
prostituted press—who have caught the thoughtless with profane wit, and
betrayed the daringly wicked with the hardihood of declared infidelity!
The worst words of the worst men were rolled from this wretch’s lips, as
if they were his own utterance; the shallowest cant of infidel
literature came from his mouth as if his own heart had originated what,
indeed, it had only harbored. Out of the borrowed abundance of a vile
heart, his lips spake; and the applause of his auditory was scarcely
less disgusting than his words were.

Women began to gather round the windows of the house—they dared not
enter—and to call in hoarse whispers to their husbands, fathers and
sons to come out. Children climbed up and looked in, now gazing,
open-mouthed, with terrified interest to the drunken maniac’s fury—now
laughing, in thoughtless merriment, as his antics became ridiculous. At
length, spent with the vanity of a successful orator to a fit audience,
filled with drink, and worn out with rage, Yorkshire John sank on a
chair. The efforts of his satellites failed to awaken him to new
ravings. The joke was worn out—the women coaxed their husbands away,
the children walked off, rehearsing, describing, and laughing over what
they had heard. The place was soon hushed and still, the monotonous
voice of the water only breaking the silence of the night, and Mariot
and I took our way homeward—for I lodged with him.

On our way nothing was said. The family, except Mrs. M., had retired;
and Mariot seemed as if he would have made that circumstance a pretext
for following them in silence. He put a night lamp in my hand, but I
placed it on the table, and, sitting down, took up THE BOOK. He sat
also—but it was evidently with unwilling politeness. Conscience was at
work—and he was desirous to evade, rather than listen to, her warnings.
I opened to the twenty-eighth of Isaiah, and he started as I read, “Wo
to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim!”

“Edward Mariot,” I said, “God will hold _you_ accountable for the sin
which we have this night witnessed!”

He arose—I thought angrily. He commenced to speak, but a look from his
wife dissuaded him. How would he defend himself with such facts so
fresh? But I knew that there was a coldness in his manner as he returned
my “good night,” with a half nod, such as I never before had witnessed
from him. I feared that our friendship, and of course my further
residence in Mariotdale, was at an end; but I feared more, that it would
be written of my generous but business devoted friend, “Ephraim is
joined to his idols—let him alone!”

-----

[1] The incidents which follow are not offered as from the writer’s own
observation. As the simple narrative can be best told in the first
person, the reader must consider us both as having listened to the aged
clergyman who related it. He was a veteran in the Christian army, and
truly adorned his vocation by unaffected dignity and sincere piety. Long
experience and close observation had given him power to penetrate
character, and to read the very thoughts of those whom he addressed. The
listener might often be startled at what seemed abrupt harshness, but
the result always showed that he knew in what manner to approach all
persons. Sympathy and gentleness he well understood are lost on some
natures; and positive words are as widely improper for others. Clergymen
are too apt to regard all men but as so many copies of each other. They
are taught better as they grow older; but our friend seemed to have an
intuitive knowledge of human nature.

                          II.—THE PEST HOUSE.

There was an air of uncomfortable constraint over our little family at
the breakfast table on the morrow. All thoughts were full of the same
thing, but none liked to broach it. Edward Mariot’s manner seemed to
say, “I am disposed to forget, if you will be silent.” But I was
determined, at any cost to myself, to insist upon Mariot’s doing his
duty in relation to the disorderly house upon his premises—or, failing
in that, to leave the parish. I felt that my usefulness was at an end if
I hesitated to do what Mariot, as well as I, knew was incumbent upon me;
for a clergyman who compromises his conscience to keep his parish, is
not only an unfaithful servant but an ally to the enemy. Events,
however, were so ordered that I retained my friend, and was spared the
pain of giving him further reproof. I was informed that Yorkshire John
was at the door, and desired to see me.

I rose instantly and went out. Mariot followed, fearing violence—a
danger which did not once occur to me; for there are few—very few—so
base and cowardly as to make an attack upon a clergyman. The man could
not look me in the face. He was abashed and evidently afflicted, and,
merely muttering that Bessie was “very bad,” and _wanted me_, turned and
strode hastily away.

Mariot accompanied me down to the little village, and, as we walked,
gave me some particulars of the life and character of this singular
being, Yorkshire Jack. He had only the one child, and its mother was
still living, but had been forced to leave her husband, on account of
his cruel treatment. Nobody knew precisely where she lived, or in what
manner she supported herself; but she was occasionally seen hovering
about the dale, with the intention of seeing or carrying away her
daughter. The father detained the child in the hope that the love of a
mother would bring her back to him; for, in the years that she had been
absent, with a drunkard’s inconsistency, he had earnestly desired her
return, and vehemently promised amendment. In these professions, which
had reached her through a mutual acquaintance, she put no faith. She had
been compelled to fly more than once before; and having, on those
occasions returned only to discover the hollowness of his promises, and
to receive new abuse, she had resolved to trust him no further. She
heard, moreover, through common fame, of all his wild and wicked
proceedings; and learning what her child suffered, was the more firmly
resolved not only never herself to return, but to take away Bessie if
possible. This made John but the more cruel, especially when in drink;
and he was at all times mad with suspicion that some one would aid her
in the abduction. Hence his rage against his daughter and against me;
for as he never conversed even with his own child, he could conceive of
no purpose but a sinister one, in my accidental interview with little
Bessie. I was tempted to chide Mariot for suffering this state of things
without interfering; but judged it discreet to be silent.

John’s house—or rather his room—was the picture of neglect and
desolation. He had converted it into a sort of fortification, so that
none but a most expert burglar could get in without his permission.
Neither could the child get away when once the premises were locked.
During the day he had been in the habit, often, of fastening her in, and
when she went abroad it was with him. It was shocking to hear that the
poor infant had been the forced auditor of her father’s violence on the
night before, till, spent with fatigue, she fell on the floor and slept.
No wonder, you are ready to exclaim, that she was ill.

But her disease was evidently something more than mere exhaustion. Now
feverish and languid, she would anon become chilled. Pains in the head
and back, redness of eyes, a husky voice, and sore throat, and a
loathing rejection of food, with other symptoms, which I will not expose
my medical ignorance by attempting to describe, marked her affection as
one of no light character. A hint sent the father for a physician—for
remorse often hastens those whom affection cannot influence. Upon his
arrival he confirmed my surmises, and pronounced the case one of decided
small-pox, and of a very dangerous and malignant type.

The father was frantic, and raved like a madman. He denied stoutly that
such could be the case—called us fools and idiots, and ordered all—the
physician, Mariot and myself—to leave his house. I looked at my friend,
and saw tokens of the indecision and lack of resolution, which was his
infirmity. Then turning to the father, I said, “We will not leave this
sweet child to perish in your hands; and unless you desist from
violence, if Mr. Mariot will not act, I will cause you to be committed
as a disturber of the peace!” The man was in a frenzy, and absolutely
foamed at the mouth; but the physician and Mariot supported me, and
taking advantage of his temporary absence, we turned his own
fortifications against him and barred him out, while we should consult
what to do in the emergency.

“Mariot,” I said, after he and the physician had proposed and rejected
as impracticable several expedients, “there is a _pest house_ ready to
your hand. Take that.”

“The tenant will not suffer it,” said he.

“Leave that to us.” And, with the doctor, I went directly to the tavern,
and without circumlocution informed the landlord that we were about to
bring a small pox patient to his house, and desired a room!

He, too, stormed and threatened, but we insisted. The terror among the
residents had now grown intense, for the rumor had spread; and they
having collected, with one voice demanded that the house should be
taken. It stood apart from the rest, and was in all respects eligible
for the purpose.

“If you do bring the child here,” said he, “I will leave.”

“Do so before, if you choose,” I answered, “for in one hour she will be
here.” And I further informed him that upon his future quietness and
good behavior it would depend whether he should be proceeded against for
the sale of spirits to minors and his other misdeeds.

A new cause of alarm was now discovered. The mother of the child lay
sick in another house; and investigation into the nature of her illness
developed the fact that, in a stolen interview with poor little Bessie,
it was she who had communicated to the child the infection. Both mother
and daughter were removed to the tavern, a nurse was provided, and all
proper steps were taken for their comfort. Yorkshire John, having become
subdued by these events, was suffered to be their attendant. The
landlord, having received Mariot’s assurance that his reasonable charges
should be met, sullenly acquiesced, and did not carry out the threat of
removal. The customers, however, fortunately for themselves, avoided the
“Pest House,” and his business was reduced completely to that of an
infirmary. Thus, what fear of moral contagion could not accomplish, was
effected by the dread of physical infection.

                            III.—THE VISION.

Pass over a couple of years, and behold me, the energetic actor—perhaps
almost unclerical—in the events of the preceding narrative, now
domiciled permanently in the “Mariotdale Hotel.” The old landlord—a
good weaver—has resumed his place in the works, and frequently avows
his satisfaction at the change which circumstances compelled him to make
in his pursuits. Yorkshire John, his very self, is my landlord—and a
quieter dwelling there is not in the country. Perhaps much of this is
due to the good management of his wife—for she, after all, is the man
of the house.

And Bessie?

Poor Bessie! We laid her down to rest in the churchyard two years since,
for the illness she had was unto death. It was this shock which recalled
the father to his senses; and rest assured I did not spare him. He was
not a man who could _bear consolation_, for it seemed as if he could
almost strike the person who offered it. He rebelled against the blow,
but found that he was in the hands of a God who will reach those by
affliction who refuse to be persuaded by mercy.

Poor Bessie—did I say? Blessed child! If the dead can look on earth,
she knows that her father and mother have been reformed and reconciled
through her death; that father and mother have learned to believe that
the early lost are early saved.

And Mariot, my warmer friend than before, admits that my counsel was
sound—that the souls as well as the bodies of his people are in some
sense in his charge, and that he who neglects his duty in regard to the
first cannot atone for that neglect by care of the last.

I often float in the evening down to Bessie’s rock, and seldom fail to
see in the twilight, THE VISION. Nor does it now prove to be of the
earth, earthly, as once it did—for I know that she is in Heaven.

                                SORROW.

                          BY ALFRED B. STREET.

          I saw at sunrise, in the East, a cloud—
            A form upon the sky; at first it seemed
            Gloomy and threatening, but at length it beamed
          Into a glow of tender light endowed
          By the soft rising light. How mild and sweet
            It shone! how full of holy tenderness!
          How like some hovering Angel did it greet
            My heart until I almost kneeled to bless!
            It brightened more and more, but less and less
          It melted, leading further still my gaze
            Into the heavens; with lovelier, lovelier dress
          It shrunk, until it vanished in a blaze.
          Thus sorrow, kindled by Religion’s light;
        Turns to a tender joy, pointing toward heaven our sight.

                        SONNET.—MORAL STRENGTH.

                         BY MRS. E. C. KINNEY.

            The spirit that in conscious right is strong,
              By Treachery or Rage may be assailed;
            But over single-handed RIGHT, hath WRONG
              Never by art or multitude prevailed;
              As Samson, shaking off the withes that failed
            To hold the Titan, rose all free among
              The weak Philistines that before him quailed,
            And bade defiance to the coward-throng!
              So the Titanic soul through moral power
              Rending the toils of Calumny, doth tower—
            A host within itself—sublimely free,
              Above the foes that in their weakness cower.
            Shorn of its strength the human soul must be,
            Ere overcome by truth’s worst enemy.

                                TAMAQUE.

                     A TALE OF INDIAN CIVILIZATION.

                         BY HENRY C. MOORHEAD.

One day, during a ramble in the interior of Pennsylvania with my gun and
dog, I found myself on the top of a high mountain, which commanded an
extensive view of the surrounding country. The charms of the landscape
soon drew off my attention from the pursuit on which I had set out so
zealously in the morning; and leaving my dog to chase the game at his
pleasure, I indulged myself in pursuing the phantoms of my imagination.
In this mood of mind I approached the end of the mountain, whose rugged
cliffs overhung the river which washed their base. My dog running to the
brink, looked over, but instantly bounded back again, ran to and fro,
looking up in my face then crept back cautiously to the spot, and gazed
intently at some object below him. Curious to learn what it was that so
deeply interested my faithful companion, and anxious to secure it, if
worth shooting, I looked to the priming of my gun, and stretching myself
on the rock, projected my head over the precipice. A single glance made
me follow my dog’s example, and draw back; for, on a kind of shelf,
formed by a projecting rock, a few feet below me, sat an old man, his
white hairs flowing over his shoulders, calmly surveying the scene
around him. From his dress and whole appearance, I judged that he was,
like myself, a stranger in that neighbourhood, which made me still more
desirous to seek his acquaintance. I soon found a winding path which led
to the front of the bluff, and in a few moments brought me to the side
of the stranger. To my increased surprise I found that he was sitting at
the mouth of a cavern, which had been scooped out of the solid rock by
the hand of Nature. Here was as convenient a cell, and as profound a
solitude as any hermit could desire. But it was clear that he was no
hermit. His was neither the garb, nor the look, nor the address of a man
living in seclusion from his fellows. When a sudden turn in the path
brought me close to his side, he rose calmly, and saluted me as blandly
and as kindly as if we had been old acquaintances. Stammering out a few
words of apology for my intrusion, I was about to withdraw, when he
interposed with a courteous gesture.

“Would you not like to have a look at my hermitage?” said he; then,
perhaps, noticing my look of incredulity, he added, “It is mine now, at
least, by the right of possession.”

“Pardon me,” said I, “but I should not take you for an inhabitant of
these mountains.”

“And why not, pray?”

“It is not customary, I think, for wild men of the woods and rocks to
wear white neckcloths and polished boots,” said I.

The old gentleman laughed at this remark, and then said, “you may call
me a _temporary_ hermit, then; for you certainly found me alone, and
sitting at the mouth of my cave. Indeed, if I were to assert my claim to
it, I doubt whether there is any man living who could show a prior
right; for I knew this place when few white men had ever penetrated what
was then considered a remote wilderness.”

“The prospect must have changed very much since then,” said I.

“In some respects it certainly has,” he replied; “but the main features
of a scene like this continue ever the same. The plough cannot level
mountains, nor cultivation change the course of rivers. I have been
tracing the windings of this stream with my eye, and find them just as
they were; and I recognize every soaring peak, and every projecting rock
as an old acquaintance; I saw broken clouds just like these floating
above the mountain tops fifty years ago; and I would almost swear that
yonder eagle is the same which then sailed so majestically through the
air.”

“Those villages and forms, however, must be new to you.”

“Ah, yes!” said he, “there we see the hand of civilization. Where now
our eyes take in no less than four neat and thriving villages, there
were not then as many clusters of rude wigwams; and these green fields
and blooming orchards were an unbroken wilderness.”

“A most happy change,” said I.

“So reason doubtless tells us,” he replied. “Better the peace and
industry which now reign here, than the war-whoop, or the listless
indolence of savage life. And yet it is melancholy to think how quickly
these old lords of the forest have disappeared. Many a league was made
in their rude fashion to endure between the parties and their
descendants, as long as these mountains should continue to stand, or
this river to run. The eternal hills still cast their shadows on the
ever-rolling waters; but the powerful tribes who appealed to them as
perpetual witnesses of their faith are extinct, or live only in a few
wretched stragglers, thousands of miles away in the far west. We have
possessed ourselves of their heritage; and to show our gratitude, we
abuse them for not having made a better use of their own possessions,
and congratulate ourselves on the happy change we have effected.”

“There will never be wanting romantic persons,” I remarked, “to
celebrate the glories of savage life, and the felicity of spending a
northern winter half naked and half starved, under the precarious
shelter of a wigwam.”

“Well,” said he, with enthusiasm, “let them embalm the memory of the Red
Man! It will appease the manes of those ambitious warriors to be
renowned in song and story. The noblest spirits of the world have gained
but a few lines in a Universal History, or a single page in a
Biographical Dictionary, and have deemed themselves well paid for a life
of toil. Ambition is everywhere the same; and its essence is a desire to
be remembered. It may happen that the sad fate of the Indian will
perpetuate his memory when the achievements of all his conquerors have
been forgotten.”

“I cannot help suspecting,” said I, smiling, “that you have yourself
been a warrior, perhaps the adopted son of the chief who presided over
these hunting-grounds.”

“No,” said he, “I was not so great a favorite with the chief of these
hunting-grounds.”

“Ah, then,” continued I, “your sympathy is that of a generous conqueror
for an unfortunate adversary.”

“Not exactly that either,” said he; “I was neither for nor against them.
If you are inclined to hear my story, I will relate it here, in sight of
every spot to which it refers.”

We then sat down on the rock together, and he proceeded as follows.

I came out as bearer of despatches to what was then the frontier
settlement; but an errand of my own induced me to come on here. It was
at the time that the Moravians were making zealous and apparently very
successful efforts to civilize and Christianize the Indians; and they
had a station, under the care of the venerable Luten, which I know must
be somewhere in this neighborhood. Although I had known and honored
Luten from my boyhood, I should scarcely have ventured on such an
expedition for the mere pleasure of seeing _him_; but he had brought his
wife with him, and what is more to our present purpose, his daughter,
Mary. Well, it was a rash undertaking to penetrate this wilderness
without a guide, just then, for the Indians were in a state of angry
hostility toward the whites, in consequence of some real or supposed
injuries lately received; but what will not an enterprising young fellow
risk in such a cause? Even the bold hunter often carries his life in his
hand; and the game I was pursuing was better worth the risk than a wolf
or a panther.

Having struck on this chain of mountains, and finding that they
commanded a view of the surrounding country, I followed them up until I
reached the brow above us, when I caught a glimpse of a figure suddenly
gliding down the face of the hill toward where we are now sitting. I
cautiously followed, and saw a man whom I knew, from his appearance, to
be an _Indian conjurer_, enter this cave. Without disturbing him, I
returned to the hill above, and carefully explored the country round for
the station I was in search of. I had given up the search, with the full
conviction that there was no settlement in sight, when the light breeze
wafted to my ear the sound of human voices. I soon made out that it was
a familiar strain of sacred music, and sweeping over the valley again
with my telescope, discovered an encampment just where yonder creek
empties into the river. It was the hour of evening worship; and the
savages were tuning their voices to the unwonted notes of a Christian
hymn. Of the venerable missionary, it might emphatically be said, that
he pointed to heaven, and led the way. He had left country, home, and
friends; the habits of a lifetime, and the tastes of a highly cultivated
mind, for the sake of the poor Indian; and it mattered little to him
whether his head reposed in a palace or a wigwam, or whether his bones
were laid in the Fatherland or in some wild glen of the New World, so
that his Master’s work was sped. If such thoughts passed through my mind
whilst my eye rested for a moment on him, they were instantly put to
flight when I saw another figure in the group. But he would have
forgiven my irreverence, if he had known of it, for the love he also
bore his gentle Mary.

I quickly descended the mountain, and reached the encampment just as the
sun was setting. Luten received me as a son; Mary as a brother, except
that the blush which suffused her face and the agitation of her nerves
were something more than fraternal—so, at least, I flattered myself.
When I inquired for the missionary’s wife a tear started into the eye of
both father and daughter. I understood it all—she had found a grave in
the wilderness.

I had many questions to ask as well as to answer, and much news to tell,
and the evening wore away before curiosity had been satisfied on either
side. But I felt anxious to know their plans and prospects for the
future; I therefore inquired of Luten how he was succeeding with the
Indians.

“Far beyond my most sanguine expectations,” he replied.

“You really think, then, that it is possible to change their savage
natures,” said I.

“Why should it be thought doubtful?” said he. “Are we not all descended
from the same parents—all partakers of the same fallen nature—all
hastening to the same bourne? But you would scarcely recognize the
gnarled and stunted oak, springing from the scanty earth afforded by a
crevice in the rock, as belonging to the same species with the monarch
of the forest, striking his roots deep in a generous soil, and spreading
his branches proudly toward heaven. Pour into the minds of these poor
heathen savages the light of civilization and Christianity, and in a few
generations they will have become the noblest race of men in the world.”

“It is a very common belief, however,” said I, “that they are incapable
of civilization; and does not experience seem to justify this opinion?”

“_My_ experience proves the contrary,” said he, with emphasis. “The
people now in this encampment were lately fierce and blood-thirsty
warriors; I wish the docility and meekness they now exhibit were more
common among white men.”

“But has there been time,” I asked, “to warrant the conclusion that the
change will be permanent?”

“I have no fear as to that,” he said; “the change is radical—the savage
nature is extinct in them; and, like children, their plastic minds can
now be moulded into any form by education.”

“I hope it will prove so,” said I; “but do their chiefs go with them?”

“Their favorite young chief, Tamaque, now leads them as zealously in the
path of peace, as he formerly did in the war-path,” he replied. “A noble
young fellow he is, too.”

“Indeed he is,” said Mary, who had hitherto been listening to our
conversation in silence; “he is always so kind and gentle. I love him as
my own brother.”

The very bluntness of her words might have satisfied me that she meant
_only_ what she said; but somehow or other I did not like her form of
expression, and I began to feel anything but partial toward the person
they referred to. “Pray what does he look like?” I inquired.

“Oh, he is very handsome,” said she, with the same provoking simplicity.

“And no doubt very accomplished,” said I, drily.

“Why, yes,” she replied, “he is by no means wanting in accomplishments.
He was educated at one of our own schools, and, it is said, proved a
very apt scholar. Indeed, his civilized accomplishments are very
respectable; and as to his savage ones,” she added, laughing, “he is
foremost in all the exercises of his tribe.”

I joined in the laugh, rather faintly, and then added, maliciously:

“No doubt even his copper color is unusually bright.”

“By no means,” she replied; “his color is that of a white man a little
tanned by exposure to the sun.”

“The truth is,” said Luten, “he is only half Indian, and he seems to be
endowed with most of the virtues of both the white and red man, without
the vices of either.”

The affair had now become serious, and I could no longer help regarding
this accomplished half-breed chief as a formidable rival.

“On him, more than any man,” continued Luten, “rest my hopes for the
regeneration of his race. I imagine to myself that I see in him the
future founder of Indian civilization. Yes, my young friend, ere you
have attained the age which now bears me to the ground, you will see
these savage tribes every where pursuing the arts of peace; you will see
them kneeling at the altar of the living God, and putting to shame the
boasted civilization of the white man. My old body will be dust long
before that; but this hope, and belief, have sustained me amidst all the
toils and privations of a life in the wilderness.”

I looked anxiously in the speaker’s face; for the thought struck me that
his mind had become unsettled. But his placid countenance and clear,
steady eye, at once convinced me that what I had deemed madness, was
nothing more than the enthusiasm of a bold and sanguine reformer. I
could not find it in my heart to disturb the vision which afforded him
so much delight by any expression of my doubts, and still less did I
feel inclined to enter upon any further discussion of the merits of
Tamaque. I had heard too much about them already for my repose that
night; and every remark I had made on the subject had only served to
call forth a fresh eulogy. I therefore gladly accepted Luten’s
invitation to retire to my bear-skin couch. Many were the visions that
chased each other through my brain during my broken slumbers, and
Tamaque was connected with them all. Sometimes I saw him the king of a
mighty people, with Mary at his side, crowned as a queen. Again I found
myself engaged in deadly conflict with him, and waked just in time to
escape receiving the death-blow at his hands. At another time I seemed
to have got the better of him, and was about to plunge my sword into his
bosom with fierce exultation, when my hand was arrested by a reproachful
look from her, and started up and thanked heaven that it was only a
dream. At length, however, I fell into a sound and tranquil sleep. But I
was not permitted long to enjoy it; for, just at the dawn of day, a
strange Indian rushed into the camp, yelling the war-whoop until the
mountains echoed it back again. The whole camp was instantly in motion;
in a few minutes the council-fire was blazing, and the Indians had
ranged themselves around it.

The messenger soon told his story. A number of fanatic white men had
banded together and sworn eternal hostility to the Indians. They
professed to consider them as standing in the same relation to
themselves as the Canaanites of old did to the children of Israel; and,
therefore, in the name of God, they waged an exterminating war against
them. They had just fallen upon an Indian village of Tamaque’s tribe,
and slaughtered the inhabitants, without regard to age or sex. This
messenger had alone escaped to tell the dreadful tidings. His words
produced a deep sensation on these fierce warriors, just emerging into
civilization. The old instincts of their natures were evidently
reawakened; and it seemed as if a signal only were wanting to make them
rush forth, as in former days, with tomahawk and scalping-knife.

Luten hastened to check the torrent of passion which threatened, in one
moment, to sweep away the fruits of all his labors. Standing, like a
venerable patriarch, among his rebellious household, he endeavored, by a
skillful blending of persuasion with parental authority, to restore them
to a sense of duty. Reminding them of their solemn vows, he conjured
them by that regard for plighted faith which is the red man’s boast, not
to forget or break them in this moment of passion. He pointed out the
high destiny they had to accomplish, in spreading light and knowledge
all through the wilderness, and leading the way to a great reformation
of the Indian race. Then, in a more solemn tone, he spoke of the world
to come; painting the happiness in store for those who persevere to the
end, and the uncontrollable miseries reserved for the unfaithful. His
earnest eloquence was perfectly adapted to their simple apprehensions,
yet eminently calculated to strike their imaginations by the wild
imagery with which he embellished it. Their stern natures relented as he
spoke, and he seemed to be on the point of regaining all his influence
over them, when another messenger arrived, and signified that he had
important news to communicate.

He told of new outrages, more cruel, if possible, than the first; and
whilst every heart beat high with rage and horror, turned to Tamaque and
addressed him thus:

“These griefs are common to us all; but the words I am now to speak will
fall more dismally on Tamaque’s soul than the howling of a famished
wolf. Yesterday you had a father and a sister. I saw that father’s gray
hairs red with blood; I saw that sister, when flying from the blazing
wigwam, driven back by the white men’s spears—and she returned no more.
Then I came, swift as a hunted deer, to sound the war-whoop in the ears
of Tamaque and his warriors.”

Throughout the whole scene Tamaque had been sitting as impassive as a
statue. It was impossible to gather from his looks any hint of what was
passing in his mind; and when, at length, he rose, the fire that beamed
from his eye alone enabled me to anticipate his purpose.

“Warriors!” he said, “we must listen to the song of peace no longer. The
white man’s words are love, but his embrace is death. Let us return,
without delay, to the customs of our fathers. Even now I hear their
voices, from the land of spirits, calling us to war and vengeance.” Then
turning toward me, he continued: “The stranger has come just in
time—seize him and drag him to the torture.”

With savage yells some gathered round me, whilst others hastened to
prepare the stake, and others to collect the implements of torture. I
had seen the operation once in my life, and remembered it well. In that
case, the victim was stripped naked and tied with a grape vine to the
top of a pole, having a free range on the ground of ten or fifteen feet.
At the foot of the pole was a flaming fire of pitch-pine, and each
Indian held in his hand a small bundle of blazing reeds. The
death-signal being given he was attacked on all sides, and driven to the
pole for shelter; but, unable to endure the flames that scorched him
there, he again rushed forth and was again driven back by his
tormentors. When he became exhausted water was poured on him and a brief
respite given, that he might recover strength for new endurements. The
same scene was acted over again and again, until they had extracted the
last thrill of anguish from his scorched and lacerated body.

Similar preparations were now making for me, and I watched them with
shuddering interest as the fire was kindled and the faggots distributed.
Just as they were about to drag me to the stake, however, Luten
interposed. But all his appeals and entreaties were unheeded; and when
at last he begged them, if they must have a victim, to take him and
spare his young friend, Tamaque rudely repulsed him, and ordered him to
be carried away to his tent. My last hope of escape was now
extinguished, when lo! a figure glided suddenly into the arena,
arresting the attention of all, as if she had been a messenger from
Heaven. Can the daughter control these wild spirits who have rebelled
against the authority of the father? She binds her white handkerchief
round my arm, and then whispers in the ear of Tamaque. The words,
whatever they are, act like a charm on him. His stern countenance
relaxes almost into a smile, and he stands for some moments absorbed in
meditation. Again she whispers a few earnest words; upon which he comes
forward, takes me by the arm, and leads me, in silence, to the outskirts
of the encampment.

“Now go!” he cried, pointing toward the east; “you are indebted for your
freedom to one I love better than you. See that you make a good use of
it; for, if you should be retaken, and brought here again, not even
_her_ entreaties shall save you from the torture. Away! and here,” he
continued, handing me a red belt, “bear to the false-hearted cowards you
came from this token of the hatred and defiance of Tamaque and his
warriors.” He waved his hand to prevent my replying, and stalked away.

I was now free, but by no means satisfied with the manner in which my
liberty had been procured. What meant this mysterious influence of a
fair young Christian girl over a haughty savage chieftain? What were
those whispered words which had wrought the sudden charm? Had she
yielded to some request, or given some pledge in order to make her
prayer effectual? My mind was racked with torments scarce less poignant
than those which just before had threatened to assail my body. I
resolved at all hazards to see the end of it; and, therefore, in
defiance of fire and faggot, concealed myself at a point close by, which
commanded a full view of the neighborhood.

I had not been long in my hiding place when I saw a procession, with
Tamaque at its head, move from the camp in the direction of this
mountain. I conjectured at once that they were coming here to consult
the conjurer, and resolved to follow them. When they had descended the
face of the precipice to the spot where we are now sitting, I crept
cautiously forward on the rock above, and found myself in full hearing
of their consultation.

“How often have I warned you,” said the conjurer, “against the teachings
of the white men. I told you they only wished to rob you of your courage
that they might destroy you the more easily; but you refused to listen
to me.”

“Well, well,” said Tamaque, “that is past; there is no help for it now.
Let us talk of the future.”

“Last year,” continued the conjurer, “when no game was to be found, and
when the corn all withered away, I told you the Great Spirit was angry
because you were forsaking the customs of your fathers; but you turned a
deaf ear to my words.”

“I remember it all,” said Tamaque, “but go on, and tell us of the
future.”

“They promised you,” persisted the conjurer, “that if you would worship
their God you should go to their heaven when you died. I told you that
your spirits and theirs could never live in peace in the same
spirit-land; but you would not believe me.”

“Come, come, I am tired of this,” said Tamaque.

“No forests, no rivers, no deer, no hunting and no war,” continued the
conjurer, “what would the Indian warrior do in the white man’s heaven?”

“Cease your babbling!” cried Tamaque, in a tone no longer to be
disregarded. “If you can foretell our fortunes in this war speak; if
not, out on your boasted wisdom!”

The conjurer seemed to feel that it was necessary to come to the point.
After a long pause, he asked:

“What have you done with the white stranger that came to your camp last
evening?”

The old impostor had no doubt seen me at the same time I had seen him as
I crossed the mountain, but he was determined to make a mystery of it.
Tamaque seemed puzzled.

“How did you know of his coming?” he inquired.

“Tamaque doubts the conjurer’s wisdom,” he replied.

“No!” said Tamaque, “you would not tell me what I come to hear. Go on,
now, and I’ll believe you.”

“Has the stranger been put to death?”

“He is gone,” said Tamaque.

“It was wrong,” said the conjurer; “he should have died at the stake.
The Great Spirit calls for a sacrifice. The missionary and his daughter
must die.”

“No!” said Tamaque, “it is impossible.”

“It must be so,” replied the conjurer; “they must die before sunset.”

“It cannot be,” said Tamaque firmly; “command me to do any thing but
that.”

“I command you to do that,” replied the conjurer, “or I will call down
confusion on your war-party.”

“I tell you,” said Tamaque fiercely, “they shall not die. Say no more
about it.”

“Obstinate man!” said the conjurer, “you dare not disobey me. They shall
die, and you shall kindle the fire beneath them.”

Tamaque now sprang forward and seized the conjurer by the throat.
“Villain!” he exclaimed, “I warned you to speak of that no more. Name it
again, and I will toss you headlong down the mountain.”

Finding that Tamaque could not be overawed, the wily conjurer now
changed his tactics.

“You might safely spare them,” he said, “on one condition; but I dare
not name it.”

“Go on,” said Tamaque, “you have nothing to fear, if you do not speak of
their death.”

“The anger of Tamaque is dangerous,” continued the conjurer; “and who
can tell what words will rouse it?”

“No, no!” said Tamaque mildly, “I will hear you patiently; and if you
require me even to leap down this dizzy precipice, I’ll obey you.”

“Listen, then,” said the conjurer; “and if my words sound harsh in your
ears,” said the old hypocrite, “let not your anger be kindled. They
shall live if you choose, but then the white maiden must become
Tamaque’s wife.”

I was looking over, at the moment, from the rock above, full at Tamaque.
He started convulsively; his whole frame shook with emotion; whilst a
gleam of joy absolutely lighted up his dark features. My own sensations
were not less violent, perhaps, though somewhat different in their
character.

After a pause Tamaque asked, in a tone of affected indifference:

“If I consent to this, do you promise success to our expedition?”

“Yes,” said the conjurer, “you will conquer all your foes, and
reestablish the power and glory of the red man. Behold! a vision of the
future rises up before me. I see Tamaque great and powerful, the ruler
over many nations; and far off, for many generations, I see his
children’s children walking in his footsteps.”

“Your words are good,” said Tamaque.

“So will be your deeds,” said the conjurer. “Strike boldly, and fear
nothing.”

“Tamaque knows no fear,” replied the haughty chief. “To-morrow he will
go forth with his warriors, and thus will he rush upon the foe.” As he
spoke he heaved from its resting place a huge fragment of rock, which
bounded down the mountain roaring and smoking, and crushing all before
it, until, with a loud plunge, it disappeared beneath the bubbling
waters.

I had now heard and seen enough; and there was no time to be lost if I
wished to save _her_ from—from what? Confusion on the thought! My head
reeled, and I came near falling down amongst them. But I soon rallied,
and made all possible haste to reach the camp before Tamaque.

Suddenly, as I emerged from a clump of trees yonder on the bank of the
creek, I saw her whom I sought close before me, kneeling on a mound of
earth,—doubtless her mother’s grave. I stood entranced, and listened,
in spite of myself, to the broken sentences which she uttered aloud.

“And save, oh, merciful Father,” she murmured, “save his white hairs
from the dangers which surround us.” Her filial words here became
inaudible. The next sentence that reached my ears related to a different
person. “May thy powerful arm protect us from the cruel rage, and the
still more cruel love of that dreadful man!” My jealous ears drank in
these words with ecstasy. They were a balm to my wounded spirit; a
compensation for all my sufferings. Again she spoke aloud: “And him, the
stranger, who wanders, unprotected, through the wilderness; oh! guard
his steps from harm, and grant, in thine own good time, that—” her
voice now died away into a gentle whisper. When it rose again she was
saying, “And for me, in mercy, give thy unhappy child, here, in this
hallowed spot, a peaceful grave.” I began to feel that my listening,
however inadvertent, was little less than sacrilege; and, therefore,
quietly stole away out of hearing.

As soon as I discovered that she had risen to her feet, I again drew
near. Great was her surprise and consternation at seeing me.

“Oh! why do you linger here,” she cried. “You should, ere this, be far
on your way toward home. Fly instantly, and look not behind you; for, if
you should be taken by these cruel savages no human power can save you
from a dreadful doom.”

“I know that well,” I replied; “but can you think me so careful of my
own life as to run away and leave you to their tender mercies?”

“Fear nothing for me,” she said; “they do not rank me among their
enemies, and will not harm me.”

“But although you may be safe from their hatred, have you nothing to
fear from their friendship?” said I.

The tide of confusion mounted to her brow at these words, and she
trembled in every limb. But, quickly recovering herself, she said: “Come
what may, I share the fate of my father.”

“But go,” said I, “bring your father quickly, and we will all escape
together.”

“No,” said she, sadly, “he is old and feeble; his absence would soon be
noticed; they would certainly pursue us, and easily overtake us.”

I could make no reply to this, for I knew that we could not take her
father with us, and I felt sure that she would not go without him. With
the dogged resolution of despair, therefore, I said:

“Your own fidelity teaches me my duty. I shall remain in these woods to
watch over your safety. Seek not to change my purpose. Better endure all
the torments these fiends can inflict than the shame and remorse I
should suffer if I left you.”

I spoke in a tone that could leave no doubt of my sincerity or firmness.
She evidently felt it so, and stood for some minutes with her eyes fixed
on the ground in silent meditation. Then, at length, raising her head,
she abruptly asked:

“Can you paddle a canoe?”

I replied that I could with considerable skill.

“Then go down immediately to the mouth of the creek,” she continued; “I
will bring my father there, and it is possible that we may yet escape
across the river. It is worth the trial, at least, and is our only
hope.”

I hastened to the place designated, where I found two canoes moored to
the shore. In a few minutes Mary appeared, almost dragging her father
along. When the old man understood our purpose he refused to get into
the boat.

“No,” said he, “I cannot leave these poor children, whom I have so long
taught and prayed for. Deserted by their pastor, they would soon return
to their old habits, and the labor of long years would lose all its
fruits.”

“But, sir,” I replied, “they have already withdrawn themselves from your
authority. You cannot safely remain amongst them, for they now regard
all white men as their enemies.”

“I will stay,” he answered, “and bring them back to the fold from which
they are wandering, or else lay down my life among them.”

“But your daughter,” I continued; “surely this is now no place for her.
Come! let us place her in safety, and then, if you choose, you can
return.” I saw that he hesitated; and so, taking him by the arm, I led
him, with gentle violence, into the canoe.

“Are these the only canoes at the station?” I asked.

Being answered in the affirmative, I directed Luten to hold fast to the
empty one, and then pushed off from the shore. My intention was to cut
off pursuit by carrying the empty canoe some distance into the stream
and then setting her adrift. The river was then about at its present
height, and dashed over these rapids with the same violence as now. It
was certain that no boat could drift through them without being swamped
or broken to pieces.

Accordingly, when we had attained what I thought a sufficient distance
from the shore, I directed Luten to let go his hold. Scarcely had he
done so when a shriek from Mary, whose face was turned toward the shore,
was immediately followed by a plunge, and then another, into the water.

“It is Tamaque and another Indian,” she exclaimed, “and they are
swimming for the empty canoe.” I cast a hasty glance behind me, and saw
all the peril of our position; but I had no time for making
observations. My business was to ply the paddle.

“Now,” continued Mary, “they have almost reached it; and now they have
caught—but see! they have upset it in trying to climb in. No! it has
come right again; and now Tamaque has got in safely, and is dragging his
companion after him. But it is too late; they are almost at the falls,
and they cannot stem the current. Look! Merciful Heaven, they will go
over, and be drowned!”

Obeying the gentler impulses of her nature, she thought only of their
danger, forgetting that _that_ was our only chance of escape.

“Oh! how they do struggle for their lives,” she continued; “and now they
are standing still—no, they are moving—they are coming—faster and
faster—they are coming toward us!”

I again looked back for a moment, and, truly, they were coming, and
evidently gaining on us. Luten meanwhile sat in the bottom of the canoe
in a fit of total abstraction.

“I will not leave them, nor return from following after them,” he
muttered; “they have gone astray, but I will bring them back, and they
shall yet be the instruments, under God, of regenerating the whole
Indian race.”

But the state of things was now becoming critical, and Mary cried out in
terror:

“Oh, father, help!—take that other paddle and help, or we are lost.”

The old man roused himself up, took the paddle, and went to work in the
bow of the canoe. But he was unskilled in the business, and did more
harm than good. I begged him to desist, but he only replied by
increasing his well meant exertions. At length, however, he rocked the
boat, and threw her out of her course so badly, that I was obliged to
command him, peremptorily, to sit down; and he was soon again lost in
meditation.

Meanwhile our pursuers were rapidly gaining on us. Under the guidance of
her two powerful and well-trained workmen, their canoe bounded forward
at every sweep of the paddles like a race-horse. I now saw that it was
all over with us. We were still a long way from shore, and they were
almost upon us. Nor could it avail us any thing even if we should
succeed in landing first. They would capture us on the land if they did
not on the water. My heart sickened at the thought. To me captivity
would bring unutterable torments; and to my innocent and lovely
companion a fate still more deplorable. Was there any alternative? I
looked the whole subject steadily in the face for one minute, and then
my resolution was taken. With a single dexterous sweep of the paddle I
brought the head of the canoe directly down stream, and then urged her
forward toward the roaring cataract. Tamaque uttered a loud yell of rage
and disappointment; and, the same moment, his tomahawk whizzed by within
an inch of my head. But the current now drew us on with fearful
rapidity. Mary sat pale and silent, gazing anxiously in my face; whilst
her father continued unconscious of all that was passing. Now and then I
could hear his voice amid the tumult of the dashing breakers mournfully
bewailing the apostacy of his neophytes.

We had now reached the very brink of the foaming precipice, when my eye
caught a narrow streak of blue water, which evidently descended in a
gradual slope. I directed the canoe toward it, and she went down,
plunging, I thought, entirely under; but she rose again filled with
water, but still afloat. I threw my hat to Mary; and, whilst I kept the
canoe steady in her course with one hand, I seized my hat in the other
and commenced bailing. In a few minutes all danger of sinking was
removed. We had now a free course before us, and an impassible barrier
(so it was deemed) between us and our pursuers. We felt that we were
safe;—all but Luten; to whom our danger and our safety seemed equally
indifferent. His thoughts were far away in the land of dreams, where he
had so long dwelt, and from which he would not yet depart. We spoke to
him, but he made no answer. At length his head began to sink slowly
down, and Mary hastened to support it. An ashy paleness now came over
his features; his breathing grew short and difficult, and his mutterings
became inaudible; except once, when the name of Tamaque trembled on his
lips. Then his eyes became fixed; his lips ceased to move; his hand
dropped heavily down at his side; and now,—the hot tears that rain from
the eyes of his dutiful child fall on the brow of death.

It was now near sundown; and when we reached the nearest white
settlement it was near morning. There we buried Luten; and his daughter
being now an orphan, and without a protector in the world, why, of
course,—but I need not relate what followed. Suffice it to say that I
was no longer jealous of Tamaque, but even felt a pang of regret when I
heard, soon after, that he had fallen in battle.

                          THE RECONCILIATION.

                       BY MISS L. VIRGINIA SMITH.

 The midnight shadows deepen on, the earth is still and lone,
 And starry lamps in heaven’s blue hall are fading one by one,
 For cold gray clouds wreathe o’er them like a dim and misty veil,
 And through their foldings peers the moon—a spirit wan and pale.

 As far away the gentle breeze is sighing mournfully
 It seems a murmur from the shore of olden memory,
 And while its cadence floats afar _thy voice_ I seem to hear—
 Like music in some troubled dream it steals upon my ear.

 My heart beats faster as the sound fades out upon the night,
 And pants to drink again that tone of rapture and delight;
 At such an hour it cannot deem that voice is cold and strange,
 In such an hour it will forget that hearts like thine can change.

 No—never, it shall _not_ be so—the thought is burning pain,
 Which like the levin’s blighting fire comes crushing through my brain;
 It cannot be our friendship’s bright and glowing dream is o’er,
 It must not be that we _shall meet_ as we _have met_ no more.

 Have I offended?—then _forgive_—’twill be the nobler part—
 And oh, _forget_ that I have wronged thy warm and generous heart,
 For careless words though lightly said come keenly to the mind,
 To chill its glowing depths with tones like winter’s frozen wind.

 Ah! “cast the shadow” from thy heart, and mine shall glow with thine
 In purer flames, whose fairy gleams in rainbow beauty shine,
 Its thoughts of thee shall brighten then though all around be sad,
 Its every dream of thee be sweet—its every vision glad—

                             UNHAPPY LOVE.

                          BY GEO. D. PRENTICE.

               ’Tis vain, ’tis vain, these idle tears!
                 Thou art far distant now;
               No more, oh never more my lips
                 May press thy pale, sweet brow;
               And yet I cannot, cannot burst
               The deep and holy spell that first
                 Bade my strong spirit bow
               With all of passion’s hopes and fears
               Before thee in our happier years.

               Those eves of love, those blessed eves—
                 Their memory still comes back
               A glory and a benison
                 O’er life’s bewildering track,
               Their light has vanished from our lot
               Like meteor-gleams and left us—what?
                 The sigh, the tear, the rack!
               And yet upon their visions blest
               Still love can turn and sink to rest.

               I know thou lovest me, I know
                 Thine eyes with tears are dim,
               I know that stricken love still chants
                 To thee its mournful hymn;
               I know the shadows of love’s dream
               In the deep waves of memory’s stream
                 Like soft star-shadows swim;
               But oh! the fiend of wild unrest
               Is raging in my tortured breast.

               Forgive me, gentle one, forgive
                 My burning dreams of thee;
               Forgive me that I dare to let
                 Forbidden thoughts go free;
               My torrent-passions madly sweep
               On, darkly on, and will not sleep
                 But in death’s silent sea;
               And I—a mouldering wreck—am still
               The victim of their stormy will.

               Ah, dear one, suns will rise and set,
                 And moons will wax and wane,
               The seasons come and go, but we
                 Must never meet again;
               That thought, whene’er I hear thy name,
               Is like a wild and raging flame
                 Within my heart and brain;
               But none, save thee, shall ever know
               The secret of my living wo.

               Oft at the sunset’s holy time,
                 Our spirits’ trysting hour,
               I wander to commune with thee
                 Beneath the wildwood bower;
               And o’er me there thy tone of love,
               Like the low moaning of a dove,
                 Steals with a soothing power;
               ’Tis gone—my voice in anguish calls,
               But silence on the desert falls.

               I gaze on yon sweet moon as erst
                 We gazed on that dear night
               When our deep, parting vows were said
                 Beneath its mournful light;
               And then with tones, low, sweet and clear,
               Thou breathest in my ravished ear
                 And risest on my sight—
               I call thee, but the woods around
               With mocking voice repeat the sound.

               I look on each memento dear,
                 The tress, the flower, the ring,
               And these thy sweet and gentle form
                 Back to my spirit bring;
               I seem to live past raptures o’er,
               Our hands, our hearts, our lips once more
                 In one wild pressure cling—
               It fades—I mourn the vision flown
               And start to find myself alone.

               I look upon thy pictured face
                 ’Till from my straining eyes
               My soul steals out to animate
                 The sweet but lifeless dyes;
               The dark eyes wake, the dear lips speak,
               Their breath is warm upon my cheek—
                 I clasp the living prize;
               Alas! I wake to cold despair,
               There’s but a painted mockery there.

               My youth is vanished from my life,
                 And ah! I feel that now
               The lines of manhood’s fading prime
                 Are deepening on my brow;
               My life is in its evening shade,
               And soon its last pale flowers will fade
                 Upon the withering bough,
               Alas! alas! that life should be
               So fleeting and not passed with thee!

               Farewell, our dreams are idle now,
                 And tears are idler yet,
               But oft beneath the midnight moon
                 My eyelids still are wet;
               Oh! I could bear life’s every grief,
               Its shade, its cloud, its withered leaf,
                 Its sun’s last darkened set,
               Could I but know that we might love
               As now in that bright world above.

               Farewell—farewell—yon gentle star
                 Is pure and bright like thee—
               But lo! a dark cloud near it moves,
                 The type, alas, of me!
               From the blue heavens the cloud will go,
               But that unfading star will glow
                 Still beautiful and free;
               And thus thy life, with fadeless ray,
               May shine when I am passed away.

                             THE SUNFLOWER.

                     A TRUE TALE OF THE NORTH-WEST.

                          BY MAJOR RICHARDSON.

Of all the tribes of Indians with whom it has been our lot to mix, and
these have not been a few, we know of none who can surpass in the native
dignity and nobleness of manhood the Saukie tribe. We, however, speak
not of them as they exist at the present day. Many years have elapsed
since fighting against Hull, Winchester, and Harrison, we numbered, as
co-operating with the division of the army to which we were attached,
three thousand fighting men of the élite of the warriors of the
principal tribes, headed by the indomitable and ever lamented Tecumseh,
whom, as a boy, then first attempting his _coup d’essai_ at arms, we
ever loved and revered, and with whom half an hour before his fall, we
shook the hand of cordiality, and separation—forever. We repeat, at
that period there were, varying slightly in number at intervals, not
less than three thousand with the eighth division of the British
army—and these were the choice warriors of the following tribes:
Shawanees, Delawares, Munsees, Hurons, Wyandots, Miamis, Chippewas,
Ottowas, Kickapoos, Foxes, Minouminies, Pottowattamies, Winnebagoes,
Loups, Sioux, and lastly, for we cannot recollect some two or three
others—the Saukies. Each tribe had its peculiar and distinctive
characteristics—but no one so markedly so as the last named people, and
next to them the Winnebagoes. We have remarked that we do not know what
the Indian tribes, even in their original hunting grounds have become
since so long abstinence from the pursuits of war and adventure, but
_then_, the Saukies were the noblest looking men of all we have ever
since beheld in any quarter of the globe we have visited. They were a
collective impersonation of the dignity of man, as sent first upon earth
by the will of God; nor were these characteristics of manly beauty
peculiar only to a few, but general to all. A Saukie warrior, arrived at
the full stage of manhood, was tall—generally from five feet eleven to
six feet in height, and of proportionate symmetry of person. Their
carriage was erect, dignified, graceful. Their look serene, imposing
without sternness. Their features bore the Roman impress, and seldom did
we look upon a Saukie, arrived at mature age, without the memory
adverting at once to the dignified senators of the forum of which we had
so recently been reading. There was a nobleness—a consciousness—a
native dignity about these people that always inspired us with a certain
degree of awe and respect; and so deeply was this sentiment implanted in
us at that very early period of a somewhat adventurous life, that our
_beau ideal_ of manly beauty has ever since continued to be a Saukie
warrior of the commencement of the present century.

The period of occurrence of the incidents of our little tale was some
four or five years prior to the American declaration of war against
Great Britain, and when the North West Company of Canada, whose wealth,
acquired in the pursuit of that trade, was at one time great, held
various stockade forts in the heart of the Indian country. The
ambulating village of the Saukies was then situated on a branch of one
of those small streams on which the forts were usually built, and at a
distance of about forty miles from that which will come more immediately
under our notice.

White Bear was one of the most honored of the Saukie chiefs, and even
among men whom we have just described as so eminently prepossessing, he
was remarkable. He was forty years of age, and possessed a majesty of
mien and carriage that won to him the respect of his tribe not more than
did his wisdom in the council, and his daring in war. He had but one
wife, and she was much younger than himself, but years had so little to
do with the estimate in which he was generally held by the squaws of his
tribe, and particularly by his wife, whose passion for him was ardent as
his own for her, that this disparity had never even been noticed.
Indeed, their friendship for each other was the remark of the whole
tribe. For an Indian, he took great pride in her beauty, and spent with
her many hours that ought to have been devoted to the chase. War for
some years past there had been none.

Sunflower was tall and graceful. She had very black, soft, languishing
eyes—marked, yet delicate eyebrows. Her nose, like that of her tribe,
was Roman, but more delicately marked than that of the men, her teeth
were white and even, her mouth small, and her hair glossy as the raven’s
wing, and darker than the squirrel’s fur. The full and massive club into
which it was tastefully rolled and placed behind the back of her neck,
proved its fullness and redundance. She was elegantly formed. She had
never been a mother, and her nut-brown bosom had all the roundness of
contour of a Venus, and the smoothness of the Parian marble. Her hands
and feet, like those of all her race, were small, and yet there was a
development of her whole person that set all art to improve it at
defiance. Late at night she always bathed in the sweet waters of the
stream, and on its low banks combed the long and luxuriant hair that
overshadowed her person, and with the chewed root of the grape-vine,
added fragrance to her breath, even while she increased the dazzling
whiteness of the teeth she rubbed with it. To crown all the fascinations
of this Indian wife—this favored daughter of a race in which the
interesting and the beautiful are so rarely found, she had a voice whose
every note was laughing music.

There was one in that camp, and of that tribe, who saw the happiness of
White Bear, not with envy, for his nature was too generous for so low a
passion, but with regret that destiny had not given to him the
beautiful, the enchanting Sunflower. He was consumed with the most
ardent love. He lived only in and for her—hung upon her look, fed upon
her glance, and yet he had never spoken to her. His soul melted away
with love for her. To look at her alone was enjoyment the greatest he
could taste. The chase was deserted, his very flute, in which he
excelled, and on which he often played to the great delight of the
admiring Indian girls, was neglected. Not so his dress. No young Saukie
bestowed more pains in decorating his person than did the tall and
gracefully formed Wawandah, and this not from any foolish love of
display, as because he wished to appear favorably in her eyes, should
she ever be induced to regard him. The savage equally with the
civilized, tries to win a woman as much by dress as by address. But in
vain Wawandah courted his toilet. The vermilion was applied to his cheek
and lips without the desired result—the Sunflower never once caught his
eye, or if she did, she was too much engaged in thinking of the White
Bear, to be conscious that any other of her tribe sought to win her
attention.

Days, weeks passed on, with the same unvarying result. Wawandah was
sorely grieved at heart. He began to pine away. His soft and melancholy
eye became dull. He had no pleasure in the chase which took him far from
the encampment. Every step that he trod in pursuit led him farther from
the spot trodden by her, the very soles of whose feet he worshiped, and
he could not continue. Thus, when a stray buffalo would cross him, easy
to be killed, and offering himself as an unerring mark to his rifle, his
passion would so trouble his mind as to unnerve his arm. Then the ball
would pass unwounding by, and the half sneers of his companions arise
and bring the blush to his cheek; as they bade him tauntingly leave the
rifle to be handled by men, and go and amuse himself with the women. In
like manner he sought to avoid the war-dance, and the ball playing, and
the foot-race, for his mind was too painfully interested to engage
unrestrainedly in these amusements, and unless excellence was to be
obtained in whatever he undertook, Wawandah cared not to be a
competitor. Wawandah was beginning to lose caste not only with the
elders of the tribe but with the young men who were jealous of his
superiority, and so much was he talked of that the very women knew all
that was said by the warriors, and the Sunflower like the rest. It was
the first time Wawandah had ever come under the notice of her he so
fondly loved, and as he knew the cause, he secretly blessed the fate
which had, even under circumstances so humiliating to the pride of a
warrior, been the cause of her bestowing even the slightest attention
upon him.

The White Bear had been the friend of the father of Wawandah, who for
ten long years, according to Indian computation, had slumbered in his
grave with the red stained pole at its head. Since he had taken the
Sunflower to his bosom, he had neglected the boy, for his own breast was
full of the natural selfishness of love, and he had not found time to
regard him as he would have done had he been free from the influence
that now exclusively governed him in all things. But when the Sunflower
told him that there was a youth in the village who, oppressed by some
secret care, had so degenerated in the tastes and pursuits of the young
warriors, as absolutely to have incurred their scorn, her husband
recollected the name, and determined as far as he could to comfort him,
and to restore to him the respect of his tribe; and straightway he sent
a young boy to the wigwam of Wawandah, who was then lying on the skin of
a grizzly bear, which he had killed before the spirit of guilty love had
entered into his heart, and the recollection of his skill and prowess in
obtaining which was the only circumstance that still preserved to him a
certain consideration among the elders of the tribe. Astonished, almost
dismayed at the message, Wawandah rose from his couch, and disguising
his feelings, said to the young messenger, “That it was good. He would
go to White Bear’s wigwam presently.” The boy departed, and Wawandah was
torn with emotion. What was the meaning of this message? Since the death
of his father, the Black Vulture, the White Bear had taken no other
notice of him than he had of the young warriors generally; then how was
it that he sent for him now, when almost shunned by the young men of his
tribe; he bowed submissively and uncomplainingly to the effects of the
passion that was preying upon his heart, rendering him regardless of all
things else. Why, he again asked himself, was this? Or had the White