Peter's horrid pipes knocked all the romance out of me. It took all the talk of dear old Minister (whose conversation was often like poetry without rhyme), till I was of age, to instil it into me. If it hadn't been for him I should have been a mere practical man, exactly like our Connecticut folks, who have as much sentiment in them in a general way as an onion has of otter of roses. It's lucky when it don't predominate though, for when it does, it spoils the relish for the real business of life.

Mother, when I was a boy, used to coax me up so everlastingly with loaf-cake, I declare I got such a sweet tooth, I could hardly eat plain bread made of flour and corn meal, although it was the wholesomest of the two. When I used to tell Minister this sometimes, as he was flying off the handle, like when we travelled through New York State to Niagara, at the scenery of the Hudson; or Lake George, or that everlastin' water-fall, he'd say--

"Sam, you are as correct as a problem in Euclid, but as cold and dry. Business and romance are like oil and water that I use for a night-lamp, with a little cork dipsey. They oughtn't to be mixed, but each to be separate, or they spoil each other. The tumbler should be nearly full of water, then pour a little oil on the top, and put in your tiny wick and floater, and ignite it. The water goes to the bottom--that's business you see, solid and heavy. The oil and its burner lies on the top--and that's romance. It's a living flame, not enough to illuminate the room, but to cheer you through the night, and if you want more, it will light stronger ones for you. People have a wrong idea of romance, Sam. Properly understood, it's a right keen, lively appreciation of the works of nature, and its beauty, wonders, and sublimity. From thence we learn to fear, to serve, and to adore Him that made them and us. Now, Sam, you understand all the wheels, and pullies, and balances of your wooden clocks; but you don't think anything more of them, than it's a grand speculation for you, because they cost you a mere nothing, seeing they are made out of that which is as cheap as dirt here, and because you make a great profit out of them among the benighted colonists, who know little themselves, and are governed by English officials who know still less. Well, that's nateral, for it is a business view of things.¹ Now sposen you lived in the Far West woods, away from great cities, and never saw a watch or a wooden clock before, and fust sot your eyes on one of them that was as true as the sun, wouldn't you break out into enthusiasm about it, and then extol to the skies the skill and knowledge of the Yankee man that invented and made it? To be sure you would. Wouldn't it carry you off into contemplatin' of the planet whose daily course and speed it measures so exact? Wouldn't you go on from that point, and ask yourself what must be the wisdom and power of Him who made innumerable worlds, and caused them to form part of a great, grand, magnificent, and harmonious system, and fly off the handle, as you call it, in admiration and awe? To be sure you would. And if anybody said you was full of romance who heard you, wouldn't you have pitied his ignorance, and said there are other enjoyments we are capable of besides corporeal ones? Wouldn't you be a wiser and a better man? Don't you go now for to run down romance, Sam; if you do, I shall think you don't know there is a divinity within you," and so he would preach on for an hour, till I thought it was time for him to say Amen and give the dismissal benediction.

¹ It is manifest Mr Hopewell must have had Paley's illustration in his mind.

Well, that's the way I came by it, I was inoculated for it, but I was always a hard subject to inoculate. Vaccination was tried on me over and over again by the doctor before I took it, but at last it came and got into the system. So it was with him and his romance, it was only the continual dropping that wore the stone at last, for I didn't listen as I had ought to have done. If he had a showed me where I could have made a dollar, he would have found me wide awake, I know, for I set out in life with a determination to go ahead, and I have; and now I am well to do, but still I wish I had a minded more what he did say, for, poor old soul, he is dead now. An opportunity lost, is like missing a passage, another chance may never offer to make the voyage worth while. The first wind may carry you to the end. A good start often wins the race. To miss your chance of a shot, is to lose the bird.

How true these "saws" of his are; but I don't recollect half of them, I am ashamed to say. Yes, it took me a long time to get romance in my sails, and Peter shook it out of them by one shiver in the wind. So we went to work. The moose was left on the shore, for the doctor said he had another destination for him than the water-fall. Betty, Jackson, and Peter, were embarked with their baskets and utensils in the boats, and directed to prepare our dinner.

As soon as they were fairly off, we strolled leisurely back to the house, which I had hardly time to examine before. It was an irregular building made of hewn logs, and appeared to have been enlarged, from time to time, as more accommodation had been required. There was neither uniformity nor design in it, and it might rather be called a small cluster of little tenements than a house. Two of these structures alone seemed to correspond in appearance and size. They protruded in front, from each end of the main building, forming with it three sides of a square. One of these was appropriated to the purposes of a museum, and the other used as a workshop. The former contained an exceedingly interesting collection.

"This room," he said, "I cannot intrust to Jackson, who would soon throw everything into confusion by grouping instead of classifying things. This country is full of most valuable minerals, and the people know as much about them as a pudding does of the plums contained in it. Observe this shelf, Sir, there are specimens of seven different kinds of copper on it; and on this one, fragments of four kinds of lead. In the argentiferous galena is a very considerable proportion of silver. Here is a piece of a mineral called molybdena of singular beauty, I found it at Gaberous Bay, in Cape Breton. The iron ores you see are of great variety. The coal-fields of this colony are immense in extent, and incalculable in value. All this case is filled with their several varieties. These precious stones are from the Bay of Fundy. Among them are amethyst, and other varieties of crystal, of quartz, henlandite, stibite, analcine, chabasie, albite, nesotype, silicious sinter, and so on. Pray do me the favour to accept this amethyst. I have several others of equal size and beauty, and it is of no use to me."

He also presented Cutler with a splendid piece of nesotype or needle stone, which he begged him to keep as a memento of the "Bachelor Beaver's-dam."

"Three things, Mr Slick," he continued, "are necessary to the development of the mineral wealth of this province--skill, capital, and population; and depend upon it the day is not far distant, when this magnificent colony will support the largest population, for its area, in America."

I am not a mineralogist myself, Squire, and much of what he said was heathen Greek to me, but some general things I could understand, and remember such as that there are (to say nothing of smaller ones) four immense independent coal-fields in the eastern section of Nova Scotia; namely, at Picton, Pomquet, Cumberland, and Londonderry; the first of which covers an area of one hundred square miles: and that there are also at Cape Breton two other enormous fields of the same mineral, one covering one hundred and twenty square miles, and presenting at Lingan a vein eleven feet thick. Such facts I could comprehend, and I was sorry when I heard the bugle announcing that the boat had returned for us.

"Jessie," said the doctor, "here is a little case containing a curiously fashioned and exquisitely worked ring, and a large gold cross and chain, that I found while searching among the ruins of the nunnery at Louisburg. I have no doubt they belonged to the superior of the convent. These baubles answered her purpose by withdrawing the eyes of the profane from her care-worn and cold features; they will serve mine also, by showing how little you require the aid of art to adorn a person nature has made so lovely."

"Hallo!" sais I to myself, "well done, Doctor, if that don't beat cock-fighting, then there ain't no snakes in Varginny, I vow. Oh! you ain't so soft as you look to be after all; you may be a child of nature, but that has its own secrets, and if you hain't found out its mysteries, it's a pity."

"They have neither suffered," he continued, "from the corrosion of time nor the asceticism of a devotee, who vainly thought she was serving God by voluntarily withdrawing from a world into which he himself had sent her, and by foregoing duties which he had expressly ordained she should fulfil. Don't start at the sight of the cross; it is the emblem of Christianity, and not of a sect, who claim it exclusively, as if He who suffered on it died for them only. This one has hitherto been used in the negation of all human affections, may it shed a blessing on the exercise of yours."

I could hardly believe my ears; I didn't expect this of him. I knew he was romantic, and all that; but I did not think there was such a depth and strength of feeling in him.

"I wish," I said, "Jehu Judd could a heard you, Doctor, he would have seen the difference between the clear grit of the genuine thing and a counterfeit, that might have made him open his eyes and wink."

"Oh! Slick," said he, "come now, that's a good fellow, don't make me laugh, or I shall upset these glass cases;" and before Jessie could either accept or decline this act of gallantry, he managed to lead the way to the lake. The girls and I embarked in the canoe, and the rest of the party in the boat, but before I stepped into the bark, I hid the pipes of Peter behind the body of the moose, very much to the amusement of Jessie and the doctor, who both seemed to agree with me in giving a preference to the bugle.

I never saw so lovely a spot in this country as the one we had chosen for our repast, but it was not my intention to land until the preparations for our meal were all fully completed; so as soon as Jane leaped ashore, I took her place and asked Jessie to take another look at the lake with me. Desiring Jackson to recall us with his bugle when required, we coasted up the west side of the lake for about half a mile, to a place where I had observed two enormous birches bend over the water, into which they were ultimately doomed to fall, as the current had washed away the land where they stood, so as to leave them only a temporary resting-place. Into this arched and quiet retreat we impelled our canoe, and paused for awhile to enjoy its cool and refreshing shade.

"Jessie," said I, "this time to-morrow I shall be on the sea again."

"So soon?" she replied.

"Yes, dear; business calls us away, and life is not all like a day on the lake."

"No, no," she said, "not to me; it is the only really happy one I have spent since I left my country. You have all been so kind to me; you, the captain, and the doctor, all of you, you have made no difference, you have treated me as if I was one of you, as if I was born a lady."

"Hasn't the doctor always been kind to you?" I said.

"Oh, yes," she replied, "always very kind, but there is nobody here like him."

"He loves you very much."

"Yes," she said, in the most unembarrassed and natural manner possible, "he told me so himself."

"And can't you return his love?"

"I do love him as I do my father, brother, or sister."

"Couldn't you add the word husband?"

"Never, never," she said, "Mr Slick. He thinks he loves me now, but he may not think so always. He don't see the red blood now, he don't think of my Indian mother; when he comes nearer perhaps he will see plainer. No, no, half-cast and outcast, I belong to no race. Shall I go back to my tribe and give up my father and his people? they will not receive me, and I must fall asleep with my mother. Shall I stay here and cling to him and his race, that race that scorns the half-savage? never! never! when he dies I shall die too. I shall have no home then but the home of the spirits of the dead."

"Don't talk that way, Jessie," I said, "you make yourself wretched, because you don't see things as they are. It's your own fault if you are not happy. You say you have enjoyed this day."

"Oh, yes," she said, "no day like this; it never came before, it don't return again. It dies to-night, but will never be forgotten."

"Why not live where you are? Why not have your home here by this lake, and this mountain? His tastes are like yours, and yours like his; you can live two lives here,--the forest of the red man around you--the roof of the white one above you. To unite both is true enjoyment; there is no eye to stare here, no pride to exclude, no tongue to offend. You need not seek the society of others, let them solicit yours, and the doctor will make them respect it."

It was a subject on which her mind appeared to have been made up. She seemed like a woman that has lost a child, who hears your advice, and feels there is some truth in it, but the consolation reaches not her heart.

"It can't be," she said, with a melancholy smile, as if she was resigning something that was dear to her, "God or nature forbids it. If there is one God for both Indian and white man, he forbids it. If there are two great spirits, one for each, as my mother told me, then both forbid it. The great spirit of the pale faces," she continued, "is a wicked one, and the white man is wicked. Wherever he goes, he brings death and destruction. The woods recede before him--the wild fowl leave the shores--the fish desert their streams--the red man disappears. He calls his deer and his beaver, and his game (for they are all his, and were given to him for food and for clothing), and travels far, far away, and leaves the graves and the bones of his people behind him. But the white man pursues him, day and night, with his gun, and his axe, and fire-water; and what he spares with the rifle, rum, despair, and starvation destroy. See," she said, and she plucked a withered red cone from a shumack that wept over the water, "see that is dyed with the blood of the red man."

"That is prejudice," I said.

"No, it is the truth," she replied. "I know it. My people have removed twice, if not three times, and the next move will be to the sea or the grave."

"It is the effect of civilization, and arts, and the power of sciences and learning, over untutored nature," I said.

"If learning makes men wicked, it is a bad thing," she observed; "for the devil instructs men how to destroy. But rum ain't learning, it is poison; nor is sin civilization, nor are diseases blessings, nor madness reason."

"That don't alter things," I said, "if it is all true that you say, and there is too much reality in it, I fear; but the pale faces are not all bad, nor the red all good. It don't apply to your case."

"No," she said, "nature forbids the two races to mingle. That that is wild, continues wild; and the tame remains tame. The dog watches his sleeping master; and the wolf devours him. The wild-duck scorns confinement; and the partridge dies if compelled to dwell with domestic fowls. Look at those birds," she said, as she threw a chip among a flock of geese that were floating down the lake, "if the beautiful Indian wild bird consorts with one of them, the progeny die out. They are mongrels, they have not the grace, the shape, or the courage of either. Their doom is fixed. They soon disappear from the face of the earth and the waters. They are despised by both breeds;" and she shook her head, as if she scorned and loathed herself, and burst into a passionate flood of tears.

"Jessie," said I, and I paused a moment, for I wanted to give her a homoeopathic dose of common sense--and those little wee doses work like charms, that's a fact. "Jessie," says I, and I smiled, for I wanted her to shake off those voluntary trammels. "Jessie, the doctor ain't quite quite tame, and you ain't quite wild. You are both six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other, and just about as like as two peas."

Well it's astonishing what that little sentence did. An ounce of essence is worth a gallon of fluid. A wise saw is more valuable than a whole book, and a plain truth is better than an argument. She had no answer for that. She had been reasoning, without knowing it, as if in fact she had been in reality an Indian. She had imbibed in childhood the feelings of her mother, who had taken the first step and repented it--of one who had deserted, but had not been adopted--who became an exile and remained an alien--who had bartered her birthright for degradation and death. It is natural that regret for the past and despair for the future should have been the burden of the mournful ditties of such a woman; that she who had mated without love, and lived without affection, the slave, the drudge, but not the wife or companion of her master, should die with imprecations on her lips for a race who were the natural foes of her people, and who had reduced her to be an object of scorn and contempt to both. It is no wonder therefore poor Jessie had a repugnance to the union, when she remembered her mother, and the sad lesson her unhappy life and fearful death contained. It was a feeling difficult to overcome.

"Jessie," sais I, "nature, instead of forbiddin' it, approves of it; for like takes to like. I don't say it to please you, but you are as good as he is, or any white man in the world. Your forefathers on your mother's side are a brave, manly, intelligent race; they are free men, and have never been subdued or enslaved by any one: and if they have degenerated at all, it is because they have contracted, as you say, vices from the white man. You have reason to be proud of being descended from a race of warriors. On the other hand, your father is a Highlander, and they too have always been free, because they were brave; they are the noblest fellows in Europe. As for the English, there are none now, except in Wales, and they are called Taffies--which means lunatics, for they are awful proud, and their mountains are so high, every fellow says his ancestors were descended from the man in the moon. But the present race are a mixture of Taffies, French, Danes, Saxons, Scotch, and the Lord knows who all, and to my mind are all the better of it."

"But the colour," said she.

"As to colour!" said I, "nations differ in every shade, from black up to chalk white. The Portuguese, Italians, and Turks are darker than the Indian if anything; Spaniards and Greeks about the same."

"And do they intermarry?"

"I guess they do," said I; "the difference of language only stops them,--for it's hard to make love when you can't understand each other,--but colour never."

"Is that now really true?" she said; "for I am ignorant of the world."

"True as preachin'," said I, "and as plain as poverty."

She paused awhile, and said slowly:

"Well, I suppose if all the world says and does differently, I must be wrong, for I am unacquainted with everything but my own feelings; and my mother taught me this, and bade me never to trust a white man. I am glad I was wrong, for if I feel I am right, I am sure I shall be happy."

"Well," sais I, "I am sure you will be so, and this is just the place, above all others in the world, that will suit you, and make you so. Now," sais I, "Jessie, I will tell you a story;" and I told her the whole tale of Pocahontas; how she saved Captain Smith's life in the early settlement of Virginia, and afterwards married Mr Rolfe, and visited the court of England, where all the nobles sought her society. And then I gave her all the particulars of her life, illness, and death, and informed her that her son, who stood in the same relationship to the whites as she did, became a wealthy planter in Virginia, and that one of his descendants, lately deceased, was one of the most eloquent as well as one of the most distinguished men in the United States. It interested her uncommonly, and I have no doubt greatly contributed to confirm her in the decision she had come to. I will not trouble you, Squire, with the story, for it is so romantic, I believe everybody has heard of it. I promised to give her a book containing all the details.

The bugle now sounded our recall, and in a few minutes we were seated on the grass, and enjoying our meal with an appetite that exercise, excitement, and forest air never fail to give. Songs, trout-fishing, and stories agreeably occupied the afternoon; and when the sun began to cast long shadows from the mountain, we reËmbarked with our traps, and landed at the cove near the clump of trees where we started in the morning. While preparations were making for tea in the house, I lit my cigar to take a stroll with Cutler, and talk over our arrangements for an early start in the morrow, and proceeding immediately to sea. In the mean time, I briefly stated to the doctor that he would now find no further obstacle to his wishes, and counselled him to lose no time, while the impression was favourable, to bring his long-pending negotiation to a conclusion.

"Slick," said he, laughing, "your government ought to have prevailed upon you to remain in the diplomatic service. You are such a capital negotiator."

"Well," said I, "I believe I would have succeeded in that line; but do you know how?"

"By a plentiful use of soft sawder," said he.

"No, Doctor, I knew you would say that; and it ain't to be despised neither, I can tell you. No, it's because you go coolly to work, for you are negotiatin' for another. If you don't succeed, it's the fault of the mission, of course, and defeat won't break your heart; if you do carry your point, why, in the natur of things, it is all your own skill. I have done famously for you; but I made a bungling piece of business for myself, I assure you. What my brother, the lawyer, used to say is very true: 'A man who pleads his own cause has a fool for his client.' You can't praise yourself unless it's a bit of brag, and that I can do as well as any one, I do suppose; but you can't lay the whitewash on handily no more than you can brush the back of your own coat when it is on. Cutler and I will take a stroll, and do you invite Jessie out, to see the moon on the lake."

In about an hour, Peter, who had found his pipes to his infinite delight, intimated supper was ready; and the dispersed groups returned, and sat down to a meal which, in addition to the tea and coffee and its usual accompaniments at country-houses, had some substantial viands for those, like myself, who had done more talking than eating at dinner. In a short time, the girls retired for the night, and we arranged for a peep of day return.

"Mr Slick," said the doctor, "I have ordered the boy to take the moose down to the village as my share of the sea-stores. Will you give me leave to go a part of the cruise with you?"

"With great pleasure," said I; "it's just what I was going to ask the favour of you to do. It's the very identical thing."

"Come, Peter," said he, "I will show you where to turn in;" and returning, in a few minutes, with Jackson, desired him to attend the captain.

When we were alone, he said:

"Come this way, Mr Slick. Put your hat on--I want you to take a turn with me."

And leading me down to the verge of the woods, where I saw a light, we entered a large bark wigwam, where he said he often slept during the hot weather.

It was not made in the usual conical form, but resembled a square tent, which among Indians generally indicates there is a large family, and that they propose to occupy the same spot for some time. In fact, it was half wigwam, half summer-house, resembling the former in appearance, construction, and material; but was floored on account of the damp ground, and contained a small table, two chairs, and a couple of rustic seats large enough to sleep upon, which, on the present occasion, had hunters' beds on them. The tent, or more properly camp, as it is generally called here, was so contrived as to admit of the door being shifted according to the wind. On the present occasion, the opening was towards the lake, on which the moon was casting its silver light.

Here we sat till a late hour, discoursing, over our cigars, on a variety of subjects, the first and last of which topic was Jessie, who had, it appeared, at last accepted the Bachelor Beaver. Altogether, it was a charming visit; and left a most agreeable recollection of the enjoyment that is to be found in "a day and a night in the woods."