their approval and admiration. He became one of the most active, athletic, and swift-footed participants in their various games and dances, and was particularly expert and successful, as a hunter, in the use of the rifle and the bow. He was also noted, even in his youth, for his reckless daring as a rider, and his graceful feats of horsemanship, which the fine stables of his father enabled him to indulge. To use

the words of an old Indian woman who knew him at this period, “The squaws would quit hoeing corn, and smile and gaze upon him as he rode by the corn-patch."

ABEL STEVENS.1 1815-.

From "The History of Methodism."

121. THE EARLY METHODIST CLERGY IN AMERICA.

THEY Composed a class which, perhaps, will never be seen again. They were distinguished by native mental vigor, shrewdness, extraordinary knowledge of human nature, many of them by overwhelming natural eloquence, the effects of which on popular assemblies are scarcely paralleled in the history of ancient or modern oratory, and not a few by powers of satire and wit which made the gainsayer cower before them. To these intellectual attributes they added great excellences of the heart, a zeal which only burned more fervently where that of ordinary men would have grown faint, a courage that exulted in perils, a generosity which knew no bounds, and left most of them in want in their latter days, a forbearance and co-operation with each other which are seldom found in large bodies, an entire devotion to one work, and, withal, a simplicity of character which extended even to their manners and their apparel. They were likewise characterized by rare physical abilities. They were mostly robust. The feats of labor and endurance which they performed, in incessantly preaching in villages and cities, among slave huts and Indian wigwams, in journeyings seldom interrupted by stress of weather, in fording creeks, swimming rivers, sleeping in forests, these, with the novel circumstances with which such a career frequently brought them into contact, afford examples of life and character which, in the hands of genius, might be the materials for a new department of romantic literature. They were men who labored as if the judgment fires were about to break out on the world, and time to end with their day. They were precisely the men whom the moral wants of the new world at the time demanded.

1 A prominent clergyman of the Methodist church. His History of Methodism is a work of great research and value. A native of Pennsylvania.

FRANCIS PARKMAN. 1823-. (Manual, pp. 496, 505.)

From "The Conspiracy of Pontiac."

122. CHARACTER OF THE CANADIANS.

THE Canadian is usually a happy man. Life sits lightly upon him; he laughs at its hardships, and soon forgets its sorrows. A lover of roving and adventure, of the frolic and the dance, he is little troubled with thoughts of the past or the future, and little plagued with avarice or ambition. At Detroit, all his propensities found ample scope. Aloof from the world, the simple colonists shared none of its pleasures and excitements, and were free from many of its cares. Nor were luxuries wanting which civilization might have envied them. The forests teemed with game, the marshes with wild fowl, and the rivers with fish. The apples and pears of the old Canadian orchards are, even to this day, held in esteem. The poorer inhabitants made wine from the fruit of the wild grape, which grew profusely in the woods, while the wealthier class procured a better quality from Montreal, in exchange for the canoe-loads of furs which they sent down with every year. Here, as elsewhere in Canada, the long winter was a season of social enjoyment; and when, in summer and autumn, the traders and voyageurs, the coureurs des bois, and half-breeds, gathered from the distant forests of the north-west, the whole settlement was alive with frolic gayety, with dancing and feasting, drinking, gaming, and carousing.

JOHN GILMARY SHEA.1 1824-.

From "The History of Catholic Missions among the Indians.”
123.

DIFFICULTIES OF THE ENTERPRISE.

THE discovery of America, like every other event in the history of the world, had, in the designs of God, the great object of the salvation of mankind. In that event, more clearly, perhaps, than it is often given to us here below, we can see and adore that Providence which thus gave to millions, long sundered from the rest of man by pathless oceans, the light of the gospel and the proffered boon of redemption.

The field was one as yet unmatched for extent and difficulty. That region now studded with cities and towns, traversed in every direction by the panting steam-car or lightning telegraph, was then an almost unbroken forest, save where the wide prairie rolled its billows of grass

1 This writer is much distinguished for his numerous works, mostly relating to the early missions of the Roman Catholic church in America. He is a native of New York.

towards the western mountains, or was lost in the sterile, salt, and sandy plains of the south-west. No city raised to heaven spire, dome, or minaret; no plough turned up the rich, alluvial soil; no metal dug from the bowels of the earth had been fashioned into instruments to aid man in the arts of peace and war.

The country itself presented a thousand obstacles: there was danger from flood, danger from wild beasts, danger from the roving savage, danger from false friends, danger from the furious rapids on rivers, danger of loss of sight, of health, of use of motion and of limbs, in the new, strange life of an Indian wigwam.

Once established in a tribe, the difficulties were increased. After months, nay, years, of teaching, the missionaries found that the fickle savage was easily led astray; never could they form pupils to our life and manners. The nineteenth century failed, as the seventeenth failed, in raising up priests from among the Iroquois or the Algonquin; and at this day a pupil of the Propaganda, who disputed in Latin on theses of Peter Lombard, roams at the head of a half-naked band in the billowy plains of Nebraska.

CHAPTER II.

ESSAYISTS, MORALISTS, AND REFORMERS.

1

JAMES IREDELL.1 1750-1799.

From an "Essay."

124. BENEFICIAL INFLUENCE OF FEMALE SOCIETY.

WOMAN has been ordained to perform a most important part in the moral government of the world. The mother forms the first rudiments of the infant mind, and instils into the infant bosom the first principles of virtuous action. The sister refines and softens the harsher manners and more turbulent feelings of the brother. The passion for a virtuous mistress purifies the sentiments and elevates the thoughts of the lover, while she binds him in the chains of despotism only to lead him in the paths of honor. The wife brings to the aid of her husband a tender sympathy that robs sorrow of its sting, a fortitude that never quails beneath calamity or distress, a prudence ever vigilant, and an instinctive sagacity that never falters. Such was the influence of woman even in the days when her sole titles to admiration and respect were her personal charms and the virtues of her heart. Happily, in our time, education, without diminishing these claims, has added others of the highest character. The cultivation of her intellect has left man little to boast of his assumed superiority. Where can you meet united such refined intelligence, such delicacy of taste, such purity of thought, such utter loathsomeness of vice in every shape, such fortitude in every situation in which we are called on to bear and to suffer, as in woman? Can you fail to be improved by an association which offers to you such examples, clothed in the most captivating form?

In youth there can scarcely be found a more efficient corrective of vicious propensities than the society of virtuous and enlightened woman.

1 Born in England, but emigrated in early life to North Carolina, and became eminent as a statesman and jurist.

JOSEPH DENNIE. 1768-1812. (Manual, p. 497.)

From "The Lay Preacher."

125. REFLECTIONS ON THE SEASONS.

“Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.'

THE sensitive Gray, in a frank letter to his friend West, assures him that, when the sun grows warm enough to tempt him from the fireside, he will, like all other things, be the better for his influence ; for the sun is an old friend, and an excellent nurse, &c. This is an opinion which will be easily entertained by every one who has been cramped by the icy hand of Winter, and who feels the gay and renovating influence of Spring. In those mournful months when vegetables and animals are alike coerced by cold, man is tributary to the howling storm and the sullen sky, and is, in the phrase of Johnson, a "slave to gloom; " but when the earth is disencumbered of her load of snows, and warmth is felt, and twittering swallows are heard, he is again jocund and free. Nature renews her charter to her sons. Hence is enjoyed, in the highest luxury,

"Day, and the sweet approach of even and morn,
And sight of vernal bloom and summer's rose,
And flocks, and herds, and human face divine."

It is nearly impossible for me to convey to my readers an idea of the "vernal delight" felt at this period by the Lay Preacher, far declined in the vale of years. My spectral figure, pinched by the rude gripe of January, becomes as thin as that "dagger of lath" employed by the vaunting Falstaff, and my mind, affected by the universal desolation of winter, is nearly as vacant of joy and bright ideas as the forest is of leaves and the grove is of song. Fortunately for my happiness, this is only periodical spleen. Though in the bitter months, surveying my attenuated body, I exclaim with the melancholy prophet, "My leanness, my leanness! woe is me!" and though, adverting to the state of my mind, I behold it "all in a robe of darkest grain," yet when April and May reign in sweet vicissitude, I give, like Horace, care to the winds, and perceive the whole system excited by the potent stimulus of sunshine. ... I have myself in winter felt hostile to those whom I could smile upon in May, and clasp to my bosom in June.