This digression, long as it is, has a very intimate connexion with the character of my friend, who early adopted the views of her family, in regard to those friendly Indians, which greatly enlarged her mind, and ever after influenced her conduct. She was, even in childhood, well acquainted with their language, opinions, and customs; and, like every other person possessed of a liberality or benevolence of mind, whom chance had brought acquainted with them, was exceedingly partial to those high-souled and generous natives. The Mohawk language was early familiar to her; she spoke Dutch and English with equal ease and purity, was no stranger to the French tongue, and could, (I think,) read German: I have heard her speak it. From the conversations which her active curiosity led her to hold with native Africans, brought into her father’s family, she was more intimately acquainted with the customs, manners, and government of their native country, than she could have been, by reading all that was ever written on the subject. Books are, no doubt, the granaries of knowledge; but a diligent, inquiring mind, in the active morning of life, will find it strewed like manna, over the face of the earth—and need not, in all cases, rest satisfied with intelligence accumulated by others, and tinctured with their passions and prejudices. Whoever reads Homer or Shakspeare, may daily discover that they describe both nature and art from their own observation. Consequently, you see the images reflected from the mirror of their great minds, differing from the descriptions of others, as the reflection of an object in all its colours and proportions, from an unpolished surface, does from a shadow on a wall, or from a picture drawn from recollection. The enlarged mind of my friend, and her simple, yet easy and dignified manners, made her readily adapt herself to those with whom she conversed, and every where command respect and kindness—and, on a nearer acquaintance, affection followed; but she had too much sedateness and independence to adopt those caressing and insinuating manners, by which the vain and the artful so soon find their way into shallow minds. Her character did not captivate at once, but gradually unfolded itself, and you had always something new to discover. Her style was grave and masculine, without the least embellishment—and at the same time so pure, that every thing she said might be printed without correction, and so plain, that the most ignorant and most inferior persons were never at a loss to comprehend it. It possessed, too, a wonderful flexibility; it seemed to rise and fall with the subject. I have not met with a style, which, to noble and uniform simplicity, united such variety of expression. Whoever drinks knowledge pure at its sources, solely from a delight in filling the capacities of a large mind, without the desire of dazzling or out-shining others; whoever speaks for the sole purpose of conveying to other minds those