I have often heard my friend speak of an old man, who, being carried away in his infancy by some hostile tribe who had slain his parents, was rescued very soon after by a tribe of friendly Indians, who, from motives of humanity, resolved to bring him up among themselves, that he might, in their phrase, “learn to bend the bow, and speak truth.” When it was discovered, some years after, that he was still living, his relations reclaimed him, and the community wished him to return and inherit his father’s lands, now become more considerable. The Indians were unwilling to part with their protégé, and he was still more reluctant to return. This was considered as a bad precedent; the early settlers having found it convenient in several things regarding hunting, food, &c. to assimilate in some degree with the Indians; and the young men, occasionally, at that early period, joined their hunting and fishing parties. It was considered as a matter of serious import to reclaim this young alien, lest others should be lost to the community and to their religion, by following his example. With difficulty they forced him home—where they never could have detained him, had they not carefully and gradually inculcated into his mind the truths of christianity. To those instructions, even his Indian predilections taught him to listen; for it was the religion of his fathers, and venerable to him as such: still, however, his dislike of our manners was never entirely conquered, nor was his attachment to his foster fathers ever much diminished. He was possessed of a very sound intellect, and used to declaim with the most vehement eloquence, against our crafty and insidious encroachments on our old friends. His abhorrence of the petty falsehoods to which custom has too well reconciled us, and those little artifices which we all occasionally practise, rose to a height fully equal to that felt by Gulliver. Swift and this other misanthrope, though they lived at the same time, could not have had any intercourse, else one might have supposed the invectives which he has put into the mouth of Gulliver, were borrowed from this demi-savage; whose contempt and hatred of selfishness, meanness, and duplicity, were expressed in language worthy of the dean: insomuch, that years after I had heard of this singular character, I thought, on reading Gulliver’s asperities, after returning from Houyhnhnmland, that I had met my old friend again. One really does meet with characters that fiction would seem too bold in portraying. This original had an aversion to liquor, which amounted to abhorrence; being embittered by his regret at the mischiefs resulting from it to his old friends, and rage at the traders for administering the means of depravity. He could never bear any seasoning to his food, and despised luxury in all its forms.