“It is the character of the artificial state to which society is fast verging,” replied Paul, “to prefer accomplishments to qualities, ornament to usefulness, luxury to comfort, tinsel to gold: setting aside the consideration of a future state, this system might be well enough, if the drawing–room, the theatre, and the ball were the sum of human life; but it is ill calculated to render man dignified in his character, and useful to his fellow–creatures, or woman what she ought to be,—the comfort, the solace, the ornament of home.” “These observations may be true as regards England or France,” replied Reginald; “but you surely would not apply them to our country?” “To a certain extent, I do,” answered the missionary. “I have been now thirty years on this continent, and have observed that, as colonists, the Americans have been very faithful imitators of these defects in their mother country; I am not sure that they will be rendered less so by their political emancipation.” The conversation was now straying rather too far from the subject to which Reginald desired to confine it: waving, therefore, all reply to the missionary’s last observation, he said, “If I understood you aright, there were, beyond these studies and accomplishments of Prairie–bird, some other means employed by you, to give and preserve to her the extraordinary influence which you say that she possesses over the Indians.” “There were,” replied Paul Müller: “amongst others, I enabled her to vaccinate most of the children in this band, by which means they escaped the fatal effects of a disorder that has committed dreadful ravages among the surrounding tribes: and I have instructed her in some of the elementary calculations of astronomy; owing to which they look upon her as a superior being, commissioned by the Great Spirit to live among them, and to do them good: thus her person is safe, and her tent as sacred from intrusion as the Great Medicine Lodge. I am allowed to occupy a compartment in it, where I keep our little stores of books and medicines; and she goes about the camp on her errands of benevolence, followed by the attachment and veneration of all classes and ages!” “Happy existence!” exclaimed Reginald; “and yet,” added he, musing, “she cannot, surely, be doomed through life to waste such sweetness on an air so desert!” “I know not,” answered the missionary. “God’s purposes are mysterious, and the instruments that he chooses for effecting them, various as the flowers on the prairie. Many an Indian warrior has that sweet child turned from the path of blood,—more than one uplifted tomahawk has fallen harmless at the voice of her entreaty; nay, I have reason to hope, that in Wingenund, and in several others of the tribe, she has partially uprooted the weeds of hatred and revenge; and sown in their stead the seeds of gospel truth. Surely, Reginald Brandon, you would not call such an existence wasted?”