Shawondasee, the lazy one, ruler of the South-wind, had his kingdom in the land of warmth and pleasure of the sunlit tropics. The smoke of his pipe would fill the air with a dreamy haze that caused the grapes and melons to swell into delicious ripeness. He breathed upon the fields until they yielded rich tobacco; he dropped soft and starry blossoms on the meadows and filled the shaded woods with the singing of a hundred different birds. How the wild rose and the shy arbutus and the lily, sweet and languid, loved the idle Shawondasee! How the frost-weary and withered earth would melt and mellow at his sunny touch! Happy Shawondasee! In all his life he had a single sorrow--just one sleepy little sting of pain. He had seen a maiden clad in purest green, with hair as yellow as the bright breast of the oriole, and she stood and nodded at him from the prairie toward the north. But Shawondasee, although he loved the bright-haired maiden and longed for her until he filled the air with sighs of tenderness, was so lazy and listless that he never sought to win her love. Never did he rouse himself and tell her of his passion, but he stayed far to the southward, and murmured half asleep among the palm-trees as he dreamed of the bright maiden. One morning, when he awoke and gazed as usual toward the north, he saw that the beautiful golden hair of the maiden had become as white as snow, and Shawondasee cried out in his sorrow: "Ah, my brother of the North-wind, you have robbed me of my treasure! You have stolen the bright-haired maiden, and have wooed her with your stories of the Northland!" and Shawondasee wandered through the air, sighing with passion until, lo and behold! the maiden disappeared. Foolish Shawondasee! It was no maiden that you longed for. It was the prairie dandelion, and you puffed her away forever with your useless sighing. III HIAWATHA'S CHILDHOOD NO doubt you will wonder what the stories of the Four Winds have to do with Hiawatha, and why he has not been spoken of before; but soon you will see that if you had not read these stories, you could not understand how the life of Hiawatha was different from that of any other Indian. And Hiawatha had been chosen by the great Manito to be the leader of the red men, to share their troubles and to teach them; so of course there were a great many things that took place before he was born that have to be remembered when we think of him. In the full moon, long ago, the beautiful Nokomis was swinging in a swing of grape-vines and playing with her women, when one of them, who had always wished to do her harm, cut the swing and let Nokomis fall to earth. As she fell, she was so fair and bright that she seemed to be a star flashing downward through the air, and the Indians all cried out: "See, a star is dropping to the meadow!"