The recollections of my earliest childhood are of Indians. My grandfather had an old Indian woman in his house for the greater part of the first fifteen years of my life. Our house-servants and field-labourers were chiefly Indians. It was my grandfather's custom, and had been that of his ancestors, ever since their settlement, a hundred and fifty years ago, in the vicinity of the tribe, to take Indian boys at the age of four or five years, and keep them until they had attained their majority, when they usually left us, chiefly to become sailors--an employment in which their services were specially valued. During my minority we had three of these little foresters in our house, and these drew around them their fathers, and mothers, and sisters, and brothers: very frequently our house was an "Indian Camp" indeed. From the boys I learned the sports and pastimes of Indian childhood, and, from the aged, their traditional history and wild legends of supernatural horrors. So thoroughly has my mind become imbued with their superstitions, that at times I find difficulty in reconciling myself to the plain matter-of-fact narratives of the men of my own creed and colour. I have to pinch myself like one awaking from an unpleasant dream, and to say to the wild creations of Indian fancy, "Ye are shadows all." It is quite impossible that any one, who has not been among and "of" the North American Indians, should be able to form even a tolerable idea of the extent to which they are acted upon by their superstitions. They are governed entirely by them; they enter into their conceptions of every occurrence. The old Indian woman, before mentioned, afforded a striking example of the strength of their faith in these "thick coming fancies." There was nothing, I believe I may say in the world, which was not with her a "spirit." The waves were "spirits"--the meteors were "spirits"--the winds singing their lullabies were "spirits"--the thunders were "spirits." In the long winter evenings, when seated before the wood fire, which at that season of the year is perpetually burning on a New England hearth, the sound was heard of a cricket chirping in the hollow wood; starting with alarm she would exclaim "a spirit!" and minutes would elapse before she would regain her composure. Seated in a little chair at her side, how I used to enjoy her long but never tedious stories of the wonderful things she had seen and heard--of the phantoms which had visited her bedside, or whispered strange things in her ear--of the several conversations she had had, face to face, with the Father of Evil! Once in particular she had seen the latter grim personage when she was returning from a "husking frolic," _i.e._ an assemblage of persons met for the purpose of stripping the husks from Indian corn. She described him as a rather tall and exceedingly gaunt old gentleman, wearing his hair much as Andrew Skurliewhitter is described as wearing his in "The Fortunes of Nigel;" his face the colour