“Is that true, Bourdon?” demanded Margery, laughing at the Indian’s earnestness.

“I shall be honest, and own that there may be some truth in it—­for the Injin promises nothing, or next to nothing, and it is easy to square accounts, in such cases.  That white men undertake more than they always perform, is quite likely to be the fact The Injin gets his advantage in this matter, by not even thinking of treating his wife as a woman should be treated.”

“How should treat woman?” put in Pigeonswing with warmth.  “When warrior eat venison, gib her rest, eh?  Dat no good—­what you call good, den?  If good hunter husband, she get ’nough—­if an’t good hunter, she don’t get ’nough.  Just so wid Injin—­sometime hungry, sometime full.  Dat way to live!”

“Aye, that may be your red man’s ways, but it is not the manner in which we wish to treat our wives.  Ask pretty Margery, here, if she would be satisfied to wait until her husband had eaten his dinner, and then come in for the scraps.  No-no-Pigeonswing; we feed our women and children first^ and come in last, ourselves.”

“Dat good for pappoose—­he little; want venison—­squaw tough; use to wait.  Do her good.”

Margery now laughed outright, at these specimens of Indian gallantry, which only too well embody the code of the red man’s habits.  Doubtless the heart has its influence among even the most savage people, for nature has not put into our breasts feelings and passions to be discarded by one’s own expedients, or wants.  But no advocate of the American Indian has ever yet been able to maintain that woman fills her proper place in his estimate of claims.  As for Margery, though so long subject to the whims, passions. and waywardness of a drunkard, she had reaped many of the advantages of having been born in that woman’s paradise, New England.  We are no great admirers of the legacy left by the Puritan to his descendants, taken as an inheritance in morals, manners, and customs, and as a whole; though there are parts, in the way of codicils, that there is no portion of the Christian world which might not desire to emulate.  In particular, do we allude to the estimate put upon, and the treatment received by their women.  Our allusion is not to the refinements and gracefulness of polished intercourse; for of them, the Blarney Rock of Plymouth has transmitted but a meagre account in the inventory, and perhaps the less that is said about this portion of the family property the better; but, dropping a few degrees in the social scale, and coming down to the level where we are accustomed to regard people merely as men and women, we greatly question if any other portion of the world can furnish a parallel to the manly, considerate, rational, and wisely discriminating care, that the New England husband, as the rule, bestows on his wife; the father on his daughter; or the brother on his sister.  Gershom was a living, and, all things considered, a remarkable