“And here we are, Mr. Williams. How strange! What a scene is this!”—
“Indeed, Sir, and did we dream of it, when we run around the brick school-house in the street of Long Meadow, and played our boyish pranks in that never-to-be-forgotten and delightful retreat?”
“And do you remember the dress you wore, when first your father brought you from Canada—and what infinite sport you and your brother John made for the children of the school, by the strangeness of your manners, and your Indian whims, before you had learned to accommodate yourselves to such a state of discipline?”
“My memory,” said Mr. Williams, tapping his forehead with his finger, as much like a Frenchman, as an Indian, and winking a smile of great significance—“my memory records those scenes, as if they were the recurrence of yesterday; and I remember, too, that we did not take your ridicule in very good part. And do you not think that you, little fellows, were rather impolite?—And did we not give you a rap, or two, for such disrespect?”
“Indeed, you made yourselves quite the terror of the school, for a little. For nothing, you know, is more frightful in story, to a white man’s child, than the thought of an Indian. He would run from an Indian before he were hatched.”
“And what have you heard lately of my good and venerable father Ely’s family? Blessed be their memory! And what do I not owe them! Some are in heaven; and where are the rest? And all my old friends and patrons in New England—I cannot name them, they are so many?”
“The Elys, all, as you may well believe, who are not saints in heaven, are on their way.”
“I should be base, indeed—I could never respect myself, to forget even for a day the family, who took and cherished my childhood;—and to whom, under God, I owe all that I am more than my brethren of the St. Regis Tribe, in Lower Canada.”
And much and various talk of early and later days, of trifling and more important events, occupied the hour or two, while the canoe was made to stem the current, and bore us along between the wild and romantic shores of Fox River, towards the humble and solitary log-cabin of the Rev. Mr. Williams, perched upon the right bank, ascending; and skirted by what is called an oak-opening, or more properly, an orchard of oaks, scattered here and there, near enough for a shady grove, but too distant to make a forest proper. The beauty of Fox River and of its wooded banks, is hardly to be exceeded by any thing of the kind. Every thing is soft and picturesque to the full satisfaction of the soul. The mind, in contemplating the shifting scene, drinks in pleasure, as if from the current of the river of life.
A little incident in this excursion is perhaps worthy of notice. As the canoe was gliding smoothly along near the shore, a sudden agitation of the bark summoned my attention to the young man forward, who had dropped his paddle, and grasped and fired his rifle at an object in the high grass, under the bank, but invisible to any eye, but that of an Indian;—and all so quick, that one could hardly say, it had occupied time. The rifle was discharged, before I could even look up; and the Indian’s fiery glance, and cry of—“Umph!” followed a deer, as he leaped up the bank, and bounded into the wood. The rifle, as I have called it by mistake, was a shot-gun;—and having been loaded only for water-fowl, could effect no more, than to pepper the poor animal, and make him feel uncomfortable; and perhaps extinguish the light of an eye. The young man seemed greatly vexed to have lost his game.