“Take all that papa prescribes upon that head; and, talking of heads, you shall have your peruke again after the honeymoon.” Audry was content; and the wedding went off as merrily as though it had been the last act in an old comedy; though the newly-espoused couple did not lead quite so angelical a life afterwards, as either St. Severin of Cologne, or his namesake of Bordeaux. But it was neither to be expected nor required of them. They would not have been half as profitable to the state if they had followed, throughout, the example set them by the saint whose name graced the church wherein they were united.
A Dacota doctor is perhaps, neither in costume nor practice, more absurd than his European brethren of the early part of the last century. His fee is a blanket, a buffalo robe, or a pipe; his dress is chiefly composed of the first two articles; and his cunning lies in his sacred rattle, which he shakes as Christian doctors do their heads, and there is no doubt as much in one as in the other. Wherever he goes he carries with him his medicine-bag; and to ask him what that mysterious article contains, and upon what grounds he applies its contents, would be an insult as profound as if you asked your own medical man for the reasons of his practice, and expected that he would (or could) give you an answer. The Winnebagoes are attired like their learned brethren among the Dacotas; but dress is not thought so much of by them as possession of the medicine-bag: to lose this is to lose reputation. But, savages as these are, they have some very wise observances. The chief of these is the medicine-dance. This is a grand solemnity, given by the doctors, for two reasons: one, for the increase of practice, just as we find the fashion to be at home; the other reason is, in order to appease the dead who have died under medical treatment. And perhaps that is also the reason why our own medicine-men give such neat dinners, such splendid balls, or such enjoyable quadrilles on the carpet and soirées dansantes. These entertainments are born of remorse; and when next you join the saltatory throng at the house of your medical friend, ponder gravely, good reader, on the solemnity of the occasion, and impress upon that fair girl, with her hair à l’Impératrice, that the object for which you mutually point the light fantastic toe, is to rescue the medical master of the house from the revengeful visits of the unskilfully slain at his hands. That understood, plunge with frantic velocity into the valse à deux temps. The sacred rattles of the Dacotas and Winnebagoes are always shaken with maddening rapidity on these occasions, and you are the rattles by which doctors live. The more you are shaken, the better they live; and should you have the honour of perishing by their prescription, find comfort in knowing that other waltzers will perform, not in your memory, but that you may be peacefully forgotten, the “medicine-dance” of the medically murdered.
It will be found only another division of this subject to treat of odd dressers and dresses, after touching upon doctors and costume,—doctors who so often looked like the Laird of Cockpen, of whom we are told that
“His wig was well powther’d and as good as new,
His jacket was red, and his hose they were blue;
He put on a ring, a sword, and cock’d hat;
Ah, who could refuse the Laird wi’ a’ that?”
If the doctors were sometimes queerly costumed, their matches might be occasionally found among the laity. For these I open the last scene, and “Enter mob variously attired.”