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118 neighbor. When excited they ejaculate Will! Will!—sharp and staccato—it is possibly a conception of the English well. But it often comes out in the place of bad, as the Sepoy orderly in India reports to his captain, "Ramnak Jamnak dead, Joti Prasad very sick—all vell!" The savages win and lose with the stoicism habitual to them, rarely drawing the "navajon," like the Mexican "lepero," over a disputed point; and when a man has lost his last rag, he rises in nude dignity and goes home. Their language ignores the violent and offensive abuse of parents and female relatives, which distinguishes the Asiatic and the African from the European Billingsgate: the worst epithets that can be applied to a man are miser, coward, dog, woman. With them good temper is good breeding—a mark of gentle blood. A brave will stand up and harangue his enemies, exulting how he scalped their sires, and squaws, and sons, without calling forth a grunt of irritation. Ceremony and manners, in our sense of the word, they have none, and they lack the profusion of salutations which usually distinguishes barbarians. An Indian appearing at your door rarely has the civility to wait till beckoned in; he enters the house, with his quiet catlike gait and his imperturbable countenance, saying, if a Sioux, "How!" or "How! How!" meaning Well? shakes hands, to which he expects the same reply, if he has learned "paddling with the palms" from the whites—this, however, is only expected by the chiefs and braves—and squats upon his hams in the Eastern way, I had almost said the natural way, but to man, unlike all other animals, every way is equally natural, the chair or the seat upon the ground. He accepts a pipe if offered to him, devours what you set before him—those best acquainted with the savage, however, avoid all unnecessary civility or generosity: Milesian-like, he considers a benefit his due, and if withheld, he looks upon his benefactor as a "mean man"—talks or smokes as long as he pleases, and then rising, stalks off without a word. His ideas of time are primitive. The hour is denoted by pointing out the position of the sun; the days, or rather the nights, are reckoned by sleeps; there are no weeks; the moons, which are literally new, the old being nibbled away by mice, form the months, and suns do duty for years. He has, like the Bedouin and the Esquimaux, sufficient knowledge of the heavenly bodies to steer his course over the pathless sage-sea. Night-work, however, is no favorite with him except in cases of absolute necessity. Counting is done upon man's first abacus, the fingers, and it rarely extends beyond ten. The value of an article was formerly determined by beads and buffaloes; dollars, however, are now beginning to be generally known.

The only arts of the Indians are medicine and the use of arms. They are great in the knowledge of simples and tisanes. The leaves of the white willow are the favorite emetic; wounds are dressed with astringent herbs, and inflammations are reduced by