Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/226

Rh with all his warriors in their complete array, he rode alone—spite of all their remonstrances—across the little brook which separated the camp of the Whites from that of the Indians, and saw the young girl and her mother throw themselves into each other's arms with tears of joy, he stood overpowered by the sight and exclaimed, “The mother must have her child!” turned his horse, recrossed the brook and rejoined his own people without a glance at the darling of his heart, “the White Lily,” who now, in the fifteenth year of her age, returned to her family! What an excellent subject for dramatic treatment! I hope that Mrs. K. will some day publish this beautiful narrative, together with several others which I heard during these evenings.

The massacre of Chicago belongs to the unpleasing portion of the chronicle, and Chicago still retains fresh traces of this event. Yet even that is ennobled by beautiful human actions.

The wooing of my noble and gentlemanly host by the Indian Chief Fourlegs for his daughter, and the arrival of the fat Miss Fourlegs on her buffalo hides in the city, where she met with a refusal, belong to the comic portion of the chronicle, and very much amused me. For the rest, the gentle and refined Mr. K., like many others who have lived much among the Indians, has a real attachment to them, and seems to have an eye rather for the virtues than the failings which are peculiar to this remarkable people. The K.'s resided long in Minnesota, and only within the last few years at Chicago (Illinois), where they have a handsome house with a large garden.

Chicago is one of the most miserable and ugly cities which I have yet seen in America, and is very little deserving of its name, “Queen of the Lake.” For sitting there on the shore of the Lake in wretched déshabille, she resembles rather a huckstress than a queen. Certainly, the city seems for the most part to