the apparently systematic doing to death, when drunk, under circumstances
of the most revolting atrocity, of an unfortunate wife.

Though the proximate result of drink is with the Indian more alarming than
with the white, the ultimate evils and sorrows wrought by continued excess
in drink are, of course, identical in both cases: moral sensibilities
blunted; manhood degraded; mind wrecked; worldly substance dissipated;
health shattered; strength sapped; every mendacious and tortuous bent
of one's nature stimulated, and given free scope.




HIS HUMOR.


In its very nature this essay will partake largely of the element
of historical preciseness, and if it do not, I have so far failed to
gain my end. I have wished to introduce matter of a kind calculated to
relieve this, and to insure the escape of the essay from the charge of
a well-sustained dryness.

Of the humorous instinct of the Indian, as indulged toward his
fellow-Indian, I cannot speak with confidence; of the malign
operation upon myself of the same instinct, I can speak with somewhat
more exactness, and with somewhat saddening recollections. The cases,
indeed, where I have been exposed to the play of his humor exhibit him
in so superlatively complacent an aspect, and myself in so painfully
inglorious a one, that I refrain, nay shrink, from rehearsing the
discomposing circumstances. I should be pleased if I could call to mind