The hut (for, in the majority of cases, it is really little better) that,
with excess of boldness, commingles its cramped, unpleasing outlines with
the forest's wealth of foliage; and has reared its unshapely structure on
the site of the historic wigwam, obliterating, in its ruthless, intrusive,
advent, that lingering relic of the picturesque aspect of Indian life--a
relic that, with its emblems and inner garniture of war, bids a scion
of the race indulge a prideful retrospect of his sometime grandeur,
and pristine might; that has power to invoke stirring recollections of
a momentous and a thrilling past; to re-animate and summon before him
the shadowy figures of his redoubtable sires, and re-enact their lofty
deeds: in view of which, there is wafted to him a breath, laden with
moving memories of that glorious age, when aught but pre-eminence was
foreign to his soul; when, though a rude and savage, he was yet a lordly,
being; when he owned the supremacy, brooked the dictation, of none;
when his existence was a round of joysome light-heartedness, and he,
a stranger to constraint--this habitation of the Indian, to my mind,
emphasizes his melancholy, and, perhaps, inevitable decadence, rather
than symbolizes his partnership with the white in the more palpable
pursuits of a practical, enlightened, and energetic age, or co-activity
with him on a theatre of enlarged and more vigorous action. It is in some
respects more comfortless than even was his experience under his primitive
style of living, and is usually composed of one room, answering all the
purposes of life--eating-room, bed-room, reception-room, principally,
however, for the snow and mud, which have been persuaded here to relax
their hold, after antecedent demonstration of their adhering qualities.




HIS ALLEGED COMMISSION OF PERJURY.