"
"Is it an Indian, that you see?" demanded the impatient Middleton.
"Red-skin or White-skin it is much the same. Friendship and use can
tie men as strongly together in the woods as in the towns--ay, and for
that matter, stronger. Here are the young warriors of the prairies.--
Often do they sort themselves in pairs, and set apart their lives for
deeds of friendship; and well and truly do they act up to their
promises. The death-blow to one is commonly mortal to the other! I
have been a solitary man much of my time, if he can be called
solitary, who has lived for seventy years in the very bosom of natur',
and where he could at any instant open his heart to God, without
having to strip it of the cares and wickednesses of the settlements--
but making that allowance, have I been a solitary man; and yet have I
always found that intercourse with my kind was pleasant, and painful
to break off, provided that the companion was brave and honest. Brave,
because a skeary comrade in the woods," suffering his eyes
inadvertently to rest a moment on the person of the abstracted
naturalist, "is apt to make a short path long; and honest, inasmuch as
craftiness is rather an instinct of the brutes, than a gift becoming
the reason of a human man.
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