, and asked the Spirit if she did not regret that she had left the
regions of the skies to assume the attributes of mortality. With a fond
glance at the object of her love, she replied that a single moon of
bliss like that she now enjoyed was worth an eternity of the cold and
passionless existence which was hers before she had quitted the skies.
Again was she enfolded in the arms of the doating warrior, and the crowd
retired to permit the full, and free, and undisturbed, interchange of
those fond attentions, which are wont to occupy the first moon of
married life.

And thus passed away the first year after the marriage of the Teton
Brave with the beautiful Spirit of the frozen North. Ere that year had
passed, there was a stranger in their cabin--a little son, with the
wondrous beauty of its mother and the fearless soul of its father. Never
was there a being so beloved as the Spirit-wife was by the whole nation.
Though she now possessed the soul of a human being, her breast was
visited only by the softer and purer passions of human nature; anger,
revenge, cruelty, jealousy, and the other turbulent passions and
emotions, never came near her gentle bosom. Her love for her husband
grew with the growth of years, and strengthened with the progress of
time; her pity and compassion for the poor, and hungry, and sick, and
fainting, knew no bounds. Ever mild and affectionate, and kind, and
humane, never prone to break the quiet of her cabin by those querulous
complaints and angry invectives wherewith wives destroy the comfort of
their husbands, and bring storms and tempests, hail, rain, thunder, and
lightning, into the sky of domestic peace, the Teton loved her better
than mortal ever before loved another. Her goodness not only brought joy
and happiness to her husband, but benefits to the nation, which made
their lives pass as pleasantly and glide along as smoothly as a canoe
floating down a quiet stream in the time of summer. When the hunters
would go to their forest sports and labours, they asked the wife of the
Swift Foot if their hunt should be successful, and as she told them
_ay_ or _no_ was their expedition undertaken or abandoned. When she bade
the women plant the maize, they might be sure of the fair weather
without which the task could not be well accomplished; when she cast her
bright eyes on the sheaf of arrows rusting on the wall, the warriors
without more ado rose, and prepared the corn and pemmican, and examined
th