ays kind and good to my children whom you see below.' So I came down,
but I have never forgotten what was said to me.

"I have always stood in the smoke between the two bands when my people
fought with their enemies . . . I now hear the same voice that talked to
me before I came into the world. It tells me I can remain here no
longer." He then walked out, looked at the sun, the sky, the lake, and
the distant hills; then came in, lay down composedly in his place, and in
a few minutes ceased to breathe.

If we would hardly care to live like Indians, after all (and Tanner tired
of it and came back, an old man, to the States), we might desire to die
like Pe-shau-ba, if, like him, we had been "good and kind to God's
children whom we meet below." So here is a Christmas moral for you, out
of a Red Indian book, and I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New
Year.

APPENDIX I

_Reynolds's Peter Bell_.

When the article on John Hamilton Reynolds ("A Friend of Keats") was
written, I had not seen his "Peter Bell" (Taylor and Hessey, London,
1888). This "Lyrical Ballad" is described in a letter of Keats's
published by Mr. Sidney Colvin in _Macmillan's Magazine_, August, 1888.
The point of Reynolds's joke was to produce a parody before the original.
Reynolds was annoyed by what Hood called "The Betty Foybles" of
Wordsworth, and by the demeanour of a poet who was serious, not only in
season, but out of season. Moreover, Wordsworth had damned "a pretty
piece of heathenism" by Keats, with praise which was faint even from
Wordsworth to a contemporary. In the circumstances, as Wordsworth was
not yet a kind of solemn shade, whom we see haunting the hills, and hear
chanting the swan song of the dying England, perhaps Reynolds's parody
scarce needs excuse. Mr. Ainger calls it "insolent," meaning that it has
an unkind tone of personal attack. That is, unluckily, true, but to
myself the parody appears remarkably funny, and quite worthy of "the
sneering brothers, the vile Smiths," as Lamb calls the authors of
"Rejected Addresses." Lamb wrote to tell Wordsworth that he did not see
the fun of the parody--perhaps it is as well that we should fail to see
the fun of jests broken on our friends. But will any Wordsworthian deny
to-day the humour of this?--

"He is rurally related;
Peter Bell hath country cousins,
(He had once a worthy mother),
Bells and Peters by the dozens,
But Peter Bell he hath no brothe