THE FIRE WATERS.

SPEECH OF YAN-NA-HAR, AN INDIAN CHIEF.

Brothers, hear! and with the heart keep my words. My father, KI-MAN-CHEE, was a noble chief. He was light of foot-the wind only was before him. His strong arm was as a branch of the mountain oak, and plenty smiled at his cabin door. Joy was with him when he returned from the chase, and his wife and children rejoiced in his shadow, as beneath a spreading tree.

The eye of the war-chief was not dimhis strength was not diminished. He came to the council-fire, and his brothers smiled in the beams of peace. Then the war-path was overgrown with grass; peace came as a river, and joy like the cataracts of the mountain.

These were the blessings of Ki-man-chee and his brothers, when they drank at the forest spring and grew strong. But alas! where now is Ki-man-chee, "Swift foot of the prairie?" The Fire-Spirit came like the clouds of the north, and fire and death were on his wings. The shadows of darkness were before him, and the clouds and coldness of night fell upon his track.

Then Ki-man-chee's eyes grew dim, his arm fell, his swift foot turned from the hunting-path, and his tread was like the heavy foot-fall of the wounded buffalo. He slept with the watch-dog in the sun, and when he awoke his strength was gone. Ki-man-chee fell, and the clustering joys that waited at his cabin door departed.

He fell like a tree in summer, torn by the lightning and the mountain blast, and all his green leaves withered. The red men fell before the Fire-Spirit like the leaves of the forest. Such was the curse of the Fire-waters—a river of death, swollen with blood, and its waves brought desolation.

NIGHT.

How absolute is the silence of the night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible! From all around us comes a half sound, a half whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away of earth and all created things. In the great miracle of nature, decay and reproduction are ever beginning, never ending— the gradual lapse and running of the sand in the great hour-glass of Time.

WAKE NOT THE FIRE SPIRIT.

SPEECH OF AN INDIAN CHIEF.

BROTHERS, hear! forget not the pleasant cabin of Ki-man-chee. Wake not the Fire

Spirit any more. We are now rejoicing in peace. Let us alone-bring not the Firestream over the blue hills of the east; for it will swallow us up quickly. If we say come, the grass will wither, and the red, men will fall like the leaves of autumn.

Brothers! bring us not the Fire-water-let us not perish by the withering curse of the waters of death. Bring us the hatchet and the spade. Then we will build cabins and plant fields. Corn shall grow in our valleys, and the yellow grain wave upon our hills.

Then joy and plenty will smile around us, and we shall dwell in peace. Let us drink at the cool stream, where the eagle flaps his wing to make it strong for his upward flight. The Great Spirit has blessed it-there let us drink and be strong. Let the white man come and drink with us at the cool stream. Then we can sit together and smoke the pipe-of-peace, and the Great Spirit will bless all his chilIren.

WRITING.

THE art of writing has probably done more than any other invention for the improvement of the human race. Without its aid the experience of each generation would have been nearly lost to succeeding ages, and but a faint glimmer of past events would have come to us through the mists of tradition. The genius of each individual would have gone down to the grave with its possessor, and the history of the world, with all the improvements in the arts and sciences, would be comparatively unknown.

The records of the great Hebrew Lawgiver could never have been made, and the powers of his inspired genius, which bore him up amid all his trials, could never have been transmitted to posterity, except in broken fragments through the wasting channel of tradition, where they would have lost all their grandeur and sublime beauty. But through this medium the powers of that great mind have blessed the nations of the earth, and the records made by his pen come to us, at the distance of thousands of years, with all the freshness and vigor they possessed when Moses lived.

Without this saving and redeeming art the light of science would not illuminate our minds, but would now be slumbering in its grave. Writing spake and science came slowly forth to shed its rays of light and life-inspiring truth over the human race. By the aid of writing, to which the printing press has given electric wings, we converse with men of distant climes, and their discoveries are quickly made known to us.

But for this art the eloquent orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, the poetry of Homer, the deeds of the illustrious Socrates, the philosophy of the renowned Plato, and all the stirring scenes of Greece and Rome, would have been buried in oblivion, or destroyed in their downward course through the paths of tradition.

Even the teachings of "Him who spake as never man spake," could not have been recorded, and all the sublime truths and precepts which he uttered, would have been lost to the world, and the earth would now be swinging to and fro, in moral darkness, without a ray of heavenly truth, or chart to guide an erring people up to God.