Various

“ Dancing.—Dancing is an amusement which has been discouraged in our country by many of the best people, and not without reason. Dancing is associated in their minds with balls; and this is one of the worst forms of social pleasure. The time consumed in preparation for a ball, the waste of thought upon it, the extravagance of dress, the late hours, the exhaustion of strength, the exposure of health, and the languor of the succeeding day—these, and other evils connected with this amusement, are strong reasons for banishing it from the community. ”

“ War, its murderous effects centupled by the destructive weapons acquired from the white man—disease in new and terrible forms, to the treatment of which their simple skill, and materia medica, equally simple, are wholly incompetent—famine, the consequence of their sadly changed habits, of the intemperance and wastefulness, substituted by the insidious arts of the trader for the moderation and foresight of their happier fathers—the vices, in short, and the encroachments of civilization, all and each in its turn are blotting out tribe after tribe from the records of humanity ”

“ To the street tactician, carts, carriages, and other large moving objects, are exceedingly useful auxiliaries as covers from the enemy, and the dexterity and tact with which he avails himself of their aid in effecting a “go-by,” is amazing. By keeping the cart, carriage, or other body in a direct line between him and the foe, he effects many wonderful, many hair-breadth escapes. ”

“ The skilful street tactician takes care of this, then, and studies to effect his retreats in such a way as to excite no suspicion of design. He does, indeed, take some very sudden and abrupt turns down streets and up lanes when he sees an enemy approaching; but he does it with so unconscious a look, and with such a bona fide air, that neither you nor his creditor would for a moment suspect any thing else than that he was just going that way at any rate. ”

“ It is the custom of Indians at war with each other to imitate the cries of various animals of the chase, for the purpose of luring unwary hunters into an ambush. Three young warriors of the Ottawas being thus decoyed into a wood, two of them were shot and scalped; the third ran for his life, without discharging his piece, setting up the yell of defeat as he ran. The men of his tribe were alarmed, and went instantly in pursuit of the enemy, whom they could not overtake; but on their return, they fell in with a hunting party of the same tribe, whom they fell upon by surprise and scalped. ”

“ Street tactics, let us define the term, is the art or science of avoiding all persons on the streets, and all places in the streets—shops, for instance—whom and which, for particular reasons of your own, you are desirous of eschewing. ”

“ Why shall not gracefulness be spread through the whole community? From the French nation we learn that a degree of grace and refinement of manners may pervade all classes. The philanthropist and Christian must desire to break down the partition walls between human beings in different conditions: and one means of doing this is to remove the conscious awkwardness which confinement to laborious occupations is apt to induce. ”

“ In the year 1834, when Mr Catlin visited these warlike and spirited, yet kindly dwellers of the woods, their number was 2000; three years after, they were infected by the traders with small-pox; and this, with certain suicides committed by individuals who could not survive the loss of all they loved, destroyed the whole tribe, some forty excepted, who were afterwards cut off by their enemies of a neighbouring tribe, so that at this moment not a Mandan exists over the whole wide continent, where, before the baleful appearance of the white man, his free ancestors ranged so happily. ”

“ The meaner vices are held in especial contempt among the yet uncontaminated Indians: slanderers, cowards, liars, misers, and debtors who refuse to pay when the means are in their power, are shunned as persons in whose society no respectable man should be seen. On the subject of debt, in particular, Indian notions differ widely from ours. Should his debtor be unable to meet his engagements in consequence of illness or want of success in the chase, he scrupulously conceals the inconvenience this may occasion, and is careful never to name debt in the defaulter’s presence. ”

“ T. Patriotism.—Patriotism, or love of country, is a sentiment which pervades almost every human breast, and induces each individual to prefer the land of his birth, not because it is better than another country, but merely because it is his country. ”

“ We have heard experienced street tacticians, men on whose skill and judgment we would be disposed to place every reliance, say, that it is a very absurd practice to run across a street to avoid a shop, and to pass along on the opposite side. ”

“ The skilful street tactician never exhibits any flurry or agitation, however imminent his danger may be: it is only green-horns that do this. Neither does he hurry or run away from an enemy when he sees him. ”

“ The Indian is scrupulously exact in the performance of his engagements, and this the traders know so well, that they feel no apprehension, when, having delivered their goods to their Indian customer, they see him plunge into his trackless wilderness with his purchase, and disappear amid wilds into which no civilized foot could follow him. ”

“ As the great object with the street tactician in moving from one point of the city to another is not the shortest but the safest course, he is necessarily subjected to a vast deal of traverse sailing, and thereby to enormous increases of distance, being frequently obliged to make the circuit of half the town to get at the next street. ”

“ The body, as well as the mind, feels its gladdening influence. No amusement seems more to have a foundation in our nature. The animation of youth naturally overflows in harmonious movements. The true idea of dancing entitles it to favour. ”

“ Such a proceeding, they say—and there is reason and common sense, as well as scientific knowledge, in the remark—only exposes you more to the enemy, by passing you through a larger space of his field of vision—by giving him, in short, a longer, a fuller, and a fairer view of you. Far better, they say, to walk close by his window at a smart pace, when the chances are greatly in favour of your passing unobserved. ”

“ This person, as already hinted, when he moves at all, must move cautiously, and must consider well, before he starts, which is his safest course; which the course in which he is least likely to encounter an enemy in the shape of a creditor, and which will subject him to running the gauntlet of the fewest number of obnoxious shops. The amount of manœuvring required to accomplish this is amazing, and the ingenuity exhibited in it frequently very remarkable. ”

“ He cannot move a hundred yards, unless he moves warily, without encountering somebody to whom he owes something, or passing some shop where his name is not in the most savoury odour.
It is, then, the manœuvring necessary to avoid those disagreeables that constitutes street tactics, and confers on the gentleman who practises them the character of what we would call a street tactician. ”

“ Mourning for the dead is expressed by certain modes of paint, and among some tribes by cutting off locks of the hair. The sketch that accompanies this paper represents two warriors, and a woman of the Sacs and Foxes, mourning over the tomb of Black Hawk, the celebrated leader of the war known as the Black Hawk War.
A party of Ottawas and the Kansas having been at war, had met “to bury the tomahawk under the roots of the tree of friendship, and sit under its shadow to smoke the pipe of peace, and to hear the birds sing.” ”

“ The Norwegians, proud of their barren summits, inscribe upon their rix-dollars, “Spirit, loyalty, valour, and whatever is honourable, let the world learn among the rocks of Norway.” The Esquimaux are no less attached to their frigid zone, esteeming the luxuries of blubber-oil for food, and an ice cabin for a habitation, above all the refinements of other countries.—Fireside Education, by S. G. Goodrich.
If a man be gracious and civil to a stranger, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins them. ”

“ Among the most devoted and persevering explorers of the Red man’s territory, is one from whose authority, and indeed from whose very lips, in many instances, we derive a great portion of the circumstances we are about to describe—we allude to the celebrated George Catlin, whose abode of seven years among the least known of their tribes, and whose earnest enthusiasm in the task of inquiry which formed the sole object of his visit, together with his entire success in the pursuit, have constituted him the very first authority of the day. ”

“ The master of the house, after washing his hands in the back kitchen, feels behind the door for a jack-towel, and lays hold of a “friend’s” nose. “Friends” are shy: sometimes a footman breaks a friend’s shins while plunging into the coal-cellar for a shovel of nubblys. We speak feelingly, our own abode having been once turned into a friends’ meeting-house—a fact we became aware of through a smoky chimney; but a chimney will smoke when there is a journeyman baker up it.—Kidd’s Journal. ”

“ They know that his first care will be to secure the game whose skin is to assist in the redemption of his promise; and at the stipulated moment he is again seen to emerge from the forest, unconscious even that what we should call an unusual degree of confidence has been reposed in him, and guided only by his own pure and simple conviction, that a promise once given is a sacred thing, and to be redeemed at whatever cost. ”

“ But, on the other hand, should the inability of the debtor proceed from indolence or intemperance, or should he be indisposed to pay when his means permit, he is then characterised as a “bad man”—his friends gradually abandon him, he becomes an object of public contempt, and nothing could after this induce his creditor to accept from him even his just demand. He is no longer permitted to pay; he has forfeited the privilege of the upright man, and must remain in the contempt into which he has sunk ”

“ Another warrior of equal authority then addressed the people, expatiating on the necessity of punishing such crimes as that committed by Te-pa-gee, who had meanwhile died before them almost without a groan. This fact is related by an eye-witness, who does not, however, tell us whether the unhappy man’s constancy in death did not go far to convince his judges that his fault was rather a defect of nerve than the absence of power to endure. ”

“ It is to be desired that dancing should become too common among us to be made the object of special preparation, as in the ball; that members of the same family, when confined by unfavourable weather, should recur to it for exercise and exhilaration ”

“ Cowardice is not punished by loss of reputation alone in some tribes; as, among the Kansas, if the coward be found incorrigible, he is destroyed. Te-pa-gee was a young warrior of this tribe, who had been more than once charged with this fatal defect. ”

“ This is bad, but a still more melancholy element of decay is the habit of drinking spirituous liquors, which is daily gaining ground among these hapless Americans; this produces an amount of crime and suffering that, even in our own country, could find no parallel; not only is the excitable nature of the Red man stirred to actual madness by these atrocious poisons ”

“ The reader can have no idea how difficult a matter it is for a gentleman of this description to work his way through the streets, so as to avoid all unpleasant encounters; how serious a matter it is for him to move from one point of the city to another. ”

“ Those which die stick to the posts; others, which get a little higher, meet with the same fate, until at last a sufficient layer of them is formed to enable the rest to overcome the difficulty of the passage. A curious instance of the means which young eels will have recourse to, in order to perform their migrations, is annually proved in the neighbourhood of Bristol. Near that city there is a large pond, immediately adjoining which is a stream ”

“ The Kaskaskias, the Peorias, and the Piankeshaws, have fallen victims to the practice of drinking spirits, and to the diseases this fearful habit engenders, so that all are now reduced to a few individuals. Some tribes are totally extinguished;—as, for example the hospitable and friendly Mandans, of whom even the traders themselves report that no one of them was ever known to destroy a white man. ”

“ Mr O’Gorman, as you have the happy knack of making the best of every thing, I believe you are the person best qualified in this company to make the most of the matter, and we must rely on your ingenuity.”
“Thank you, ma’am. That is as much as to say, ‘Bob, as you have treated us to broken meat, and lost the knives and forks, you will please to carve!’ Well, nabocklish, this isn’t a round table, like Prince Arthur’s, for it’s little more than half round, and we have old Howth at the head, and old Neptune at the foot of it ”

“ The remainder of the party arrived as safely, but somewhat more regularly, in the evening of their eventful day, and all dissatisfied except Mr O’Gorman, and
Naisi.
STREET TACTICS.
You, most respectable reader, who owe no man any thing that you are not able and willing to pay, may know nothing of the tactics alluded to in the title of this paper. But there is, you may depend upon it, a pretty numerous class of the community to whom these tactics are quite familiar, and who practise them to a greater or lesser extent every day of their lives. ”

“ Many of the Swiss, on account of the poverty of their country, are induced to seek military service in foreign lands. Yet, in their voluntary exile, so strong is their affection for their native hills, that whole regiments have been said to be on the point of desertion, in consequence of the vivid recollections excited by one of their national songs. ”