A Colonial Wooing
and threw them in thy lap, thee would laugh and call me a little witch, and why should a few years make such a difference? Why, the day I spent at the basket-maker's by the three beeches, and that poor Indian, 'that benighted soul,' as thee calls him, told me about the birds and beasts and where the eagle had its nest and the lynx its lair and where the rare flowers grew in the gloomy woods, I learned more than ever in any meeting, and been the better ever since, for I have seen the world look bright when others might say it was a dismal time o' year. We have no right to treat this beautiful world as beneath our notice because we do not understand it. That poor Indian's knowledge may not be of such use to him as it should be, and I wonder how he, knowing what he does, can be willing to lie in a drunken stupor so often; but, mother, he has made the sun to shine more brightly for me every time I go out of doors, and things mean so much more to me now, and the birds and flowers preach sermons that make what the Friends say seem very crude and
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