Do her good."
Margery now laughed outright, at these specimens of Indian
gallantry, which only too well embody the code of the red man's
habits. Doubtless the heart has its influence among even the most
savage people, for nature has not put into our breasts feelings and
passions to be discarded by one's own expedients, or wants. But no
advocate of the American Indian has ever yet been able to maintain
that woman fills her proper place in his estimate of claims. As for
Margery, though so long subject to the whims, passions. and
waywardness of a drunkard, she had reaped many of the advantages of
having been born in that woman's paradise, New England. We are no
great admirers of the legacy left by the Puritan to his descendants,
taken as an inheritance in morals, manners, and customs, and as a
whole; though there are parts, in the way of codicils, that there is
no portion of the Christian world which might not desire to emulate.
In particular, do we allude to the estimate put upon, and the
treatment received by their women. Our allusion is not to the
refinements and gracefulness of polished intercourse; for of THEM,
the Blarney Rock of Plymouth has transmitted but a meagre account in
the inventory, and perhaps the less that is said about this portion
of the family property the better; but, dropping a few degrees in
the social scale, and coming down to the level where we are
accustomed to regard people merely as men and women, we greatly
question if any other portion of the world can furnish a parallel to
the manly, considerate, rational, and wisely discriminating care,
that the New England husband, as the rule, bestows on his wife; the
father on his daughter; or the brother on his sister.
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