P.S. Alas, poor Do-Hum-Me is dead! so is NoSee, Black Hawk's niece; and several of the chiefs are indisposed. Sleeping by hot anthracite fires, and then exposed to the keen encounters of the wintry wind; one hour, half stifled in the close atmosphere of theatres and crowded saloons, and the next driving through 'snowy streets and the midnight air; this is a process which kills civilized people by inches, but savages at a few strokes.

Do-Hum-Me was but nineteen years old, in vigorous health, when I saw her a few days since, and obviously so happy in her newly wedded love, that it ran over at her expressive eyes, and mantled her handsome face like a veil of sunshine. Now she rests among the trees, in Greenwood Cemetery; not the trees that whispered to her childhood. Her coffin was decorated according to Indian custom, and deposited with the ceremonies peculiar to her people. Alas, for the handsome one, how lonely she sleeps here! Far, far away from him, to whom her eye turned constantly as the sunflower to the light!

Do

Sick, and sad at heart, this noble band of warriors, with melancholy steps, left the pestilential city last week, for their own broad prairies in the West. Hum-Me was the pride and idol of them all. The old Iowa chief, the head of the deputation, was her father; and notwithstanding the stoicism of Indian character, it is said that both he and the bereaved young husband were overwhelmed with an agony of grief. They obviously loved each other most strongly. May the Great Spirit grant them a happy meeting in their 'fair hunting grounds' beyond the sky.

LETTER XXXVII.

March, 1843

When I began to write these letters, it was simply as a safety valve for an expanding spirit, pent up like steam in a boiler. I told you they would be of every fashion, according to my changing mood; now a mere panorama of passing scenes, then child-like prattle about birds or mosses; now a serious exposition of facts, for the reformer's use, and then the poet's path, on winged Pegasus, far up into the blue.

To-day I know not what I shall write; but I think 1 shall be off to the sky; for my spirit is in that mood when smiling faces peep through chinks in the clouds, and angel-fingers beckon and point upward. As I grow older, these glimpses into the spiritual become more and more clear, and all the visible stamps itself on my soul, a daguerreotype image of the invisible, written with sunbeams.

I sometimes ask myself, Will it continue to be so? For coming age casts its shadow before; and the rarest of attainments is to grow old happily and gracefully. When I look around among the old people of my acquaintance, I am frightened to see how large a proportion are a burden to themselves, and an annoyance to others. The joyfulness of youth excites in them no kindlier feeling than gloom, and lucky is it, if it does not encounter angry rebuke or supercilious contempt. The happiness of lovers has a still worse effect; it frets them until they become like the man with a toothache, whose irritation impelled him to kick poor puss, because she was sleeping so comfortably in the sunshine.

If this state were an inevitable attendant upon advanced years, then indeed would long life be an unmitigated curse. But there is no such necessity imposed upon us. We make old age cheerless and

morose, in the same way that we pervert all things; and that is, by selfishness. We allow ourselves to think more of our own convenience and comfort, in little matters, than we do of the happiness and improvement of others; and thus we lose the habit of sympathizing with love and joy. I pray God to enable me to guard against this. May I be ever willing to promote the innocent pleasure of others, in their own way, even if it be not my way. Selfishness can blight even the abundant blossoms of youth; and if carried into age, it leaves the soul like a horse enclosed within an arid and stony field, with plenty of verdant pastures all around him. Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kind, sunshiny old age.

'How I love the mellow sage,

Smiling through the veil of age!
And whene'er this man of years

In the dance of joy appears,

Age is on his temples hung,

But his heart-his heart is young!'

Here is the great secret of a bright and green old age. When Tithonus asked for an eternal life in the body, and found, to his sorrow, that immortal youth was not included in the bargain, it surely was because he forgot to ask the perpetual gift of loving and sympathizing.

Next to this, is an intense affection for nature, and for all simple things. A human heart can never grow old, if it takes a lively interest in the pairing of birds, the re-production of flowers, and the changing tints of autumn-ferns. Nature, unlike other friends, has an exhaustless meaning, which one sees and hears more distinctly, the more they are enamoured of her. Blessed are they who hear it; for through tones comes the most inward perceptions of the spirit. Into the ear of the soul, which reverently listens, Nature whispers, speaks, or warbles, most heavenly

arcana.

And even they who seek her only through science, receive a portion of her own tranquillity, and per- . petual youth. The happiest old man I ever saw, was one who knew how the mason-bee builds his cell, and how every bird lines her nest; who found pleasure in a sea-shore pebble, as boys do in new marbles ; and who placed every glittering mineral in a focus of light, under a kaleidescope of his own construction. The effect was like the imagined riches of fairy land; and when an admiring group of happy young people gathered round it, the heart of the good old man leapt like the heart of a child. The laws of nature, as manifested in her infinitely various operations, were to him a perennial fountain of delight; and, like her, he offered the joy to all. Here was no admixture of the bad excitement attendant upon ambition or controversy; but all was serenely happy, as are an angel's thoughts, or an infant's dreams.

Age, in its outward senses, returns again to childhood; and thus should it do spiritually. The little child enters a rich man's house, and loves to play with the things that are new and pretty, but he thinks not of their market value, nor does he pride himself that another child cannot play with the same. The farmer's home will probably delight him more; for he will love living squirrels better than marble greyhounds, and the merry bob-o'lincoln better than stuffed birds from Araby the blest; for they cannot sing into his heart. What he wants is life and love -the power of giving and receiving joy. To this estimate of things, wisdom returns, after the intuitions of childhood are lost. Virtue is but innocence on a higher plane, to be attained only through severe conflict. Thus life completes its circle; but it is a circle that rises while it revolves; for the path of spirit is ever spiral, containing all of truth and love in each revolution, yet ever tending upward. The virtue which brings us back to innocence, on a higher plane of wisdom, may be the childhood of another

state of existence; and through successive conflicts, we may again complete the ascending circle, and find it holiness.

The ages, too, are rising spirally; each containing all, yet ever ascending. Hence, all our new things are old, and yet they are new. Some truth known to the ancients meets us on a higher plane, and we do not recognize it, because it is like a child of earth, which has passed upward and become an angel. Nothing of true beauty ever passes away. The youth of the world, which Greece embodied in immortal marble, will return in the circling Ages, as innocence comes back in virtue; but it shall return filled with a higher life; and that, too, shall point upward. Thus shall the Arts be glorified. Beethoven's music prophesies all this, and struggles after it continually; therefore, whosoever hears it, (with the inward, as well as the outward ear,) feels his soul spread its strong pinions, eager to pass 'the flaming bounds of time and space,' and circle all the infinite.

It is a beautiful conception of Fourier's that the Aurora Borealis is the Earth's aspiration after its glorious future; and that when the moral and intellectual world are brought into order by the right construction of society, these restless, flashing northern lights will settle into an intensely radiant circle round the poles, melt all the ice, and bring into existence new flowers of unknown beauty.

Astronomers almost contemporary with Fourier, and probably unacquainted with his theory of reconstructing society, have suggested the idea of progressive changes in the earth's motions, till her poles shall be brought into exact harmony with the poles of the heavens, and thus perpetual spring pervade the whole earth.

It is a singular fact, too, that the groups and series of Fourier's plan of society are in accordance with Swedenborg's description of the order in heaven. It is said that Fourier never read Swedenborg; yet has