pale-featured, delicate-looking lad, garmented in a plain suit of gray tweed and an
unpretentious black felt hat, which he lifted bashfully to the crowd that cheered with that
strange wild, eerie intonation that only Indian throats can give.

The very memory of that cheer thrills me now as I fancy a bugle call must thrill a war-
horse. I see again those grand old Iroquois chiefs in their savage dress, their copper-
colored faces dashed with red and black paint, their only head covering a tuft of eagle
plumes that waved and swayed with each motion of the wearer’s head, their metal
tomahaws[sic] that gleamed in the yellow sunlight, fascinating the eyes of the boyish
prince as the warriors crowded near, eager to clasp his hand and to tell him in broken,
almost unintelligible English how loyal they were to his “great mother” and how well they
remembered his brother, the Prince of Wales.

But my childish eyes watched only two people in that vast gathering, the pale young
prince and the dark, military-looking chief that rode beside him. How proud my little heart
was of that rider! How well I knew those square, Napoleonic shoulders, that beautiful
buckskin costume, those brilliant silver medals and ornaments, that dainty, thouhh[sic]
deadly, scalping knife, and well-wom tomahawk, how familiar was that flaunting crest of
ostrich plumes that, waving, fell almost to the shoulders over which was flung the red
broadcloth “blanket” that contrasted so vividly with the jet-black pony arching its head so
proudly--for had not the queen’s son just patted its glossy flanks and praised the royal
little horse for its beauty?

Then my ears caught the sound of the deer-foot rattles ornamenting my rider’s ankles. Ah!
me, how the latent germs of nationality will well up even in a child’s sentimentality. The
jangle of those rattles that kept such perfect time with each determined little step of the
pony, flew to my head like reddest wine.

I leaned far out of the window and peered down into the savage-visaged throng.

“Will he look up?” I cried to my mother, but she was too eagerly watching that pair to
reply, and a clear, proud light crept into her blue English eyes when she saw “our” chief
dismount, toss off the scarlet blanket, spread it on the green as a carpet, conduct the
young prince to a place of honor upon it, take from his own shoulders a magnificent sash
of Indian workmanship in beads, moose hair and porcupine quills, and laying it across
young royalty’s shoulder tie it in a loose knot beneath his arm.

Then stepped on to that scarlet carpeting one, rich in years and renown, one whose
privilege it was to adopt the young Britisher into the Iroquois nation, one who had been
the speaker of the council for forty years, who was called “the Mohawk Warbler,” because
of his exquisite language--a veritable Indian Ruskin. That splendid old veteran fought
bravely for the British flag in the long ago, so with pardonable pride he took the prince’s
hand within his own, and the strange, solemn rites commenced.