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311

ridiculous to any one else." And I suppose this is true of the vast majority of people. Hence it was that Pope was led to magnify his office :

"Yes, I am proud, I must be proud, to see

Men not afraid of God, afraid of me ;

Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit and the Throne,
But touched and scared by ridicule alone."

But the clock, which beats out the little lives of men,
has beaten out the brief hour of the lecturer. And so
with these noble lines of our great ethical poet, I take
my leave of my subject and of my audience.

NOTE TO P. 307.

To the Editor of the "Fortnightly Review."

"MY DEAR SIR,

"Cleveland, Ohio, July 10, 1896.

"The enclosed paragraph, which I clip from the Leader of this city, represents a writer in your periodical, as stating that the North American Indians were entirely destitute of the sense of the Ludicrous, an opinion which I think generally obtains among people who have not made a special study of the character of our aborigines. But I regard it as a slander upon the poor aborigines, and as I am almost one of them, my ancestors having come here from Holland in 1645, and helped to shoot a sense of the Ludicrous into them, and as they have no one to take their part, I feel like taking up cudgels in their defence.

"During the last year and a half I have been engaged in translating the Jesuit Relations, a work soon to be brought out by the publishing house of The Burrows Brothers Company

of this city, and in the course of my work I have found much information tending to contradict the opinion expressed by your contributor, against whom I feel no especial grudge, although he has basely slandered the people who discovered my country, and held it for my Dutch ancestors until they

came over.

"It may not be out of place to state here that the Relations consist of the experience and observations of the French Jesuit missionaries in Canada and this country in the early part of the seventeenth century, and when published, the translation offset by the old French text, they will comprise about sixty volumes. The Jesuits spent all of their time among the Indians, their sole effort being to become acquainted with their character and language, in order that they might open a way for the introduction of their religion. They were very decided in their opinion that the North American Indian possesses quite a keen sense of the Ludicrous.' When the ship's crew, a few passengers, and the Jesuits all came on shore, the Indians stood off, and looked at them in the distance, making facetious remarks about them. The Father says that if one of the new-comers was corpulent, if he had a flat nose, was cross-eyed, or had any other characteristic distinguishing him from his companions, the Indians were quick to notice it and to laugh at it. They mock us behind our backs,' said one of the Fathers. They notice every little peculiarity in our dress, our manners and features, and make all the fun of it they please behind our backs,' says another.

"One of the Fathers mentions a village where the people did nothing at all, he thought, but amuse themselves by playing tricks upon him and upon each other. On one occasion a number of Indians combined to teach Father Paul le Jeune all of the vilest words in their language, and induced him to use them in a sermon in which he was trying to explain the mysteries of the Roman Catholic Church. His every sentence was greeted by loud roars of laughter from his congregation, but it was some time afterwards that the Father learned the full nature of the practical joke which had been perpetrated

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313 upon him. You will laugh and think they have a keen sense of the Ludicrous' if you ever read the good Father's account of this incident.

"On another occasion one of the Fathers was spending a summer in a little Indian village, many of the inhabitants of which were extremely assiduous in their efforts to teach them their language. They were expecting a visit from a neighbouring tribe, and a part of the entertainment to the guests was to be a speech from the Jesuit priest in the Indian language. The Frenchman had his speech all ready to deliver, when one of the squaws informed him that the words taught him were very vulgar, and that the head-men of the village were attempting to use him for the amusement of their visitors. The Father refused to speak. He says that the MedicineMen, who wield more influence than all of the others, threatened him, and that he, in turn, assumed a menacing tone to his oppressors. Finally, it was agreed that the Jesuit would speak to the company on condition that they would allow him to say what he pleased. His first words were greeted with loud guffaws, on account of his mistakes in their language. Nothing daunted by this, however, he continued his speech, pausing wherever the Indians laughed most vociferously, repeating his words several times, and finally inducing some children or women in the audience to tell him in what his mistake consisted, when he corrected it. At last he succeeded in quieting his unruly audience, and delivered to them quite an effective sermon.

"Many other instances are cited by the very observant Jesuits, showing a very fair sense of the Ludicrous among the aborigines of this continent. They probably had as good cause for laughter in the mistakes of the Jesuit missionaries, as audiences have every year in the Paris theatres at the manufactured mistakes made by personages purporting to be Englishmen, striving to speak the French tongue.

"Yours respectfully,

"JOHN CUTLER COVERT."