Oft on a plat of rising ground Save the cricket on the hearth, To bless the doors from nightly harm. THE SAVAGES OF NORTH AMERICA. [This lesson is taken from Essays, by Benjamin Franklin.] 1. Savages, we call them, because their manners. differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs. Perhaps, if we could examine the manners of different nations with impartiality, we should find no people so rude as to be without any rules of politeness, nor any so polite as not to have some remains of rudeness. 2. The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors; when old, counsellors; for all their government is by the counsel and advice of the sages: there is no force, there are no prisons, no officers to compel obedience or inflict punishment. Hence they generally study oratory, the best speaker having the most influence. The Indian women till the ground, dress the food, nurse and bring up the children, and preserve and hand down to posterity the memory of public transactions. These employments of men and women are accounted natural and honourable. 3. Having few artificial wants, they have abundance of leisure for improvement in conversation. Our laborious manner of life, compared with theirs, they esteem slavish and base, and the learning on which we value ourselves they regard as frivolous and useless. An instance of this occurred at the treaty of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, 1774, between the government of Virginia and the Six Nations. After the principal business was settled, the commissioners from Virginia acquainted the Indians by a speech that there was at Williamsburg, a college with a fund for educating Indian youth; and if the chiefs of the Six Nations would send down half a dozen of their sons to that college, the government would take care they should be well provided for and instructed in all the learning of the white people. : 4. It is one of the Indian rules of politeness not to answer a public proposition the same day that it is made they think it would be treating it as a light matter, and that they show it respect by taking time to consider it as a matter important. They therefore deferred their answer till the day following, when their speaker began by expressing their deep sense of the kindness of the Virginia government in making them that offer; for we know,' says he, 'that you highly esteemed the kind of learning taught in those colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men while with you would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal; and we thank you heartily. 5. 'But you, who are wise, must know that different nations have different conceptions of things; and you will therefore not take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some experience of it. Several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the Northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, nor kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly-were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counsellors; they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline accepting of it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.' 6. Having frequent occasions to hold public councils, they have acquired great order and decency in conducting them. The old men sit in the foremost ranks, the warriors in the next, and the women and children in the hindmost. The business of the women is to take notice of what passes, imprint it on their memories-for they have no writing-and communicate it to the children. They are the records of the council, and they preserve traditions of the stipulations in treaties a hundred years back, which, when we compare with our writing, we always find exact. 7. He that would speak rises; the rest observe a profound silence. When he has finished and sits down, they leave him five or six minutes to recollect, that if he has omitted anything he intended to say, or has anything to add, he may rise again and deliver it. To interrupt another, even in common conversation, is reckoned highly indecent. 8. How different this is from the conduct of a polite British House of Commons, where scarce a day passes without some confusion that makes it necessary for the Speaker to call some member to order! and how different from the mode of conversation in many polite companies of Europe, where, if you do not deliver your sentence with great rapidity, you are cut off in the middle of it by the impatient loquacity of those you converse with, and never suffered to finish it! The politeness of these savages in conversation is indeed carried to excess, since it does not permit them to contradict or deny the truth of what is asserted in their presence. By this means they indeed avoid disputes, but then it becomes difficult to know their minds, or what impression you make upon them. hon'-our-a-ble in-struct'-ed im-par-ti-al'-i-ty, fairness. coun'-sel-lors, persons who give advice. Vir-gin'-i-a, one of the eastern states Six Na'-tions. These were six im- con-cep'-tions, ideas; thoughts. oc-ca'-sions, necessity. ac-quired', gained. stip-u-la'-tions, terms agreed upon. |