, and, with the solemnest voice,
say--'Gentlemen, let us smoke to the memory of Colonel John Moredock;'
when, after several whiffs taken standing in deep silence and deeper
reverie, he would resume his seat and his discourse, something in these
words:

"'Though Colonel John Moredock was not an Indian-hater _par excellence_,
he yet cherished a kind of sentiment towards the red man, and in that
degree, and so acted out his sentiment as sufficiently to merit the
tribute just rendered to his memory.

"'John Moredock was the son of a woman married thrice, and thrice
widowed by a tomahawk. The three successive husbands of this woman had
been pioneers, and with them she had wandered from wilderness to
wilderness, always on the frontier. With nine children, she at last
found herself at a little clearing, afterwards Vincennes. There she
joined a company about to remove to the new country of Illinois. On the
eastern side of Illinois there were then no settlements; but on the west
side, the shore of the Mississippi, there were, near the mouth of the
Kaskaskia, some old hamlets of French. To the vicinity of those hamlets,
very innocent and pleasant places, a new Arcadia, Mrs. Moredock's party
was destined; for thereabouts, among the vines, they meant to settle.
They embarked upon the Wabash in boats, proposing descending that stream
into the Ohio, and the Ohio into the Mississippi, and so, northwards,
towards the point to be reached. All went well till they made the rock
of the Grand Tower on the Mississippi, where they had to land and drag
their boats round a point swept by a strong current. Here a party of
Indians, lying in wait, rushed out and murdered nearly all of them. The
widow was among the victims with her children, John excepted, who, some
fifty miles distant, was following with a second party.

"He was just entering upon manhood, when thus left in nature sole
survivor of his race. Other youngsters might have turned mourners; he
turned avenger. His nerves were electric wires--sensitive, but steel. He
was one who, from self-possession, could be made neither to flush nor
pale. It is said that when the tidings were brought him, he was ashore
sitting beneath a hemlock eating his dinner of venison--and as the
tidings were told him, after the first start he kept on eating, but
slowly and deliberately, chewing the wild news with the wild meat, as
if both together, turned to chyle, together should sinew him to his
intent. From