asses an
existence, the horrors of which may be felt but not described.

The soul of the Blackfoot never returns to earth, except to forewarn his
friends of their approaching dissolution. When the Great Spirit says to
him, "Spirit of a Blackfoot, the son or the daughter of your father is
about to leave the green vales of the earth,"--"the foot of your father
is shaking off the drowsiness of age, that he may prepare for the long
journey of spirits,"--"the babe that was born yesterday will be
journeying hither to-day,"--"the heart of your kind mother wants courage
to die,"--"the soul of your beloved maiden, much as it longs for the
arms of its tender lover, faints at the near prospect of the pang that
rends asunder the flesh and the spirit--go, and comfort them,"--then,
and then only--always at the bidding of the Great Master, never of its
own accord--does the soul revisit the gross and unhappy world it has
left. Then does it knock at the ear of the sleeper, whispering, "Take
courage, for the Master despises cowards--meet the pang as a brave
warrior--as a good hunter--as a wise priest--as a beauteous maiden
should meet it, and rejoin the happy souls of thy race, in the valley of
the kind and good Waktan Tanka." The sleeper, thus admonished, wakes
with the words of the spirit deeply engraved on the green leaf of his
memory--that leaf never becomes dry. Is he a warrior, and has he the
fate to be taken in the toils of the enemy?--when bound to the stake,
and the fire scorches his limbs, and the pincers rend his flesh, and the
hot stone sears his eye-balls, and the other torments are inflicted,
that serve to feed the revenge of the conqueror, and test the resolution
of the captive, no groan can be forced from him, in the utmost extremity
of his anguish; he never stains his death-song with grief, but dies as
he lived, a man, because he knows that the Great Spirit despises
cowards. Is he a hunter?--he enters boldly the den of the black bear,
though surrounded by her cubs, and he laughs at the cry of the
catamount, though he crouches for his bound. Is he a priest?--he calls
louder and more frequently and joyfully than before upon his familiar
spirit; he thanks the Master that his prayers are heard; and he is to be
permitted to visit the happy lands. And what if the tears of the
bright-eyed maiden do drop on the bosom of those who pillow her head in
the Hour of Dread, they are not tears of sorrow, but flow from an eye,
by the com