of their glory!"

"I know not, I know not," returned his companion; "silver is far from
plenty, at least in the wilderness, and your brazen idols are forbidden
in the commandments of the Lord."

"Such indeed was the opinion of the great lawgiver of the Jews, but the
Egyptians, and the Chaldeans, the Greeks, and the Romans, were wont to
manifest their gratitude, in these types of the human form. Indeed many
of the illustrious masters of antiquity, have by the aid of science
and skill, even outdone the works of nature, and exhibited a beauty
and perfection in the human form that are difficult to be found in the
rarest living specimens of any of the species; genus, homo."

"Can your idols walk or speak, or have they the glorious gift of
reason?" demanded the trapper, with some indignation in his voice;
"though but little given to run into the noise and chatter of the
settlements, yet have I been into the towns in my day, to barter the
peltry for lead and powder, and often have I seen your waxen dolls, with
their tawdry clothes and glass eyes--"

"Waxen dolls!" interrupted Obed; "it is profanation, in the view of the
arts, to liken the miserable handy-work of the dealers in wax to the
pure models of antiquity!"

"It is profanation in the eyes of the Lord," retorted the old man, "to
liken the works of his creatur's, to the power of his own hand."

"Venerable venator," resumed the naturalist, clearing his throat, like
one who was much in earnest, "let us discuss understandingly and in
amity. You speak of the dross of ignorance, whereas my memory dwells
on those precious jewels, which it was my happy fortune, formerly, to
witness, among the treasured glories of the Old World."

"Old World!" retorted the trapper, "that is the miserable cry of all the
half-starved miscreants that have come into this blessed land, since the
days of my boyhood! They tell you of the Old World; as if the Lord had
not the power and the will to create the universe in a day, or as if he
had not bestowed his gifts with an equal hand, though not with an equal
mind, or equal wisdom, have they been received and used. Were they to
say a worn out, and an abused, and a sacrilegious world, they might not
be so far from the truth!"

Doctor Battius, who found it quite as arduous a task to maintain any
of his favourite positions with so irregular an antagonist, as he would
have found it difficult to keep his feet within the hug of a western
wrestler, he